Kellie Pickler has "Proof" She Can Still Top Charts, Kelly, Scotty and Daughtry See Solid Sales Gains

Kellie Pickler's new album, "100 Proof", debuted at #7 on the BillBoard chart and #2 on the Country chart with sales of 28K according to HitsDailyDouble estimates. That leads the other Idols on the HDD estimates, with all three of the other seeing good gains from last week. Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" continues to stay in the Top 20, landing at #19 on the chart with sales of almost 17K (11% higher than last week.) Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" should break the 900K mark with sales of almost 12K (an increase of 13%) to land him at #30, and Daughtry's "Break the Spell" is very close behind at #32 with sales of 11K, a nice 36% increase from last week. Scotty is again battling tour mates The Band Perry for Country Chart position with the two of them likely ending up #6 and #7 on the weekly chart.

Official Numbers show Scotty and Lauren's Sales Increase!

Now that the official SoundScan numbers for the week are in, it was good to see that both Season 10 finalists saw their album sales increase. Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" increased by 7% (from about 10K to about 11K, with some rounding error in there) and Lauren Alaina's "Wildflower" jumped a whopping 41% (from about 3K last week to about 5K this week.) Of course, that really means they both increased sales by about 1,000 units, but that is definitely better than going the other way! "Clear As Day" was able to improve on the charts to #29 (from #34 last week) as predicted by HDD, and "Wildflower" improved to #89 after being #133 last week. Her total sales for her debut have now reached 233K. Both of them now being on major country tours definitely helps (Scotty with Brad Paisley, Lauren with Jason Aldean.) Kelly Clarkson did have a slight drop in numbers from last week, but that is still with a very solid number of 15K which makes her break the 500K mark officially and keeps her at #14 on the BillBoard chart. You cannot say it is due to lack of exposure for Kelly. James saw his sales drop off by 43% this week (from about 4K to about 2K) after a nice increase last week. In fact him and Lauren pretty much switched it up. Last week James sold 4K with Lauren selling 3K, and this week Lauren sold 5K and he sold 2K. So between the two of them they sold 7K together both weeks.

Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" or Tim McGraw's "Number One Hits" could not sneak up on him, and "Clear As Day" again clocked in as the #6 country album of the week. Next week will not be so easy with both Kellie Pickler's "100 Proof" and McGraw's "Emotional Traffic" being released. Let's see if he can at least remain in the Country Top 10.

Kelly, Scotty and Daughtry Maintain Steady Sales

BillBoard placement (orange = "Clear As Day", blue = "Stronger")

HitsDailyDouble released its final estimates for the week and all three Idols on the BillBoard Top 50 only saw slight drops in sales from last week. Leading the pack again is Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" with about 15K in sales which is only a drop of about 10% from last week. That level of sales is enough to keep her about the same on the BillBoard chart (#14 last week, #14 estimated this week) and also officially brings her total sales to 500K for make her gold certification absolute! Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" had almost no sales drop at all, to keep at a solid 10K in sales and bring his total up to about 890K. Next week he could break 900K if he keeps this up. According to HDD, his BillBoard placement may improve from the mid 30's last week to land him at around 30 (listed at #29 on their chart). If the numbers stick he will also remain #6 on the country chart, although Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" is right behind him. Daughtry's "Break The Spell" also remains in the Top 50 with sales of 8K which should take him past 345K in total sales. Once again we will have to wait until tomorrow for the official numbers to see how good the HDD estimates were this week. Next week Kellie Pickler should lead the way, and I will be curious to see how well her latest album will do.

Darn, Hits Daily Double was a Little Bit Off!

My hope that "Stronger" would end up #11 did not come true, as it did move up the chart and ended up at #14, so my two graphs did not end up meeting. However, I still think it looks like a bird. I also continued Scotty's chart for "Clear As Day" up to this week (#34 in week #15 for the album) which shows his chart ranking slowly dropping here in January as Kelly's have improved. Of course, tonight starts the new season of Idol, so I will be interested to see when all the past Idols, including both Scotty and Kelly, get to appear on the show.

This week has been a slow one for all the Idols, as they all saw sales of their albums continue to fall except for James Durbin, whose "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" actually increased 12% with 4,000 in sales, putting his total at 81K. James was able to sell more units than Lauren this week, who with an additional 3,000 this week increased her total to 228K. It is easy to see in my graph how the past 2 weeks has been a slow climb for all the Idols except for Kelly, whose graph still has a solid increase.

Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" BillBoard Placement History

Yes, I just had to create a line graph of Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" album BillBoard ranking now that it is again nearing the BillBoard Top 10 (#11 based on HitsDailyDouble predictions). This will be the 12th week the album has been out and it was only in the BillBoard Top 10 its first two weeks. Its worst placement was at #49 in the middle of December, but since then it has been coming on strong. It seems like "Mr. Know It All" is played all the time and now "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" is making a fast move up the radio playlists (and singles charts) everywhere too. With total album sales at the 500K point now. I can see that single helping to drive her towards platinum certification in the next few months. That could make great news for the American Idol franchise if they can say both their original Idol winner and their latest one (Scotty McCreery, of course) can reach platinum with their latest albums. Now I must wait for today's actual numbers to fill in my charts for the other Idols. One interesting tidbit I noticed though, is if the #11 ranking holds true, both "Clear As Day" and "Stronger" were #11 in their 12th week! In fact if we superimpose Scotty's BillBoard ranking with Kelly's we get a neat little graph:

They end up meeting after 12 weeks! Unfortunately, after week #12 is when Scotty's ranking started to drop back (right after Christmas sales ended) whereas just before Christmas is when Kelly's started picking back up. I think the graph of their chart rankings kind of looks like a bird in flight, but then again I am pretty weird.

