American Idol Album Sales: How Not To Promote A Runner-Up's Album

BillBoard Album Chart position:
green = Fantasia, red square = Jessica, blue = Phillip, purple = Carrie, yellow = Kelly, orange = Colton

The weekly album sales numbers for American Idol alumni albums is out, and it appears if you are a female Idol it is much better to be a winner from years past than a runner up from just a year ago. Season 3 winner Fantasia leads the group in her second week, with her "Side Effects of You" album staying at #4 on the BillBoard chart with 36K in sales to give her a total of 127K in just two weeks. That is great for her, but makes the 14K that Season 11 runner-up Jessica Sanchez sold of her debut, "Me, You & the Music", look pretty meager in comparison. Jessica lands at #25 on the chart, and it will be interesting to see if her "Glee" appearance this week will do anything to help boost that number.

The only other Idols in the Top 200 are all past winners, with Carrie Underwood at #49 with 8K copies of "Blown Away" (1.429M total), Phillip Phillips' "The World From the Side of the Moon" also with 8K (#50 with 861K total sales) and Kelly Clarkson's "Greatest Hits-Chapter 1" close behind with 8K (#52 with 406K in total sales.) Colton Dixon's "A Messenger" has fallen out of the Top 200, but still sold a healthy 2K in sales to push him very close to 100K (97K as it stands.) Jessica may he hard pressed to hit the 100K level unless she receives some heavy airplay or promotion to get people to notice her music.

Ironically Season 10 runner-up Lauren Alaina is back on the performance show tonight, promoting her new single, "Barefoot and Buckwild" which more properly demonstrates how to better treat an American Idol runner up! The odds of Jessica's album sales hitting the over 300K Lauren sold of her "Wildflower" debut album are pretty unlikely, but UMG Nashville did a much smarter job in promoting and positioning Lauren's album in the summer and into the fall of 2011.

What this proves for Season 12, is that hopefully Kree Harrison will get a contract with UMG Nashville who can then continue to properly promote the country Idol artists and keep her in the public eye. At this point I do not think it matters if she places, first, second or third. The same goes with Angie Miller, who if she does not win will likely get a contract with a Christian label like Word Records (who signed Colton.) The contestant who most needs to actually win is Candice Glover, but I still worry what Jimmy and Interscope might do with her if she does win. She is definitely talented vocally, but so was Melanie Amaro! Candice would need some top notch songs to perform, and lots of good publicity and promotion.