HDD – Album Sales Prediction : Dec 3-9

By On 12/11/2012 · 114 Comments · In American Idol, Britain's Got Talent, Charts, X Factor UK

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With 47.18% of reports in, it’s “Country” vs Urban as the Swifter battles the Wiz for the top of the chart. Currently, Taylor Swift’s “RED” is in the lead with Wiz Khalifa’s “O.N.I.F.C.” not far behind. Coincidentally, NE-YO’s “R.E.D.” dangles at the bottom of the chart.

Rod Stewart continues to set the pace of the Christmas album of the year and is currently at 3rd. Michael Buble who had the Christmas album of the year last year is in the pole position at 4th. Lady A rounds out Christmas songs in the top 10 at 10th.

Ke$ha is currently debuting in 6th and is expected to finish with a relatively unremarkable 85-90K. Meh. I guess people are tiring of her speak-singing. Hopefully, program directors will soon follow suit. Speaking of people the program directors love, there is Rihanna, unapologeticaly in 7th. Alicia Keys, who was number one last week is currently in 9th.

One Direction tops the charts for reality show singers. Those money making rascals from the 7th season of the UK X-Factor have Simon dreaming of Emblem3 this Christmas instead of sugar plums. The latest Idol winner continues his third week in the top 10. Phil Phillips’ “World from the Side of the Moon” would normally expect to see a 40% range drop in its third week, but HDD is predicting a 11-17% drop (was 79K last week and they are predicting 65-70K)

Scotty McCreery’s Christmas album is at 21st, Carrie Underwood’s “Blown Away” is at 25th and Kelly Clarkson’s Greatest Hits are at 39. That makes for four Idol winners in the top 40. From BGT, we have Susan Boyle at 44th.

Blake Shelton’s Christmas album is in 12th, Adam Levine’s Maroon 5′s “Overexposed” is at 22nd, Cee Lo Green’s Christmas album is at 29th, and Christine Aguilera’s album is at 42nd. That makes for 4 voice judges in the top 50.

Now 44 is at 11 (features American Idol Kelly Clarkson, Canadian Idol Carly Rae Jepsen, Voice Judge Adam Levine and new American Idol judge Nicki Minaj).

CHART DATE: 12/10/2012
LAST UPDATE: 12/10/2012 15:06:00
NOW IN: 47.18%

LW TW artist / album label power index
2 1 TAYLOR SWIFT RED 114,606
– 2 WIZ KHALIFA O.N.I.F.C. 111,823
3 3 ROD STEWART MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY 86,545
7 4 MICHAEL BUBLE CHRISTMAS 63,707
4 5 ONE DIRECTION TAKE ME HOME 33,191
– 6 KE$HA WARRIOR 27,692
6 7 RIHANNA UNAPOLOGETIC 25,785
5 8 PHILLIP PHILLIPS WORLD FROM THE SIDE OF THE MOON 24,495
1 9 ALICIA KEYS GIRL ON FIRE 23,864
8 10 LADY ANTEBELLUM ON THIS WINTER’S NIGHT 18,097
10 11 NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 44 VARIOUS ARTISTS 17,436
9 12 BLAKE SHELTON CHEERS, IT’S CHRISTMAS 16,058
…
33 18 ONE DIRECTION UP ALL NIGHT 12,425
…
12 21 SCOTTY MCCREERY MERC CHRISTMAS WITH SCOTTY 10,168
27 22 MAROON 5 OVEREXPOSED 10,119
…
20 25 CARRIE UNDERWOOD BLOWN AWAY 9,176
…
35 29 CEE LO GREEN CEE LO’S MAGIC MOMENT 7,044
…
22 39 KELLY CLARKSON GREATEST HITS – CHAPTER 1 4,804
…
41 42 CHRISTINA AGUILERA LOTUS 4,394
…
25 44 SUSAN BOYLE STANDING OVATION: THE GREATEST 4,073
30 45 GLEE CAST GLEE: THE MUSIC, SEASON 4, V1 3,956
…
47 50 NE-YO R.E.D. 3,288

 
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  • suenigma

    I hear what you’re saying – Adam did have a remarkably successful first era, and no one can take that away from him. But it’s a business and I doubt that RCA is looking too closely at the number of albums and singles Adam sold 3 years ago. Is he making them money today, and/or can they reasonably expect him to make them money in the future?

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/PVEFG2TOUIXSROKUSO2O2DOWWE Taylor

    I feel like I must have missed a bunch of comments in other threads, because I really don’t ever remember seeing a groundswell of people saying Scotty’s Christmas album was going to be the big Christmas album of the season? I do remember people commenting on Scotty’s 1st week Christmas album sales being bigger than Blake’s. But, I also remember saying at the time that
     Blake wasn’t a great comparison because despite all the hype, Blake is not actually a great album seller and Blake was going to more than make up the difference with later promo anyway.

    Fans did say that Scotty’s album was going to be the big seller of the season. They also referred to the first week numbers of Scotty and Blake as a victory and said that it showed how well Scotty was doing.

    You and others did point out on many occasions that Blake was just getting started and that he would probably end up selling more in the long run, but many of the fans didn’t believe that would ever happen. They expected Scotty to be the big seller, like he was a year ago coming off of Idol.

