France best selling albums ever: Mon Paradis by Christophe Maé (2007)
As far as one may remember, musicals have been hugely popular in France. They also often managed to send newcomers into super stardom. It happened with Julien Clerc (Hair), Daniel Balavoine (Starmania) or Hélène Ségara and Garou (Notre-Dame de Paris) among others. Successful musical Le Roi Soleil, released in 2005, brough two new star in French Variété scene: Emmanuel Moire and Christophe Maé.
While the former had a strong debut, the latter reached highs unseen in several years. His debut song On S’Attache was an immediate hit and everything released since has been big as well.
Despite being topped by colorful singer Mika in 2007 Album Year End chart, time proved Mon Paradis album had the best legs out of both smashes.
Yearly French retail sales stand as below:
- 2007: 820,000 CD + 12,000 DL
- 2008: 498,000 CD + 9,000 DL
- 2009: 77,000 CD + 3,000 DL
- 2010: 53,000 CD + 3,000 DL
- 2011: 40,000
- 2012-2015: 50,000
- 2CD boxes: 25,000
A grand total of 1,590,000 copies sold.
The picture seems rather clear but as we are going deeper into the past data contains more and more traps. In fact, Mon Paradis sold 714,000 copies in 2007 and 422,000 copies in 2008 as per IFOP that was the official sales data provider from 1995 til 2008, while GFK took over from 2009. After studying in details both providers I have to stick with GFK data as soon as it is available although IFOP was still the official one. I’ll be posting a dedicated post explaining why GFK appears to be the most accurate out of the two company.
Net shipment as of the end of 2015 is estimated at 1,610,000 copies.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
I didn’t know this “2CD boxes” were so common in France, although, from what I can see, they didn’t add any significant sales. Are you going to do the same with the likes of Queen (Greatest Hits I & II, Platinum Collection), Michael Jackson (his 5 CD Collection), etc. or are these different cases? I’m asking because I would like a final “solution” for this; many people insist that these box set should be added to the individual’s album included on the package, whilst many others consider that this will artificially boost an album’s or act’s sales, and I’m haven’t… Read more »
Hello Hernán, While going back to the 80s/90s we will met some examples of such packages adding 100-200k or more. Even for those recent releases, if we consider they are often released about 2 years after the original, the tend to account for 20% to 50% of catalog sales. They are a key factor in order to understand good catalog sellers as obviously albums packaged that way find themself into a very difficult context to reach chart. As for the general rule determining if a package is eligible for addition into original stand-alone album, please find below the mention from… Read more »