The truth about Britney Spears’ album sales in Europe

SOUTHERN EUROPE – TURKEY

The least known about a market the bigger the tendency to claim unrealistic figures. Oops is widely claimed as a 300,000 units seller in Turkey. To be fair, with fans of Britney certifications from Turkey are quite obscure. Until their 2008 annual report, no official award was in place for international artists due to their very limited sales there. Instead, MÜ-YAP used to award a top foreign artist award in both male and female category on a yearly basis. This was an indication of success, but with no sales requirement.

One more very misleading element is the Diamond certification. For most countries Diamond is equal to 10 Platinum discs. This is where mega-claims came from in the case of Oops. Britney.com listed it at Diamond status using 2008’s requirement levels, which led many people to assume it was 10xP. In reality, Diamond equals to only 2xP there.

Myself, I had to use an assumption as to which level was used by the website in 2006 since no certification existed for foreign albums. I assumed they used a 15,000 units plateau to be in line with their own information from 2011.

Given the myths existing around Britney‘s albums sales in Turkey, those figures can be seen as disappointing, especially in a 50-million yearly selling albums industry. We need to understand the local-foreign ratio for certifications is 1 to 15/20, depending on the award. Meaning that even at its 50 million peak, Turkey must be regarded as a 3/4 million industry for international stars, about half of the market of Greece and a fourth of the one of Portugal.

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

• Baby One More Time – 25,000
• Oops!… I did It Again – 35,000
• Britney – 15,000
• In The Zone – 5,000
• Greatest Hits, My Prerogative – 5,000
• Blackout – N/A
• Circus – N/A
• The Singles Collection – N/A