Phillip Phillips Sells a Boatload of Downloads

A good measure to see how popular of a seller Phillip Phillips might be is by examining how many downloads of his single, "Home", he sold at iTune his first week. Luckily for Phillip, it had a very strong first week, selling 278,000 downloads, putting it at #2 on the digital downloads chart for the week. MJSBigBlog has a nice list of the top 11 download sales by Idols, but I think we really need a graph to better visualize the difference, so I posted the numbers in a bar graph above. I also added in more numbers from MJ's post from two years ago (so we at least include all the winners). It is interesting to note that following the typical "guys versus gals" subject, the top 4 selling singles are by guys, in fact, 6 of the top 7 are. The two biggest Idol selling superstars, Carrie and Kelly, are #5 and #8 on this list. Other fairly successful female winners like Fantasia and Jordin are even further down on the list.

As for Phillip's album, it about matched the number put up by Season 10 winner, Scotty McCreery, with Phillip listed at 24,000 sales (Billboard #11) and Scotty with 23,000 (BillBoard #12). What is most disturbing is Jessica Sanchez's number which is only 4,000 (#126), whereas last year's runner-up Lauren Alaina sold 11,000 (#42). In Season 9, Lee and Crystal both only sold about 2,000 copies of their compilation albums, but they at least sold 95K and 49K of their respective debut singles. Jessica's singles are not charting anywhere. If the folks at Interscope want Jessica to sell some downloads or albums they had better find some better, more original material for her to perform!

Six American Idols in BillBoard Top 100!

Last week there were 4 American Idols in the BillBoard Top 100, and this week with two new debuts there are 6 Idols on the chart! Haley Reinhart and Kris Allen both released their new albums last week with Haley's "Listen Up!" selling 20,000 units to land at #16 and Kris' "Thank You Camellia" selling 16K to debut at #25. Adam Lambert's "Trespassing" fell from #1 to #11 with sales of 22K (100K total) but still managed to outsell both Haley and Kris's debut weeks in his second week of sales. The leader amongst the Idols is still Carrie Underwood, though, whose "Blown Away" sold another 45K to reach 486K and place #3 on the chart. That is the 4th week in a row in the Top 3 for Carrie. The final two Idols in the Top 100 are the old troopers, Kelly Clarkson and Scotty McCreery, both of which saw good sales increases in the past week. Kelly's "Stronger" sold another 11K to reach 806K total (#36) and Scotty's "Clear As Day" sold another 6K to reach 1.059M and a BillBoard placement of #72. Above is my lovely chart of the Idols in the BillBoard Top 100. The light blue line is "Clear As Day", the dark crimson line is "Stronger", the green line is "Blown Away" and "Trespassing" is the yellow line. "Listen Up!" is the blue square and "Thank You Camellia" is the orange diamond. It will be interesting to see how well the album sales hold out for all these Idols. Kelly and Scotty have been able to maintain some very consistent sales, and I wonder if they will stay in the Top 100 longer than some of these other Idols with lower first week sales.

With Kris and Haley's releases, we now have 11 album releases since Oct 2011 (Scotty's release) where we can sort the first week sales numbers for all of them:

1) Carrie's "Blown Away" : 268K (S4)
2) Scotty's "Clear As Day" : 197K (S10)
3) Kelly's "Stronger" : 163K (S1)
4) Daughtry's "Break the Spell" : 129K (S5)
5) Adam's "Trespassing" : 77K (S8)
6) Lauren's "Wildflower" : 69K (S10)
7) James' "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" : 28K (S10)
8) Kellie's "100 Proof" : 28K (S5)
9) Haley's "Listen Up!" : 20K (S10)
10) Kris' "Thank You Camellia" : 16K (S8)
11) Casey's "Casey James" : 14K (S9)

It is easy to see who has done really well and should be safe to release another album (Carrie, Scotty, Kelly, Daughtry) also who has done well enough to stay on their labels (Adam, Lauren, probably James and Kellie.) Haley and Kris' albums are too new to see how their sales will progress and for Casey James we will have to wait and see.

American Idols all over iTunes Album Chart

I noticed today that after sitting way down low on the iTunes album sales chart yesterday, Jessica Sanchez's American Idol compilation has now jumped up into the Top 10 where it sits at #10. That makes a lot of Idols on the chart. Now Phillip Phillips is at #2, Phillip and Jessica are together at #3, Carrie Underwood is at #5 with "Blown Away" so that means 4 out of the Top 10 are American Idols. If we go up to the Top 20, we can add in Haley Reinhart's "Listen Up!" at #12, Adam Lambert's "Trespassing" at #14, and Kris Allen's "Thank You Camellia" at #18. That makes 7 out of the Top 20 American Idols!

