Official Christmas Sales Numbers are Merry for All Idols!

Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas! The official sales numbers are in, and even though Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" did not hit the estimated 90K to 95K listed last week by HitsDailyDouble, he was again well over 80K (85K) to give him the 11th best selling album this Christmas week. So for over his 12 week of sales he has stayed in the Billboard Top 15 and the Top 2 on the Country chart. His total now stands at 833K, and his 85K is again one of his best selling weeks of the year.

Daughtry, Kelly, Lauren and James all has good sales weeks, with Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" breaking 200K after 11 weeks now. Kelly's "Stronger" is at 425K and Daughtry's "Break the Spell" is right at 300K.

My Prediction for Scotty "Mr. Consistency" McCreery's Christmas Week Sales

I received another comment from the ever faithful g1dragon with the latest sales prediction for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day", and I was pretty impressed. I knew he would probably surpass his 67K from last week, but HitsDailyDouble is estimating 90 to 95K for his sales next week. That will put him near 850K in total sales or about 5/6 of the way to platinum. He will again be #2 on the country chart behind Lady Antebellum and has another good shot to be in the overall Top 10, and an almost definitely lock to be in the Top 15 for 12 straight weeks. However, I am going to guess their estimates are going to be slightly off this week, especially since they admitted it themselves. Why? Because he is Scotty McCreery, the master of consistent album sales. So I am guessing he will sell almost exactly 88K. That way he can be really weird and sell 88K for three out of 12 weeks:

Scotty sold 88K his second week and 88K on week #8. So since they are estimating 90K to 95K I am guessing he can be right at 88K for a third time to totally baffle folks as to why he always sells the exact same number of albums. That way out of 12 weeks he would sell 88K, 1/4 of the time, and about 40K to 43K for 1/3 of the time.

Just for added fun I took the three weeks where he sold between 43K and 88K and added them all together. They are 57K + 52K + 67K which adds up to 176K. Now let's add up the two weeks when he sold 88K and they add up to... 176K.

Now let's add up the 5 weeks he sold under 50K: 42K+40K+43K+33+42K = 200K. That is pretty darn close to his debut week sales of 197K.

Let's summarize his current sales after 11 weeks:
1) Top week = 197K
2) Next top 2 weeks = 88K + 88K = 176K
3) Next top 3 weeks = 67K + 57K + 52K = 176K
4) Bottom 5 weeks of sales = 43K + 42K + 42K + 40K + 33K = 200K
Total sales ~ 749K

Scary, isn't it?

Merry Christmas, Idols, Good Sales for Everybody!

As Christmas approaches this weekend, all the American Idols with current albums saw good sales gains. Leading the pack as expected is Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day", reaching three-quarters of a million (748K to be precise) with sales of 67K in its 11th week. That puts him back into the BillBoard Top 10 overall, but he drops to #2 Country again since Lady Antebellum had an even better sales week than he did. Still his BillBoard chart ranking looks pretty impressive after 11 weeks. That makes 6 out of 11 weeks in the BillBoard Top 10 with six weeks being Country #1 and 5 weeks being Country #2.

Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" also had a good week, selling 13K more units to put her almost at 200K total (196K in reality). She made it back into the BillBoard Top 100 at #100 and placed her at #15 on the BillBoard country rankings. She again outsold James Durbin's album, "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" which sold 10K to reach 57K after 4 weeks. Kelly Clarkson and Chris Daughtry also had good sales boosts with their albums as Kelly approaches 400K with "Stronger" and Daughtry is half way to gold with "Break The Spell". Overall it was a good sales week for everyone with one more Christmas sales week to push Scotty over 800K, Lauren over 200K, Kelly over 400K and Daughtry over 250K.

Final 'Clear As Day' Predictions Top Last Week's Estimates Again

Today the Monday sales estimates are being listed as FINAL, so I do not know what that means, except that the final predictions have again topped their estimates last week for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" sales. After predicting 60K to 65K last week the number today is almost 67K. Lady Antebellum's "Own the Night" should easily top the country charts as #1 this week, but "Clear As Day" seems to be alone at #2 with the next closest country artists being Jason Aldean and Taylor Swift with sales around 47K to 48K. If the rankings hold, Scotty should be #2 country again, and hopefully stay in the overall BillBoard Top 10. I guess we will have to wait until Wednesday to see.

Latest "Clear As Day" Numbers, Good Ones As Usual!

