Only Two Idols Remain in the BillBoard Top 100

Only two American Idol contestants remain in the BillBoard Top 100 this week and those two are easy to name, Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson. Carrie's "Blown Away" leads at #15 with sales of 18,000, putting her with a total of 587K after 8 weeks. Kelly's "Stronger" continues respectable sales for an 8 month old album with 8K more sales, putting her at #52 with total sales of 839K. Adam Lambert just barely missed the Top 100 as "Trespassing" falls to #107 after 5 weeks in the Top 100 with sales of 5K for a total of 131K. And Scotty McCreery hangs into the Top 200 for a 38th week with sales of 3K bringing his grand total to 1,076,000.

One interesting fact is that Carrie's eight week sales now almost perfectly matches Scotty's first 8 weeks in sales. Hers will continue to slow though, whereas Scotty had the advantage of the holiday shopping season to keep his sales going. Adam's pace has also slowed compared to Lauren Alaina's as she had the similar holiday shopping season to help her last fall and winter sales. It is also interesting to note that around the 5 to 7 week period Kelly and Daughtry's sales were pretty close together, but then she released the "Stronger" single which kept her sales increasing "strongly" whereas Daughtry did not have as powerful of a hit to propel his sales.

Casey Abrams released his album this week, but it does not appear to be a big seller as expected. Next week, however, the Walmart EP's will all be released which will make for some entertaining numbers. With five contestants releasing albums plus two extra compilation EP's, it will be interesting to see how they all sell.

American Idol Albums All Fall on the BillBoard Sales Chart

Another week, and the American Idol alumni keep dropping lower on the charts. I do not think Casey Abrams' upcoming album release will make much of a difference either. I updated my graph to remove Haley Reinhart, Kris Allen and Phillip Phillips who have all now dropped out of the BillBoard Top 100 (Haley is still in the Top 200 at #170 with total sales now of 36,000), but I keep Scotty McCreery there (green line) just because he was in the Top 100 for such a long time and has such a pretty graph! Scotty's "Clear As Day" sold another 5K this week (#117 with 1,073,000 in total sales) which is pretty good for an almost 9 month old album. The other three still in the Top 100 are Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" with 24K more (#16 for a total of 569K), Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" with 8K (#66 with 831K total sales), and Adam Lambert's "Trespassing" with 7K (#68 and 127K in total sales.) There are no numbers for Phillip, Kris, Lauren Alaina, Kellie Pickler or Jessica Sanchez this week.

My lovely graphs of all the Idol sales together shows some interesting trends. Adam's sales continue to track very closely to Lauren's and now Carrie's sales curve looks like it may run into Scotty's. Scotty benefited from having his album being released just a couple months before Christmas, so its sales had a good boost during the holiday shopping season. Carrie, instead, sees her sales slowing down going into the dead of summer. It is also interesting to note the shape of Kelly's curve which has continuing to keep rising quite well since her second single off the album ("Stronger") was an even bigger hit than her first single ("Mr. Know It All"). Plus Kelly has also had a lot of recent exposure with her appearance on a bunch of award shows as well as the new "Duets" show.

I am also looking forward to the release of the Season 11 Top 5 EP's which should all be coming out on July 3rd. Last season they only had the Top 4 release EP's and this year there are five of them, plus a "Top 10 Highlights" and a "Duets and Trios Highlights" EP. Whew, that makes seven different American Idol EP's they are releasing on the same day! And sure enough on Walmart.com they are 7 of the top 10 best selling music pre-orders. I will be curious to see how well all of them actually sell.

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Four Idols Remain in BillBoard Top 100, "Clear As Day" drops out after 35 weeks

We all knew it would eventually happen, but after 35 consecutive weeks in the BillBoard Top 100, Scotty McCreery's debut album has dropped to #105 (dark green line in my chart, with 5K in sales for 1.068M total). That was a pretty incredible run for Scotty's debut album. Luckily, there are still 4 Idols in the Top 100, the 1st and 4st winners, the runner up from two seasons ago, and #3 from Scotty's own season. Continuing to lead all Idols is Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" which moves to #9 overall and #2 Country after 5 weeks at #1 on that chart (dark red line.) She sold 27K more to put her total to 545K in 6 short weeks. Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" remains in the Top 50 with an additional 8K in sales (823K total - light blue) Close to Kelly's sales is Adam Lambert's "Trespassing" at #54 with 8K in sales (119K total, light green line) which still keeps his sales pace very similar to Lauren's first 4 weeks. The last Idol album in the Top 100 is Haley Reinhart's "Listen Up!" which sold 5K units to end up at #96 (33K total) in her third week (orange line). Phillip Phillips' compilation album ended up at #147 this week with 4K in sales, and he has sold 40K in total sales of that album.

On download sales, Carrie also rules that chart with "Good Girl" breaking the million downloads mark, while Kelly Clarkson's smash hit "Stronger" pushes farther past 3 million. Also notable on that list is Phillip Phillips' "Home" which sold another 38K downloads to reach 419K in total sales. Following Scotty's "I Love You This Big" which went gold last year, we could have two winners in a row that reach the gold single level again.

Now 7 American Idols in BillBoard Top 105!

Although there are again 6 American Idols on the BillBoard Top 100, if we stretch that out to the Top 105, we grab Kris Allen's latest album to include 7 American Idol contestants on the chart. Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" again leads the pack with 32K in sales, bringing her total to 517K and placing her at #6. In second place again is Adam Lambert's "Trespassing" with 12K in sales and a #24 position. Right behind Adam, Phillip Phillips joins the others with 12K in sales of his compilation to bring his total to 36K sales (BillBoard #25). The other Idols still in the Top 100 are Kelly Clarkson,s "Stronger" at #41 with 9K in sales (815K total), Haley Reinhart,s "Listen Up!" with 8K in sales (#51, 28K total) and Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" with 5K (#92, 1.064M total). Kris Allen's "Thank You Camellia" barely missed the Top 100 with 4K in sales to land at #105 and 21K total sales. In my lovely BillBoard ranking chart above, Kelly (light blue) and Scotty (dark green) are still the easiest lines to follow, with Carrie the dark red at the bottom, Adam the lighter green with triangles which closely overlaps Phillip's blue line with squares. Haley is the orange line with the two diamonds, and Kris is the yellow line that goes up to position #105 (off the chart).

I also created a new updated total sales chart since some folks complained about my old one:

In this one you can see the interesting shapes of the sales progressions of the different artists. Some of the lower selling Idols are harder to see scrunched under 10K. I had not noticed before but after 3 weeks Adam's sales are tracking very close to Lauren's.