Phillip wins American Idol, "Home" hits #1 on iTunes

Now that Phillip Phillips has won Season 11 of American Idol, it is time to start watching the real numbers for the season. Phillip has started off where he needs to be, with the #1 song on iTunes with "Home". I will be curious to see how well this song can do on download sales and also on the radio. Hopefully he can at least match Lee DeWyze's 95K in first week download sales for "Beautiful Day" if not Scotty McCreery's 170K for "I Love You This Big". That will be the first metric we will see to measure his true sales popularity. I am currently looking at the iTunes Top 100 list and Jessica Sanchez and her songs are nowhere on the chart. Right now Phillip has the following on the chart:

1) "Home"
26) "We've Got Tonight"
29) "Stand By Me"
35) "Volcano"
46) "Movin Out"
58) "Beggin"
87) "U Got It Bad"
91) "Disease"
95) "Have You Ever Seen the Rain"

That makes 9 tracks on the Top 100 which is a very nice start for Phillip. For his sake I hope it means his success will track more like Scotty's than like Lee's. And speaking of Scotty, I noticed on the iTunes album chart his over 7 month old, platinum selling "Clear As Day" is #80, sitting right next to Jessica's Idol compilation album at #79 (Phillip's is at #5). It is pretty impressive that the day after the finale, last year's winner can be selling about the same as this year's runner-up with an album that has been out for a pretty long time.

Two other numbers came out last night which give an ominous sign for the Idol contestants, the first week sales estimates for both Haley Reinhart's debut "Listen Up!" and Kris Allen's sophomore release "Thank You Camellia". Both albums are looking at estimates of 15K to 20K which cannot be considered strong numbers for either of them. After Carrie's explosive start for "Blown Away" and Adam Lambert's chart topping release of "Trespassing", I was hoping Haley and Kris could have better numbers than the current estimates. Hopefully they can both at least crack 20K and maybe be closer to 25K for first week sales. This should be a good reality check for all the Season 11 contestants that just being on (or even winning) American Idol does not guarantee long term super stardom like Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood enjoy. If Haley and Kris can get some heavier radio play and more media promotion and live performances, they may be able to push their sales a bit stronger.

American Idol Album Sales - 4 Idols in the Top 100, 2 in Top 3

Since American Idol is in the air, why not have another Idol alum take the #1 spot on the Billboard album chart from yet another American Idol? After two weeks on the top of the charts, Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" drops to #3 to be replaced by Season 8 runner-up, Adam Lambert's "Trespassing". Adam sold 77,000 copies to top not only Carrie but Adele as well! The blue square in my graph above is Adam's placement, sitting happily at #1 with Carrie's orange line right above it. The other two Idols in the BillBoard Top 100 are the same ones that have been there for over half a year, Kelly Clarkson and Scotty McCreery. Although both Idol winners saw their sales continue to fall, at this point both albums are huge successes. Kelly's "Stronger" sold another 8K to creep closer to 800K at 795K (#52) and Scotty's "Clear As Day" sold only 5K (#97), but hit 1.053M in total sales after an impressive 33 weeks in the Top 100. With Scotty's two appearances on Idol this week (plus his tour with Brad Paisley starting back up) his sales should increase enough to keep him on the charts awhile. With Carrie's 54K in sales this week she is already up to a total of 441K in sales in 3 weeks, matching Daughtry's total sales for "Break the Spell". Speaking of Daughtry he also stayed in the BillBoard Top 200, with sales of 3K and a total of 442K.

Adam's first week sales of 77K are the best first week sales for a non-winner since Daughtry's release back in November. This week we will have numbers for two more Idols as Haley Reinhart's "Listen Up" and Kris Allen's "Thank You Camellia" have been released. Right now on iTunes, Kris is at #3, Haley is at #6 and Carrie is at #8. If you add the American Idol Season 11 album at #4 that makes 4 of the Top 10 albums coming from American Idols.

American Idol WhatNotToSing Ratings - Top 13 to Finale

My favorite American Idol rating site, WhatNotToSing.com, has posted the preliminary results for the web ratings for the performances of Jessica Sanchez and Phillip Phillips from the Season 11 Finale performance round. In my lovely graph I have broken the night into two points, the first two songs which I averaged together, and then the winners single.