Hey, usually the few comments I receive here on the blog are spam or irrelevant, but I received a very useful comment on my last posting that notified me of the latest Hits Daily Double "Rumor Mill" numbers (thanks, g1dragon!) I was curious how Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" would sell the last couple weeks of the holiday season, if they would stay in the very respectable 30K to 45K range or do "better than that" (that's a "Clear As Day" pun.) This weeks number gives another optimistic sales projection as HDD is predicting sales of 60K to 65K which should put him near 750K. If he can sell another 50K the following week he should pass up 800K and his album should be close to shipping platinum. If I take the minimum of the estimate for my graph (always a good idea to be conservative, but a bad idea when Scotty's sales are concerned), I can generate the weekly sales graph for "Clear As Day" for the past 11 weeks:

I noticed some interesting facts from this graph. I find it interesting that for 4 of the weeks his sales were almost exactly the same, between 40K to 43K. And then if you take his low (week 7) at 33K along with the next highest (last week, week 10) at 52K, if you average those two weeks they again have an average of 42K. His sales have been incredibly consistent. So for his 6 lowest weeks in sales his average sales has been about 42K units which is an impressive number. In reality debut sales of 42K would not too bad for a new artist these days, but that has been the average sales for "Clear As Day" every week starting a month after its release. Week 8 was the one large anomaly and weeks 10, 11 and 12 should show increases leading up to Christmas. I will also be curious to see his sales slowdown once January hits and if a new single will be released then, especially once the new season of American Idol begins (where he will definitely perform).

Another fact to notice is that his 2nd best and 3rd best sales weeks were 6 weeks apart... but the sales amount was almost exactly the same at 88K in sales, a figure almost exactly twice his average for his bottom 6 weeks of sales. Is there an alien force at work here buying Scotty's albums? What is the special meaning of 42K or 88K in weekly sales?

Make that 6 out of 10 Weeks, #1 Country for "Clear As Day"

It is official now that Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" is again the #1 selling country album in the USA, outselling Lady Antebellum's "Own the Night". The album sold 52K more units to reach a total of 681K, ending up #13 on the overall chart to "Own The Night"'s #15 ranking. If you look over Scotty's incredible 10 week run, the worst week he had was sales of 34K (his only week under 40K), and that was before the big week when he sold almost 90K. He should have two more solid holiday weeks of sales before overall sales start slowing down.

Lauren Alaina also saw her sales of "Wildflower" increase slightly, and with an additional 10K in sales her 9 week total is up to 183K. Unlike last week, her sales slightly outsold James Durbin's "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" which had 9K in sales in its third week putting his total sales at about 47K. That means I can post my graph of fall 2011 Idol releases:

And also my graph of the winners and runners up for Seasons 8, 9 and 10:

They look especially colorful to give my posting a warm holiday feeling!

"Clear As Day" Back to #1 Country, Maybe #10 Overall

Now that HitsDailyDouble is in FINAL and "Clear As Day" has a 10,000 sales lead over "Own The Night", I think it is safe to say he is back to #1 on the BillBoard Country chart. With Jackie Evancho right behind him with 53.1K versus his 54.3K, however, I will not guarantee that he is in the Top 10 of the general BillBoard chart, but he will be very close if he is not there. Nevertheless we can safely say 10 straight weeks in either #1 or #2 on the Country chart and 10 straight weeks in the top 15 of the overall BillBoard chart. His grand total should now be about 685K, but I will wait until tomorrow to generate my lovely sales and chart graphs. I was curious to see if Lauren or James were back on this week's chart, but they did not make the Top 50 (required sales were about 22K to make the chart this week.) I will have a more comprehensive post tomorrow, but I was just excited to see that Scotty really did hit the +50K predictions.

I was actually over at my mother-in-law's this past Sunday helping her fix her computer when the CMA Christmas show was being rebroadcast on TV. There was Scotty again on national television singing "The First Noel" looking like he belongs there on that stage with those other big country stars. Who would have thought he was just an average high school kid just a year ago?

Do I Trust The Sales Predictions This Time?

Okay, last week on Monday HitsDailyDouble had their early 38% sales numbers and Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" was strongly outselling Lady Antebellum's "Own The Night" by 10%. Then their Tuesday FINAL numbers put them just about neck and neck (a 2% difference) and when the SoundScan numbers came out on Wednesday "Own The Night" sold about 15% more than "Clear As Day". Now this week the "Rumor Mill" numbers list "Clear As Day" as 50-55K and "Own The Night" is not even listed at 45-50K. LadyA is currently on tour but their shows this weekend are at Sioux City, Iowa, Springfield, Missouri and Murray, Kentucky, nice venues but not huge album sales producing cities. They won an ACA Award but did not perform on the show whereas Scotty won and performed and was shown prominently on some Idol commercials. So is it safe to assume that Scotty will be #1 Country again this week? I am not underestimating Lady Antebellum this time!

