France Best Selling Albums Ever:
All-Time Ranking (2015)

Various Artists / Concept Albums

01 Musical – Notre-Dame De Paris (1998) : 2 825 000
02 Era – Era (1997) : 2 180 000
03  Musical – Starmania (1978) : 2 075 000
04 Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène (1976) : 2 065 000
05 Soundtrack – Grease (1978) : 2 040 000
06 Soundtrack / Éric Serra – Le Grand Bleu (1988) : 1 760 000
07 Soundtrack – Dirty Dancing (1987) : 1 750 000
08 Soundtrack / Bruno Coulais – Les Choristes (2004) : 1 720 000
09 Soundtrack / Whitney Houston – The Bodyguard (1992) : 1 720 000
10 Soundtrack / James Horner – Titanic (1997) : 1 690 000
11 Soundtrack / Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever (1977) : 1 530 000
12 Musical – Roméo Et Juliette, De La Haine À L’Amour (2000) : 1 490 000
13 Richard Clayderman – Rêveries (1979) : 1 400 000
14 Jean-Michel Jarre – Equinoxe (1978) : 1 350 000
15 Jean-Philippe Audin & Diego Modena – Ocarina (1991) : 1 290 000
16 Musical – Les Dix Commandements (2000) : 1 180 000
17 Musical – Notre-Dame De Paris (Intégrale) (1998) : 1 165 000
18 Soundtrack / Yann Tiersen – Amélie Poulain (2001) : 1 090 000
19 Star Academy 2 – Chante Les Années 80 (2002) : 1 080 000
20 André Rieu – Valses (1997) : 1 080 000

Although there is much less albums featured on this list – 24 million sellers against 42 in the Bands category – more of them are part of the very best sellers. This is quite a good representation of soundtracks way of selling, e.g. hit big or miss completely.

Chart runs of those albums show well this situation. In fact, most of those albums are notable for their two to four months runs at the top of charts. This big splash upon release sent Grease and Saturday Night Fever up to unseen sales at the time, while Notre-Dame De Paris had the good idea to do the same during the peak of the music market in France to achieve monster sales. Jean-Michel Jarre pair of electronic albums also feature incredibly well on this list.