For the first two rounds, Jessica received a 48 for "I Have Nothing" and then a 84 for "The Prayer" which averaged to a 66. Personally I would have ranked "I Have Nothing" a little higher and "The Prayer" a little lower, but I still would have come up with a average rating in the 60's myself. Phillip received a 33 for "Stand By Me" and a 50 for "Movin Out" which averages to a 41.5 which also sounds about right to me. However, it all came down to the "winner's single" where Phillip received one that matched him well, so along with the "big" stage production and everything else he received a WNTS rating of 76 whereas Jessica's fine performance of her rather bland song "Change Nothing" received a lowly 26. For Jessica to have won the competition, I think it all came down to that final song, and she was not given good enough material to win. I would be curious to see what other choices she had for the winner's song.

Now that it is morning I was curious to see how the DialIdol busy percentages changed since Jessica always has a late night "west coast surge":

Sure enough Jessica's busy signal percentage has moved a lot closer to Phillip's numbers, but still trails him by a significant amount. Last night Phillips my 10:00pm snapshot had Phillip at 22.43%, 19.74%, 19.09% and 17.36% (average =  19.65%), and Jessica at 15.59%, 15.55%, 13.92% and 11.92% (average = 14.24%). The final tally has Phillip at 17.37%, 16.37%, 14.39% and 13.7% (average = 15.45%) and Jessica at 15.13%, 14.38%, 13.48% and 12.21% (average = 13.8%). DialIdol has the busy percentages for all the Finales since Season 4, and this is the first time ever the winner has not had all the top busiest phone lines. If you compare the final average busy percentages I can generate, that right, a chart!

Season 4: Carrie 75.51%, Bo 72.88%
Season 5: Taylor (82.3, 82.09, 82.08) = 82.2%, Kat (66.8, 66.13, 65.07) = 66.0%
Season 6: Jordan (49.82, 49.3, 46.92) = 48.7%, Blake (34.77, 31.46, 31.2) = 32.5%
Season 7: DC (44.1, 43.96, 43.47) = 43.8%, DA (32.43, 30.17, 29.1) = 30.6%
Season 8: Kris (49.28,48.82, 47.22) = 48.4%, Adam (43.51,42.94, 42.31) = 42.9%
Season 9: Lee (7.67, 6.74, 5.46) = 6.62%, Crystal (4.23, 3.63, 3.08) = 3.64%
Season 10: Scotty (16.44,16.01,12.83,12.04) = 14.3%, Lauren (9.58,8.6,7.92,7.74) = 8.5%
Season 11: Phillip = 15.45%, Jessica = 13.8%

In all previous seasons the contestant with the busier line always ended up being the winner, so I am guessing it will be the same this year. However, this is the closest year it has been in terms of busy percentages since Season 4 between Carrie and Bo. Here is a graph of how much busier the winner's lines were compared to the runner-up:

This year Phillip's lines were less than 11% busier than Jessica's which is the closest since Season 4 when Carrie's were only 4% busier. Season 8 was close when Kris's lines were only 12% busier than Adam's as well, so this season the voting may be closer than we think.

American Idol Season 11 - Game Over, Phillip Wins!

I am still trying to decide if this year's American Idol Finale lacked as little suspense as last year's or not. Initially I thought there might be a chance that the vote might be close, but by the end of Phillip's final performance I knew it was over. Jessica Sanchez pretty much had to blow some amazing performance out of the park to create a "WOW" moment for us, and that did not happen. And that means Phillip Phillips will coast on to victory. I believe this year the voting will be closer than last year when Scotty McCreery was more clearly headed for victory, but the result is the same anyway. Checking the busy percentages on DialIdol, all 4 of Phillips phone lines are busier than all 4 of Jessica's, with his busiest line about twice as busy as her least busy line. I was not overly impressed by either of their "winner's singles" although they definitely added a lot more production to Phillip's "Home" than to Jessica's "Change Nothing". His was surely the better arranged more current sounding single, and it should be enough to provide him an easy victory. I cannot believe that was the best single they could find for Jessica.

The handful of people that have voted so far on the Idol Chatter poll agree with me that Phillip will win the crown. Now we will have to watch for iTunes numbers on the singles. I believe "Home" will easily outsell "Change Nothing", but it will be nice to hear the studio versions of the songs.

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American Idol Season 11 Betting Odds - Finale Day

Tonight is the big night when Phillip Phillips squares off against Jessica Sanchez in the final performance round of Season 11 of American Idol. But does that really matter? I checked todays betting odds, and the Bovada odds have not changed from last Friday, but on Pinnacle Phillip's betting odds to win keep getting lower (i.e. he becomes a stronger favorite) as Jessica's odds keep increasing (she becomes more of a long shot to win.) Jessica's Pinnacle betting odds have increased from 3.74:1 on Friday to 3.850 on Saturday to 4.160:1 today. Phillip has seen his odds lower from 1.313:1 on Friday to 1.300:1 on Saturday to 1.267:1 today. It seems as more and more people are betting, more and more people are pretty sure Phillip is going to win.

