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.