Kelly Clarkson's Album Sales Hold "Stronger"

Even though sales of Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" album have slipped from last week, they just barely slipped which allows her chart ranking to jump near the BillBoard Top 10. The latest HitsDailyDouble final estimates puts her sales down just 8% (to ~16.5K) to land her at #11 on that chart. We will have to see how those numbers hold tomorrow for her final ranking, but I think I am going to have to go back and chart her BillBoard ranking as it has actually gone up a bit recently, and that would make a nice looking chart! The Idol winner I have been charting has been Scotty McCreery who sees his "Clear As Day" album dropping out of the Top 25 for the first time. With a 24% drop in sales to 10.4K, HDD places him in the mid 30's this week (#34). He also drops to #6 in the Country rankings if their numbers hold up.

Daughtry is the only other Idol on the Top 50 at #36 with sales of 9.2K. Let's hope for some more numbers tomorrow!

"Clear As Day" Stays in BillBoard Top 25, Country Top 5 in Week 14

It was a close call for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" this week before Season 11 of American Idol begins, but the now officially platinum certified album was able to remain in the Top 25 of the overall BillBoard Album chart and in the Top 5 of the Country chart, narrowly topping the Band Perry. Both are listed at sales of 14,000 for the week, but in RoughStock's listing "Clear As Day" is listed at #24 before The Band Perry's debut album at #25. I know that Roughstock lists "Clear As Day" as being #24 on the BillBoard chart and Idol Chatter lists it at #25, but in both cases it is in the Top 25 so I have no idea who is actually correct.

As expected, for the week Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" was the top selling album of the American Idol albums with sales of 18,000. In general everybody saw sales drops of 25% to 40% for the week. January is not a good month to be selling ice cream nor albums! However, in terms of individual song downloads, Kelly had a great week with her sales of "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" after her SNL performance. Sales of that track jumped 64% to sell 48K downloads this week for a total of 231K. "Mr. Know It All" also sold well with another 61K downloads to push its total to over 1.1 million. There is definitely no American Idol slump from Kelly Clarkson! Even though the numbers dropped a bit from last week, Scotty also sold another 36K downloads of "The Trouble With Girls" for a total of 414K. The single has a great chance of going gold to let Scotty have both his first two singles go gold and reach the Top 25 of the country singles chart.

Kelly Clarkson leads Idol Album Sales, Scotty McCreery Battles Tourmates The Band Perry for #5 Country

The final HitsDailyDouble numbers do not make tomorrow's final sales chart much clearer. Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" did end up as the top Idol album with another 18K in sales which should bring her total sales near 470K. Her chart ranking is #16 right now, but there are several other artists near the 18K level so that is far from a sure thing. Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" is also mixed in with a pack of artists selling about 14-15K, so that is also hard to guess. He has a good shot of remaining in the Top 25 for the Week and either #5 or #6 on the Country chart. His closest country competition comes from his tour mates, The Band Perry, whose album is listed with sales of 14,461 to Scotty's 14,116. That sounds like the numbers from the Iowa Caucus so I am not making any bets!

Slow January Sales Makes Predictions Difficult for Anyone Not Named Adele

HitsDailyDouble just released their Monday early numbers for the week, and with 54.02% in, the numbers look much too close to determine much. It appears that Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" is the sales leaders among American Idol alumni right now, which is hard to believe after Kelly Clarkson has been everywhere including Saturday Night Live. Scotty is at #13 with sales of 8.4K and Kelly is at #21 with sales of 6.1K, but that difference (about 2.3K) is so small these days, especially on the first day of estimates, that they are almost meaningless. Daughtry is very close to Kelly with sales of 6.5K to place him at #19. With everyone's sales numbers so low with these preliminary numbers it is difficult to say who will end up where, so it is best to wait until tomorrows final estimates, or better yet Wednesday's actual sales numbers to declare anything meaningful.

The New Year Brings a Halt to American Idol Album Sales!

Now that it is 2012 and the holiday shopping season is over, all the American Idol alumni saw a large scale slowdown in their album sales. Even the top selling "Clear As Day" saw its lowest sales week to date, moving only 22K units to bring Scotty McCreery's total sales tally to 856K. It even dropped to #3 on the Country chart as Jason Aldean sold a few more copies of "My Kinda Party" then "Clear As Day" to push Scotty out of the Top 2 where he has lived for the past 3 months. On the overall BillBoard chart the album fell to #21, its first time out of the Top 15. However, with American Idol Season 11 about to start up (as well as the Brad Paisley tour), I could see "Clear As Day" sales popping back up the charts, especially in the slow sales winter period for all the other artists.

The other American Idols with albums currently out saw their sales drop as well. Kelly Clarkson saw the smallest drop with her "Stronger" album which outsold "Clear As Day" this week with 25K in sales to push her total to 451K. Daughtry sold another 18K units to push his total to 316K, Lauren sold another 6K units of "Wildflower" to reach 221K and James Durbin sold 4K more to reach 74K