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.