The first sign we will see after Wednesday's big results show will be the first week download numbers for both Phillip's and Jessica's singles, and how they place on iTunes. If we remember last year, both Scotty and Lauren had pretty strong singles sales the week after the finale which helped boost their singles on radio and hence drive album sales. It will be important for both Phillip and Jessica have good sales on their singles which can be a good indication of future album sales:

Over the last 4 seasons, we can see that 5 of the 8 occurrences, the contestant sold more albums their first week than downloads, sometimes by just a small amount (Crystal, David A.) and sometimes by a lot more (Scotty, David C., and most of all by Adam.) I think the biggest "disappointments" are when the artists do not sell as many albums first week as they do downloads, especially for a winner (Lee and Kris being the worst culprits). Lauren Alaina did not sell as many copies of "Wildflower" as her "Like My Mother Does" single, but her actual number of 69K still beat the first week sales numbers of both Lee and Crystal from Season 9, and was not too far below Kris's "winning" sales number from Season 8. That is one point where being "runner-up" is better than "winner" since the expectations are not set as high.

So soon it will be time to see where Phillip and Jessica's numbers end up on this same sales chart. In reality, that may be more important that who "wins" tomorrow night. So a lot is riding on what single Jimmy and Interscope Records can find for both of them to perform tonight and how well they deliver them. Hopefully they know not to pick a known big cover hit (Lee's cover of U2's "A Beautiful Day") but find a decent original for each of them. Even "I Love You This Big" was not the greatest original for Scotty, but it was still an unknown original and he performed it pretty well on the show so it could become a good hit single for him. Let us hope Jimmy and the corporate Idol machine can do the same for Phillip and Jessica.

American Idol Betting Odds - Three Days Before the Finale!

I saw that Bovada had posted their odds on the final two for American Idol, and Pinnacle had slightly tweaked their numbers so I had to update my graph. On Bovada, Phillip Phillips has much lower odds, 4:13 which is well under 1:1 odds but still not quite as low as the 1:5 odds Scotty McCreery had last year.  Bovada also gives Jessica somewhat lower betting odds than Pinnacle does (5/2 = 2.5:1) versus 3.850:1 on Pinnacle which is actually slightly higher than yesterday's 3.74:1. When I average the two odds for the finalists and graph them here is my latest trend line for their betting odds:

In reality, we are pretty much guaranteed they will both be signed by Interscope and will have albums released in the fall of 2012. Phillip will have a tougher time coming up with a good album this fall, since he obviously wants to have more artistic control in his music. But with surgery and then the tour he will have a lot of work in front of him to get out a good album by the fall. Jessica will have it much easier with her album since she can be more like Scotty last year. She can just tour and let Interscope do all the work finding new songs for her, and developing an image that will fit her vocal talents. It will be interesting to see how this final 2 works out. Last year Mercury Nashville was also lucky in having a "American Idol Country Duo" who could do a lot of group press, and I do not think Phillip and Jessica together make as attractive of a marketing team.

American Idol Finale Betting Odds - Top 2!

Now the Joshua Ledet has left the competition, American Idol is now Phillip Phillips versus Jessica Sanchez. I saw the Pinnacle odds posted, but this time they do not say Phillip's odds versus Jessica's odds. Now now they just ask "Will Phillip Phillips Win Season 11?" He could be defeating Joshua, Jessica, Hollie, kidney stones or Heejun. They just ask will he win, and the betting odds say he will. He is a 1.313:1 favorite with the "No" option paying 3.74:1. His betting odds are not as low as Scotty McCreery's last year  who paid a piddly 1:5 odds, and Jessica's 3.74:1 is a little higher than Lauren Alaina's 3:1 odds at that time. Now that it is down to just Phillip and Jessica, the two front runners all season, I can change my chart to have a linear  and not logarithmic scale since both of their odds have always been under 5:1.

In March Jessica was the favorite until her near elimination and save in early April. Since then Phillip has been the one to beat, and it looks like nobody will do it.

American Idol Results - Jessica Sanchez Officially the American Idol Runner-Up!

Wow, I knew Jessica Sanchez was gaining on Joshua Ledet with the West Coast votes, but I was not sure if she would catch him. But now we know that Jessica will face Phillip Phillips in the American Idol Finale on Tuesday (PP versus BeBe). But the question is, can she possibly beat him? Can we just stop the season now and declare Phillip the winner and Jessica the runner up? If we look at the past two seasons, this is the third straight guy vs. gal finale, and on both previous seasons the guy always wins. But this season is a little different if we compare the Finales for Seasons 9, 10 and 11.

