France Album Sales: Rihanna
Unapologetic (2012) Era
We already mentioned that every Rihanna album debuted with better sales than its predecessor. It must also be said that every lead single out-peaked the previous lead as they performed as in following order: #18-#12-#6-#4-#2-#1. The series was poised to be ended as you can’t beat a #1 position. Well, someway Rihanna can. We Found Love was five weeks #1, 15 weeks Top 10 and 111 weeks Top 200. Hard to beat. Due to strong competition from PSY cult smash Gangnam Style and Adele massive Skyfall, the Barbadian new lead single Diamonds stopped its run at #1 at three weeks. But the song was an utterly massive 21 weeks inside the Top 10 and a mind blowing 154 weeks inside the Top 200.
The album titled Unapologetic debuted at #3. Has it debuted with more than 26,000 units to continue the increase trend? Well, it did, debuting with an impressive 37,342 units sold. While the Top 10 Album Chart is stolen by juggernaut local acts every year in France, Diamonds was so popular that Unapologetic stood Top 10 each of its five weeks until the end of the year. It sold a huge 158,000 units in the meantime.
Second single Stay was also huge, hitting #2 for four weeks and pushing the album to #6 in March. With the first two singles taking an heavy amount of air time all year long, following extracts failed to make that much of an impact. Unapologetic registered 127,000 sales in 2013, bringing the total to 285,000 units.
During this era Rihanna catalog kept selling very well. Good Girl Gone Bad sold 25,000 units in 2012-2013, Rated R nearly 20,000 while Loud sold more than this figure in 2013 alone.
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
- Diamonds – 258,690,000
- Stay  feat. Mikky Ekko – 121,878,000
- Pour It Up – 69,873,000