maroon = "Clear As Day", orange= "Stronger", blue = "Blown Away"
This was definitely not as good of a week for the American Idol album sales compared to last week unless your name is Carrie Underwood (or Mandisa.) Carrie's "Blown Away" saw a huge jump in sales to put her back into the BillBoard Top 10 at #8 with sales of 28K, putting her at 749K in total sales. Kelly Clarkson saw her sales drop, though, after a strong previous week, but with another 5K in sales she remains in the Top 100 for 44 straight weeks now, but her #74 position is her worst chart position to date. After three straight weeks back in the Top 200, Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" appears to have fallen back off the charts, but it did have 2K more in sales (1.108M total.) Initially it was not listed in Brian's sales article (which would have been its first week ever not listed there since release) but Brian appears to have updated his numbers! (Thanks again for the update, g1dragon!) I was also surprised to not see the "Sparkle" soundtrack listed after being in the Top 25 for the past two weeks. It seems odd it would sell 16K two weeks ago, 14K last week, and now not be listed at all on the sales list. The only Idols still on the Top 200 are Phillip Phillips with his compilation EP with 3K in sales (74K total) to place at #129, and Mandisa at #130 with her "What If We Were Real" which also sold 3K for a total of 208K. Her sales of over 200K is very strong for a Christian album so that is good for her!
There have been a number of album release dates announced recently which should make for some new data points coming out in the future. The most interesting is the current release date for Phillip Phillips studio album which appears to be not until January or February of 2013. That will be the first time since Season 1 that the winner's album was not released before Christmas of the winning year. It will be very interesting to see what effect that will have on his sales, especially selling in such a typically dead period of album sales during winter. Colton Dixon's Christian album should also be released at about the same time, with a lead single being released October 19. From the EP sales numbers so far from Joshua Ledet, Skylar Laine, Hollie Cavanagh and Jessica Sanchez, I think the best selling Idol release this fall will most likely be "Christmas with Scotty McCreery" which will be released on October 16. I bet all his fans will buy it up, especially now that Scotty has been snubbed by not being nominated for the CMA New Artist of the Year Award. That is pretty crazy to not even nominate him if you ask me. Just to help support Scotty I am embedding his video for the pre-order of his album, especially since it is so fun just listening to him talk!