Nevertheless, Scotty's 50-55K number looks very strong and should put him quite close to 700K in total sales. The question now becomes how much inventory is being shipped to retail to cover the remaining weeks of the holiday shopping season to push "Clear As Day" to Platinum certification. Those Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target stores want to make sure those CD's are sitting on those shelves for people to buy as last minute gifts. Scotty's total sales of 680K+ should now push him past Bo Bice (673K) to have the 15th highest selling debut album for an American Idol alumnus. He should push past Taylor Hicks (705K) and Josh Gracin (703K) next week and then sit at #13 behind David Archuleta (765K) and Adam Lambert (829K). Now he is moving in amongst the heavy hitter Idols who have sold close to or over a million in album sales.

Holy Moly, Scotty Does It Again...

I tell you, it sure is fun watching the sales numbers come in for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" album.  You never know what to expect except for the unexpected. This week, Scotty decided to be gentlemanly and allow Lady Antebellum to take the #1 Country slot since he will probably take it back next week. The final numbers for both of them were substantially higher than the HDD predictions with "Own The Night" selling 48,000 to be BillBoard #10 and "Clear As Day" selling 42,000 to be #11. That means for nine straight weeks Scotty has sold over 30K units every week, and over 40K for 8 out of 9 weeks. He even outsold Daughtry's second week sales of 39K. It is time for my chart of Scotty's BillBoard ranking for the past nine weeks. The Country chart ranking sure is a flat line:

This is for over two months now which is pretty crazy. The Idol Chatter article does have "Wildflower" and James Durbin's "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" album listed with James being able to outsell Lauren this week with 11K units (39K total) to her 10K (172K total.) I think Lauren can likely surpass 200K by the end of the year, and I would like to see if James can at least break 60K or 70K. The rock market is definitely a tough place to sell a lot of records. With James' and Daughtry's albums both being out for 2 weeks now, I can now generate a American Idol Fall 2011 release sales chart using data for Scotty, Lauren, James, Kelly Clarkson and Chris Daughtry's sales so far this fall:

On the song download numbers, "Trouble With Girls" sold another 13K to reach 205K in total downloads. Amazingly "I Love You This Big" continues to sell as a download with 4K more to bring its total to 689K. I noticed that Kelly's "Mr. Know It All" has surpassed ILYTB in sales (779K) so I may have to track down all of her numbers to generate a pretty graph there, comparing the two hits and their download numbers. I never realized so many people downloaded individual tracks so much!

#1 Country Album this week -- Too Close to Call!

Wow, yesterday with the preliminary HDD numbers "Clear As Day" led "Own The Night" in sales by over 10% (2648) with 19,834 in sales versus 17,186, but the final HDD numbers puts Lady Antebellum in the lead by a mere 818 in sales (about 2% of their ~36,000 in sales). This is too close to call until tomorrow's numbers, so I will just say they are #1 and #2 on the country charts and both will end up in the mid teens (13 to 17) on the all genre album charts. That will give "Clear As Day" nine straight weeks in the Country Top 2 and the full BillBoard Top 20. I do not remember seeing Lady Antebellum performing on the ACA Award show last night, but definitely saw Scotty appearing several times (hey, it was on FOX!), so perhaps next week he can top LA for sure. With no major country artists having a new release for the rest of the year the two of them may be battling it out for #1 and #2 country for the rest of 2011.

I also noticed both Lauren Alaina and James Durbin's albums dropped out of the Top 50 in the final HDD numbers. I will have to see what their numbers are tomorrow. I will be curious to see which of them ended up selling more albums this week since they were so close on the first predictions.

"Clear As Day" Battles "Own The Night" for #1 Country Again

I was a little concerned last week when I did not see Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" listed on the Hits Daily Double predicted Top 15 list in their "Rumor Mill", but on today's preliminary HDD sales chart it is back up to #8 with 19.8K in sales compared to #10 with 18.0K for Lady Antebellum's "Own The Night" (the only country artist on last weeks list):

In fact, "Clear As Day" is the only album in this week's predicted Top 10 so far that was NOT listed in the Top 15 from last week's Rumor Mill. He may have had stronger weekend sales that helped elevated his sales. I wonder if perhaps his sales numbers were reduced earlier last week because of his larger than expected sales over Black Friday weekend depleting inventories of physical CD's in stores.

I also noticed there are two other Season 10 Idols on the HDD Top 50 as Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" currently re-enters the list:

James and Lauren's albums are neck and neck with their HDD predictions differing by only 59. It will be interesting to see if either or both of them can finish up in the Top 50 this week. It should be close. We shall see on Wednesday.