Official Global Top Sellers of 2004 – with Sales

#13 Britney Spears – Greatest Hits: My Prerogative – 4,400,000

With a jump of 700,000 sales to 4,4 million with the #13 album in this ranking is Britney Spears‘ first compilation Greatest Hits: My Prerogative. It is always difficult to sell a best of when all your studio albums are already owned by most of your target audience. However, the American pop star still did so in great fashion. 

The positive feedback provided by Toxic and Everytime gave her enough credibility to succeed with this package by opening a slightly older audience for her. As this is the first Christmas cash-in we met, we need to point out that November releases always enjoy heavy shipments upon release, leading to a notable gap between sales to consumers and sales to retailers by the end of December.

It takes nothing away from the success of this package which enjoyed the last days of mega-compilations, getting released precisely when iTunes was created. Unlike albums mentioned previously in this ranking, sales of this set were perfectly balanced all over the world. It made the Top 5 in every relevant market, including the always hard to break Japan where it shot to #1.