Season 9: Midwestern mid-20's male folk rock singer/songwriter versus Midwestern mid-20's female folk rock singer/songwriter. Most people consider the female contestant sang better in the Finale, but the guy won anyway. Female contestant ended up outselling the male contestant by a noticeable but not huge margin (neither sold 300K albums).

Season 10: Southern teen male country singer versus Southern teen female country singer. Most people consider the female contestant sang better in the Finale, but the guy won anyway. Male contestant ended up outselling the female contestant by a very large margin (the female sold ~300K albums, the male winner sold over a million and counting).

Season 11: Southern 20 year old male folk rock singer/songwriter versus West Coast teen R&B/pop power vocalist. Result?

In Seasons 9 and 10, Crystal and Lee were pretty similar except for their gender (Lee leaned somewhat more mainstream and Crystal was more "eclectic") and Scotty and Lauren were pretty similar except for their gender (Scotty leaned more traditional country and Lauren was more contemporary/pop country.)

But this year there is quite a difference between Phillip and Jessica in just about every way, area of the country they come from, musical style, vocal ability, personality, you name it. Can this help Jessica to possibly beat Phillip? Obviously the Hollie Cavanagh votes that added to Joshua's fan base were not enough to push him past Jessica voting fans, but will enough of the Hollie/Joshua power voters vote for Jessica to push her past Phillip? I guess we will see next week!

Wow, Phillip Phillips actually Tops the WhatNotToSing Ratings!

Just a few weeks ago it seemed like Phillip Phillips was destined to remain in the cellar of the American Idol WhatNotToSing.com ratings, but last night against the strong vocals of Joshua Ledet and Jessica Sanchez, Phillip's scores actually ended up on top. If we average all three scores for the three contestants, the median scores for last night were:

1) Phillip (61, 45, 77), Mean = 61
2) Joshua (58, 53, 53), Mean = 54.7
3) Jessica (43, 30, 64), Mean = 45.7

Phillip's rating is about the same as it was last week, but both Joshua and Jessica saw a big dip, from 68.5 to 54.7 for Joshua and from 72.5 to 45.7 for Jessica. This was the lowest median rating for Jessica ever and the first time she had the lowest median rating of the group.

And last night was definitely not the night for her to now shine, when she and Joshua are battling it out for the #2 spot in the Finale. As expected Jessica had a nice "west coast" surge later in the evening to close the gap between her and Joshua on DialIdol. If you look at both their DialIdol scores and their busy percentages they are pretty much dead even:

I had to calculate the mean busy signals between Jessica and Joshua since they are so close and mixed together:

Jessica: (15.12%, 12.52%, 10.95%) Mean = 13.2%
Joshua: (16.44%, 11.05%, 10.27%) Mean = 12.6%

Those are pretty close. However, if you look at the raw numbers we see that Jessica has a lot more power voters using DialIdol than Joshua does:

What does this mean? I have no idea. In any case we will have to watch tonight to know for sure whether it is Joshua or Jessica joining Phillip in the Finale next week. Early last night it seemed like it would be Joshua, but Jessica's fans may have closed the gap.

American Idol Top 3 - The Battle for Runner-Up

I was hoping that after their homecoming weekends that both Joshua Ledet and Jessica Sanchez would be energized to come back and give some truly "WOW" performances to show they could actually win American Idol. After tonight, however, I believe they are in a very important battle for second place. Do not get me wrong, ending up runner-up in American Idol is a pretty big deal. If either Lauren Alaina or Crystal Bowersox has ended up at #3 I do not think they would have had the success that they have both enjoyed so far in their careers. And then there is Adam Lambert who definitely used his runner-up position to maximum potential, so coming in #2 versus #3 is a huge deal, even if #3 does usually receive a recording contract.

Following the current DialIdol busy signals, it currently appears that Joshua Ledet will be joining Phillip Phillips in the Finale. For the past three Top 3 nights, DialIdol has been very accurate, but this season DialIdol has definitely been losing its accuracy. If we follow the current busy signal percentages it will be Phillip winning with Joshua second and Jessica third. However, note that Jessica usually receives a later west coast surge in voting that may bring her closer to Joshua. It is interesting to note, however, that the differences in busy percentages are nothing like they were last year when Scotty was destroying both Lauren and Haley in busy signals. That contest was not close at all. This time the differences in busy signals are more like in Season 9 with Lee DeWyze, Crystal Bowersox and Casey James, although the actual percentages are much higher.

