SNEP's responsibilities include collecting and distributing royalty payments for broadcast and performance, preventing copyright infringement of its members' works (including music piracy), and sales certification of silver, gold, platinum and diamond records and videos.
SNEP also compiles weekly official charts of France's top-selling music, including singles and albums.
The first attempt at a French national chart of best-selling records originated from a request by the American music industry magazine Billboard.
The magazine's French correspondent, Eddie Adamis, compiled a top 10 list of the country's preferred format, the extended play (EP), for Billboard's "Hits of the World" column of 5 June 1961.
The number 1 record was an Edith Piaf EP featuring the song "Non, je ne regrette rien".
While the list continued to demonstrate the dominance of EPs, the British band Procol Harum succeeded in achieving the first French number 1 single, with their 1967 release "A Whiter Shade of Pale".
[1] SNICOP published its first national singles chart, or "Hit Parade Officiel", in October 1968, compiled by the Centre d'Information et de Documentation du Disque.
This date marks the debut broadcast of Top 50, a television chart show on the recently launched Canal+ network.
[10] In December 2020,[11] the London-based Official Charts Company (OCC) announced it was taking over the contract from German company GfK, in compiling the French music charts for SNEP /SCPP (Civil Society of Phonographic Producers), with the OCC taking over on 1 January 2021.