France Album Sales: Daft Punk

Homework Era

It all started with their debut album Homework, released in January 1997 and its first single Da Funk. A sizable underground hit that went #7 in the big chart, it enabled an incredible #3 peak position for Homework in its first full week of release in spite of Daft Punk fame being almost null at the time.

This debut wasn’t the start of a ground breaking era yet. In fact, the album dropped to #13 the following week, never coming back inside the Top 10. Instead, it was the debut of a solid run, a continuous underground appeal with crossover second single smash Around The World solidifying the album success over various months. Although it never went higher than #5, the song became the anthem of the young generation. As of today it gained 59 million streams on Spotify, one of the very best totals in the world for a 1997 song.

Accumulated 39 consecutive weeks inside the Top 50, the album sales went 2xGold in December, representing 200,000 sales in France. The certification came quite late yet as Homework sold almost 300,000 units to rank at #24 in 1997 year end list. Remaining quite alive until March 1998, worldwide total was up to 1,3 million units. It was an outstanding total for a French release. The cult status gained by both the group and the album over years obviously benefited sales of their records. By 2000, the total was already on 1,8 million while by the release of Discovery in 2001 it had crossed 2 million units. This figure included 489,000 scanned sales in the US, highlighting the enduring success of the album considering its initial peak of #150 only in this market. Sales in France were pretty similar as the album was up to 450,000 units by that time.