The truth about Britney Spears’ album sales in Europe

SOUTHERN EUROPE – PORTUGAL

Although their local scenes are very different, Spain and Portugal have a lot in common in their reception of foreign artists. Both BOMT and Oops topped Portuguese weekly charts and both made the Top 10 Year End Chart of 1999 at #8 and 2000 at #4 respectively.

Their official awards are incomplete since the AFP, Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa, had the habit to display certifications in their Weekly charts only, meaning once an album had dropped out there was no information anymore. Their official rankings only began in 2003 which explains the incomplete picture for her early years.

Britney.com awards confirm indeed the impressive career start Britney had there with her first two albums coming close to the six digits milestone. An interesting case is the one of Greatest Hits, officially Platinum under the 40,000 units criteria upon release, and later shown as only Platinum under the 20,000 units plateau a couple of years later. It appears the album failed to sell its initial shipment, which leads us to conclude on some returns.

Just like in Spain, the popularity of the singer dropped a lot after her image matured. Circus peaked at an awful #28 position and dropped out after a couple of weeks. As one can guess considering the market size (4 times lower by 2008 than one decade earlier), and the disastrous chart performance, this album and the subsequent ones sold irrelevant numbers in this country.

Merging all the data together concludes on the following album sales to date:

• Baby One More Time – 90,000
• Oops!… I did It Again – 85,000
• Britney – 40,000
• In The Zone – 25,000
• Greatest Hits, My Prerogative – 35,000
• Blackout – N/A
• Circus – N/A
• The Singles Collection – N/A