France best selling albums ever:
Chambre 12 by Louane (2015)

After six months of release, it was up to an impressive 12 weeks at the top, 10 weeks at #2, 3 weeks at #3 and one week at #4. The following singles Nos Secrets at #43, and the tribute song to her mother Maman, a #18 hit, weren’t as big as previous singles but supported the album very well for various more months.

In fact, Chambre 12 only left the Top 10 once until the end of 2015, in early November due to 5 new albums debuting at the first five positions. Such a ground-breaking performance made the LP a strong contender for the yearly #1 spot. That position seemed secured until Adele stormed onto the charts in November with her third album 25. After a fierce battle, Louane concluded the year on 772,000 sales against 785,000 for the British megastar, which edged ahead in the very last week of 2015. However a last-minute change in SNEP rules to allow streaming figures to be factored into the annual rankings shot Louane to the official top selling title. Please note that streaming units are not considered for this article tally as the weekly ranking is still missing to weight them.

Recurrent airplay, as well as the Victoires de la Musique awards, kept the album in the Top 10 until April 2016. If nothing new was on its way from Louane, except an impressive German success where Avenir shot to #3 while reaching Platinum status, Chambre 12 remained inside the Top 40 every week until October 2016, a total of 81 time frames. It sold almost 200,000 units in 2016 alone.

Turning two years old next week, the album is still in the Top 50 based on pure sales at the time of this article. The worst position it has dropped to so far is #74 in the always competitive first week of November – ironically, the same week it first dropped out of the Top 10 one year earlier. With 971,000 units sold by the end of 2016, net shipments were fairly close to the million mark.

Net shipment as of the end of 2016 is estimated at 990,000 copies. It makes Chambre 12 the 178th best selling album of all-time by that date.

It must be noted that ongoing 2017 sales have since pushed the album to 983,000 units scanned and arguably 1 million copies shipped. It will thus be added to the million selling albums in the major 2017 update.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: SNEP, GFK, Chartsinfrance.net.