France Album Sales: Coldplay

Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends Era

With their first three albums, peaks of Coldplay improved from #26 to #4 to two weeks #1. Can you get any better than #1? Yes, you can by topping charts for an impressive nine weeks. That’s exactly what Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends did in France in 2008. As of today, it remains the album that definitely opened doors of the French general public to the British band. The 53,000 copies sold in its first week also represented the band best opening to date.

If Violet Hill buzz single performed decently with a #36 physical sales peak and #8 in the digital front, it’s Viva La Vida smash who increased for good Coldplay profile in the country. Peaking at #11 in physical sales but at #2 in digital ranking where it remained 17 weeks Top 10 and 35 weeks Top 40, the track was one of the biggest 2008 hits. The album followed this golden way with the initial streak at #1 and an incredible resistance with 73 weeks Top 50 and 177 Top 200.

Each of their past albums sold in the 150-300k range during their promotional campaign. This one outperformed them with ease selling 433,000 units in 2008, including 25,000 digital sales, plus 119,000 units in 2009, a total of 552,000 copies in 18 months, enough to reach the new Diamond criteria of 500,000 units.

Once again in the meantime their catalog did wonders. In terms of catalog albums only, Coldplay sold 111,000 albums in 2008 and 87,000 albums in 2009. Even more impressive is the fact those figures include nearly 15,000 multi-CD sets for each years. By the end of 2009 their release to date sales were as detailed below.

2000 Parachutes – 360,000
2002 A Rush Of Blood To The Head – 475,000
2003 Live 2003 – 120,000
2005 X&Y – 430,000
2008 Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends – 552,000

A 2010 package containing Viva La Vida + X&Y also performed quite well with over 30,000 copies sold to date.

Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify

1. Viva La Vida – 164,098,000
2. Violet Hill – 28,114,000
3. Lost! – 25,597,000