I also had to check the typically fairly accurate Idol elimination poll at USA Today's Idol Chatter. They agree with the DialIdol busy signals saying that Jessica will be leaving tomorrow night to make it a two guy finale. Only 14% of the poll takers believe that Phillip is leaving tomorrow night.

From the video footage of the homecomings it definitely felt like Phillip had the same level of "winner's suppport" from Leesburg that Scotty had from Garner last year. Not only was he the only contestant who performed with a full band (instead of recorded backing music), his performance actually felt like a real concert, similar to Scotty's huge performance in the park where Josh Turner appeared. Yes, Phillip cried during his parade, had a lot more interaction with his fans (Jessica almost seemed scared of hers), and had an open air full concert feel to it, unlike Joshua's dark, indoor evening concert and Jessica's performances where she seemed very separate from the crowd. Both Joshua and Jessica seem to be performing for their crowds, Phillip seems to be performing with his. If only Dave Matthews had appeared at Phillip's performance!

And the big winner tonight was definitely... AT&T! Really, both Jessica and Phillip learn Jimmy Iovine's song pick on their new Beats by Dr. Dre through their HTC One X on the AT&T network? It is not like we do not see the Jordan Sparks AT&T/Beats commercial twice every broadcast of American Idol, now they put it in the show... twice! And Jimmy, of course, spells out the product names precisely since he makes his cut off of every sale. And then what popped up when I cast a few votes online on www.americanidol.com/vote? Well, you can see the ad that I saw posted above (that is not a real ad!)

Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" Tops BillBoard For a Second Week

With an impressive 120,000 in sales this week, Carrie Underwood's fourth studio album "Blown Away" again tops the BillBoard chart at #1, bringing her total two week sales to 387K. It was also a good sales week for the other two platinum Idol winners in the BillBoard Top 100, with Kelly Clarkson seeing sales increase 18% for "Stronger" (11K more for a total of 787K, #35) and an 19% increase for Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" (7K more for a total of 1.048M, #65.) Above I have my chart of the three of their BillBoard ranks since Scotty released his album over 7 months ago. Carrie is the little blue line at #1 for two weeks in a row, but eventually her rank will add a third pretty line to the graph. I will also include my chart with the other Idols and their album sales to date:

It only took 2 weeks for Carrie to catch up to every one except for Kelly and Scotty. Adam Lambert just released "Trespassing" yesterday, and it will be interesting to see how well it sells compared to "For Your Entertainment" which sold an impressive 200K on its first week in November 2009.

American Idol Betting Odds Shift after Homecoming Weekend

I noticed a bit of a shift on the American Idol betting odds after the homecoming parades and concerts this weekend, so I thought I would post them. Bovada has not changed their odds, but I noticed that Pinnacle did. I will still average them together which will dampen the shift in odds, but I am still uncertain why they changed so much over the weekend. Just comparing the Pinnacle odds, Phillip Phillips is still the favorite, but his Pinnacle odds dropped from 2.00:1 to 1.775:1 which means the odds makers think he improved his position over the weekend for some reason. Jessica Sanchez also improved from 3.300:1 to 3.08:1, but for some reason Joshua Ledet saw his odds actually increase, from 3.6:1 to 4.6:1 which seems like a pretty large shift.

As far as I know all three of them had well attended homecoming events where they all performed as expected. I know they had feared in Westlake, Louisiana, it might "rain on Joshua's parade", but the good weather held out and his appearances all went without a hitch. Likewise Jessica drew large crowds at both her Chula Vista appearance at Eastlake High School and her appearance on the USS Midway, and Phillip drew a large crowd to his parade and concert in Leesburg, Georgia. I also found it coincidental that Joshua attended Westlake High School whereas Jessica would have attended Eastlake High School (if she were not home schooled). I am sure someone else must have caught the similarities in the school names. And Phillip Phillips, of course, attended "Lee" County High School, the name of the last American Idol winner not named Scotty McCreery.

American Idol Top 3 - Let's Learn Some Geography!

With the Top 3 reigning from such obscure places as Leesburg, Georgia, Westlake, Louisiana and Chula Vista, California, I decided as an American Idol fact gatherer I had to learn where in the heck these places were. I had heard Chula Vista was outside of San Diego, but the other two towns are such tiny places not very close to the known big cities in their states (Atlanta, New Orleans) so I had to do some research to figure out where our finalists were headed for their hometown visits this weekend.

