Many people were afraid the sales numbers for Candice Glover's "I Am Beautiful" would not look spectacular, and the first number shows there is some work to be done. The first week
download sales for the single were 54K, the lowest ever for a winner, about half of Season 9's Lee DeWyze's 95K for "A Beautiful Day", and around 2/3 of the 74K of Season 6's Jordin Sparks' "This Is My Now". The single did have one less day to sell compared to the previous seasons where the finale show was on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday, but that is still a pretty low number, especially when compared to the last two seasons when Phillip Phillip's
"Home" sold 278K and Scotty McCreery's
"I Love You This Big" sold 171K. If we just plot the winners' singles in order we can see how they changed over the years:
In Season 10 through 11 it looked like they had gotten on the right track, with large improvements each year, but Season 12 turns around that trend in a big way.
Runner up Kree Harrison only sold 24K which may be better than Jessica Sanchez's single from last year (I can find no number for it anywhere!), but pales compares to Lauren Alaina's "Like My Mother Does" which sold 122K back in Season 10. Yes, Lauren's single sold significantly more than Candice's and Kree's combined which is not surprising when you consider
more than twice as many people viewed the Season 10 finale as the Season 12 finale.
