In the face of Johnny Hallyday's success, Warner publishes 700,000 CDs more

Outstanding sales for an extraordinary artist. In a week, the last album of Johnny Hallyday, My country is love, has sold 780,177 copies. "This is an absolute record in the history of the French record," says Thierry Chbadagne, president of Warner Music. Taking an average selling price of 16 euros, this already represents a windfall of 12.5 million euros.

Never before has the launch of an album been so dazzling. We have to go back to 2002 to find the previous record. If he is also owned by Johnny Hallyday, he is very far from reaching the current highs since his opus To life, to death had accounted for just over 305,000 sales. The performance of the last album of the singer is all the more spectacular that in the early 2000s, the music industry was not in full crisis but in the golden age of the CD. At Fnac, pre-orders exploded to 30,000 sales, the same level of record as the latest video game that is raging among young people, Red Dead Redemption 2 .

Even more: the rocker, who died in December at the age of 74, has done better than rapper Drake in the United States. Last July, the Canadian star had sold the equivalent of 732,000 copies of her album Scorpio in seven days. Johnny not only exceeds the international star of almost 50,000 sales, but this feat is achieved in addition to a territory, France, whose population is five times lower than that of the United States, which has 325 million inhabitants …

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25,000 vinyl records

At this crazy pace, the million copies of My country is lovewill be achieved well before the end of the year holidays. Warner Music, which had set up a first salvo of 800,000 copies of CDs, had to raise urgently the manufacture of "700,000 new records", says Thierry Chbadagne. That is a total of 1.5 million CDs, plus the reprinting of new vinyls: the planned 25,000 left in just one day. On streaming platforms, the singer also caused a sensation. He came in second place in the list of the most listened to artists in the last 7 days, with 5.4 million plays on the Deezer service, for example. However, "CDs represent 95 to 97% of sales of his latest album," says Thierry Chbadagne.

Contrary to a market that is essentially driven by streaming, will the Johnny phenomenon affect the annual record of music sales? "Hard to say. Last year already, his album sales had a huge tidal wave when he died in December, "said Thierry Chbadagne. Between the covers, the best of or the original albums, about 1.2 million units had been sold at the end of the year. As a result, with 51% market share, according to the Snep, the largest producers' union, physical sales, although declining, had still outstripped digital sales by a small margin. The year 2018 should logically have ended this French cultural exception and devote the predominance of digital. But the "Johnny effect" could well happen again.