Using Sperling's Bestplaces site we can find some interesting facts about the three places:

1) Chula Vista: Population = 237,000, Median Home = $366K, Cost of Living = 35% higher than US average, Unemployment = 11.8%
2) Leesburg: Population = 3,467, Median Home = $111.5K, Cost of Living = 10.3% lower than US average, Unemployment = 7.3%
3) Westlake: Population = 4,493, Median Home = $97.4K, Cost of Living = 18.2% lower than US average, Unemployment = 7.2%

So as expected the home costs and cost of living in tiny Leesburg and Westlake are pretty similar, but Chula Vista is a typical expensive Southern California place to live. Another thing I found interesting was the racial breakdowns of the 3 places:

1) Chula Vista: 49.61% Caucasian, 15.2% Asian American, 4.97% African American and 29.5% claim 'Other'. 53.95% claim hispanic ethnicity.
2) Leesburg: 68.55% Caucasian, 28.82% African American, 0.75% Asian and 1.71% claim 'Other'. 1.59% claim hispanic ethnicity.
3) Westlake: 77.98% Caucasian, 19.59% African American, 0.24% Asian American and 2.07% claim 'Other'. 3.07% claim hispanic ethnicity.

So if anyone thought Joshua Ledet came from a predominantly black community, he does not. In face Leesburg has a higher percentage of African Americans than Westlake. And Chula Vista does of course have a large Asian and Hispanic population. So Phillip Phillips, the "white guy with guitar", actually lives in a small town with more black folks than the black gospel/soul singer. But Jessica Sanchez, the mixed raced part Asian, part Mexican girl comes from the most racially diverse area of all, where there is no majority race at all. This year there will definitely be some sort of minority in the finale, we will just have to see who it is!

American Idol Top 3 Betting Odds - No More Longshots

With Hollie Cavanagh's elimination last night, there are no longer any "dark horse" long shots left on American Idol, only the top three expected favorites. Both Pinnacle and Bovada have posted their odds and there is not very much of a spread, and although Phillip Phillips is the favorite he is nowhere as definite of a favorite as Scotty McCreery was last year at the Top 3 point. The day after James Durbin left the show Scotty became a 4:7 favorite which is much lower than the 2:1 odds at Pinnacle and even lower than the 1.1:1 odds at Bovada that Phillip currently holds. I think at this point any of the three can win, but Phillip is still the most likely one. Jessica Sanchez and Joshua Ledet are very close together in the odds and I consider them essentially even. Pinnacle actually has Jessica with slightly lower odds than Joshua, and Bovada has Joshua at slightly lower odds than Jessica.

Some folks who would really get mad at Phillip winning or even being runner-up would be the fine PR folks at Ford Motor Corporation. Yet again Phillip has not shown up for the Ford commercial, but if he is one of the Top 2, he should probably receive a free Ford car as past winners and runners up have. Plus if he is in the Top 2 and does not shoot the "Final 2" Ford commercial, does that mean either Joshua or Jessica will be doing the Ford commercial by themselves? I do not think the execs at Ford would be pleased having a winner or runner-up who does not appear in most of their music videos. Phillip would actually be good in a normal Ford commercial like Kris Allen had been in years ago, but frankly I am surprised Ford has not put Scotty McCreery in one since he loves singing about trucks and is the perfect "All American boy" image (even more so than Phillip).

Preliminary WhatNotToSing Ratings for American Idol Top 4

The preliminary WhatNotToSing scores are in for last night, and once again Jessica Sanchez and Joshua Ledet are battling it out for the top performance of the evening. Hollie Cavanagh had been at or near the top of the scores for the past three weeks, but this week she drops to the bottom of the list. And with one good performance, Phillip Phillips has escaped the bottom this time after two pretty unimpressive weeks. Here is the ranked list of the average of the two solo performances for each contestants and then my latest graph:

1) Jessica Sanchez (63,86) = 74.5
2) Joshua Ledet (50, 88) = 69.0
3) Phillip Phillips (45, 82) = 63.5
4) Hollie Cavanagh (64, 41) = 52.5

However, as Skylar showed last week, sometimes it is better to rank pretty low in the ratings than to be in the middle of the pack. The judges harsh criticism of Hollie's second performance will probably get her fans to vote in earnest for two straight hours. So if we are lucky Phillips' better performance this week can help him to be eliminated if his fans think he is safe! (Can you figure out who I want to see go away yet?)

One big change I noticed this morning from last night was on the DialIdol site. Last night all 4 contestants were pretty even in scores when I last checked about 11pm (2 hours after the show ended here in Central time), but now Jessica Sanchez is showing solid green and safe.

Unfortunately that is exactly where Skylar was last week, so I hope that does not result in the same fate for Jessica. Another thing I noticed on DialIdol is that a lot more people are casting votes using it as the weeks have progressed. If you compare the total number of votes cast starting from the Top 10 week you see:

Top 10 week: 36.9K
Top 9 week: 44.9K
Top 8 week: 45.5K
Top 7 week: 45.0K
Top 7.1 week: 59.2K (the week after the save was used)
Top 6 week: 49.8K
Top 5 week: 58.4K
Top 4 week: 67.5K

So even though we are losing contestants we are seeing more and more votes cast using DialIdol. I do not think that helps predicting the results in any way, but it is interesting to note. That does appear to happen every season, but during Season 10, their Top 4 week (Scotty, Lauren, Haley and James) saw 89.8K votes cast using DialIdol, Season 9 (Lee, Crystal, Casey J. and Mike L.) had 108.9K votes and Season 8 (Kris, Adam, Allison and Danny) saw an incredible 309.9K votes. So the general DialIdol usage has been going down over the past few seasons. So as less and less people are using analog phone lines to vote and most of the votes are coming from text messaging and on-line voting, the DialIdol results are becoming more for entertainment.

Why Even Bother Predicting Anymore?

Well, after last week when DialIdol put Skylar Laine and only Skylar in the green and she was eliminated, I wonder why I even keep checking there? I guess I just like their pretty little bar graphs. And this week they are definitely placing all four contestants so close together it is meaningless. Also last week, pretty much every single poll out there put Phillip Phillips as the worst performer of the week, yet once again he stayed out of the Bottom 2. I think at this point how well anyone sings does not matter very much unless they completely stink it up or they perform so amazingly that it blows away the viewers at home (obviously blowing away the judges does not take all that much of a performance.) But for fun, let's see who the poll on Idol Chatter thinks is going home. As long as it is not Phillip, they may be correct!

One hour after the show ended the clear pick to be leaving is Hollie Cavanagh with 70% of the poll votes. Since she is not Phillip she may actually be in trouble. Last week Phillip was the top pick to leave with Skylar being second. With Hollie performing second, she could definitely be in a lot of trouble, especially with Joshua Ledet and then Jessica Sanchez closing out the show with strong performances.

I was happy to finally see Jessica perform last, and I thought she did a good job, but I sure wish she had picked a different song. I also wonder what Jimmy thought of her styling decisions yet again. Jessica always seems so young and natural during her mentoring sessions and during her interviews, but when she is performing she is always way too overly stylized and seems "in costume". She could actually take some tips from Phillip on that matter! Now that Skylar is gone Jessica wins the award for worst styling on stage. Somebody help her! Hollie has actually gotten a lot better with her on stage style, and no longer always looks like she is always in a pageant anymore. Even Joshua who always dresses like one of the Temptations actually shows his personality and style on stage. And Phillip, well, he still looks and acts like Phillip the Slob. I guess lots of people like and can identify with unkempt, casually dressed people! Hey, Phillip did wear a jacket tonight at one point!

Carrie Underwood Blasts to #1 with 267,000 in sales for "Blown Away"

Carrie Underwood storms onto the BillBoard charts with her third consecutive #1 BillBoard 200 album, "Blown Away" opening up with 267,000 in sales (and her fourth consecutive #1 country album). Unbelievably that is her lowest first week sales number with 315K for "Some Hearts" (2005), 527K for "Carnival Ride" (2007), and 318K for "Play On" (2009). That lower number reflects more the overall state of album sales in 2012 than Carrie's star power which is definitely still flying high. "Blown Away" will likely be her fourth consecutive platinum album and has a good chance of achieving double platinum as all her other albums have reached.

I am not sure if the other country Idols are being helped by Carrie's press, but Scotty McCreery, Lauren Alaina and Kellie Pickler all saw nice sales increases this week. Scotty's "Clear As Day" sold yet another 6K to put his total sales at 1.041M and place him at #70 on the chart. Lauren and Kellie did not make the charts, but with 2K in sales Lauren's "Wildflower" is up to 276K in sales and Kellie's "100 Proof" gained another thousand to reach 70K in sales. The other Kelly, Kelly Clarkson, had another solid week of sales of "Stronger", adding another 10K in sales to add up to 776K and staying in the top 50 at #46 on the charts. Daughtry's "Break the Spell" also remains in the Top 200 at #157 with sales of 3K (437K total).

Adding Carrie to my chart of recent American Idol sales puts her close to Lauren's total already. Her total sales will probably reach Daughtry's in a few weeks and then catch up with Kelly and then eventually with Scotty. It will be interesting in upcoming weeks to see how well Adam, Haley or Kris will do on their first weeks.