    Many pointed out that Rod Stewart was going to be the big seller for the season and fans of Scotty believed he would also beat out Rod.  

    I did believe Scotty would do better than he has, even predicting a couple of weeks ago that his album would rise to get closer to 75K a week after Thanksgiving and therefore get closer to the actual 500K mark. I doubted that Blake would be able to pass Scotty eventually, due to Scotty’s Idol popularity being so recent.

    Scotty did have one of the two or three top selling country albums and one of the top 10 highest selling albums of 2011. I’m a little surprised that his numbers have fallen off this much already in one year.
    Did I expect him to sell 1.2 million Christmas albums? No, but I did expect him to be at least the big country seller this season and give Rod Stewart a better run for his money, due to the fact that he was such a bug seller in country and overall with CAD.

  • Nadine_Bitch

    As I’ve already said, I know Adam might be in trouble of dropping by his label because his second era didn’t even come closed to his first one. Many here has predicted that too. But I guess we’ll have to wait to know if he’s sold enough for his label to keep him.

  • Eileen99

    Did I expect him to sell 1.2 million Christmas albums? No, but I did expect him to be at least the big country seller this season and give Rod Stewart a better run for his money, due to the fact that he was such a big seller in country and overall with CAD.

    I really don’t remember any of those predictions and to expect Scotty to be the big Christmas CD ahead of Rod Stewart, Lady A and Blake is just silly to me.  I doubt any Scotty fans are disappointed with how the Christmas album has done – I think it’s done really, really well for him.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/PVEFG2TOUIXSROKUSO2O2DOWWE Taylor

    I’m not sure about that, Scotty’s album sold way more.

    No, it didn’t. Not in single or album total numbers.

  • mjsbigblog

    Arguing about what fans have said or not said in the past threads is off topic and could go on forever, so I am going to stop it right here.

  • ptebwwong

    I saw the original comparison. Andrea Bocelli & Josh Groban aren’t pop/rock artists. But they’re not country artists either. Both those artists sell a lot because they would be perfect artists for gifting during the holidays since they appeal to the older demographic.

    My point was that country artists usually aren’t big sellers for Christmas albums. Even though Lady A & Blake this year are selling well, they won’t compare to artists that are in big genres & appeal to the holiday buyers like Rod, Michael Buble, Josh Groban, etc. 

    BTW, I’m a Scotty fan. But I said that Rod would be the biggest Christmas album this year. There is no way that Scotty or any country artists including Lady A & Blake would sell more Christmas albums this year than a pop/rock legend.

  • ptebwwong

    There are country Christmas albums that eventually sold more than 300,000 copies, but a lot of them never went gold. Remember, I’m listing only albums that sold 300,000 in their 1st year. I’m assuming that Taylor’s 1st Christmas EP & Sugarland’s Christmas album has now sold 300,000 since they did sell over 200,000 copies the year they were released & it’s been a couple of years now. But they both haven’t went gold. I don’t think Brad’s album was even close to selling 300,000 copies.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/PVEFG2TOUIXSROKUSO2O2DOWWE Taylor

     I saw the original comparison. Andrea Bocelli & Josh Groban aren’t pop/rock artists. But they’re not country artists either.

    I agree with you on that statement, but you quoted my post about the comparison of Scotty to Bocelli and Groban and replied that the problem was that comparisons were being made between “Scotty’s numbers with pop/rock artists”. That’s not what the original comparison was, nor was it the type of artists that my comment, that you quoted, was referring to.

  • fantoo1

    Not in singles so far, but he definitely has in album sales in the US(his album has been released elsewhere so maybe even internationally):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_Idol_alumni_album_sales

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/PVEFG2TOUIXSROKUSO2O2DOWWE Taylor

    International sales also count as purchases and legit sales numbers. Adam has sold more copies of his first album and more singles from that album than Scotty did with his first album. This original comment

    I’m not sure about that, Scotty’s album sold way more.

    is not accurate.

  • lightoftruth777

    ROUGHSTOCK
    Top 10 Country Albums for This Week with Five Notable Albums
    (SoundScan Top 200 Current Albums Chart Placement)*
    *Numbers rounded to nearest thousandth.

    LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
    2 1 Taylor SwiftRed 167,000 2,383,000
    8 7 Blake SheltonCheers, It’s Christmas. 68,000 271,000
    New 9 Florida Georgia Line Here’s To The Good Times 63,000 63,000
    7 19 Lady Antebellum On This Winter’s Night 62,000 279,000
    11 14 Scotty McCreery Christmas With Scotty 41,000 245,000

    LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
    13 17 Jason Aldean Night Train 40,000 866,000
    25 20 Little Big TownTornado 34,000 454,000
    20 23 Carrie Underwood Blown Away 31,000 1,067,000
    35 29 Luke Bryan Tailgates & Tanlines 25,000 1,643,000
    36 31 Hunter Hayes Hunter Hayes 23,000 419,000

    LW TW Artist Album Sales TW Sales Total
    44 35 Eric Church Chief 20,000 1,221,000
    49 43 Zac Brown Band Uncaged 14,000 650,000
    71 81 Blake Shelton Red River Blue 8,000 845,000
    78 94 Rascal Flatts Changed 7,000 425,000
    139 137 Justin Moore Outlaws Like Me 5,000 492,000Read more at http://www.roughstock.com/blog/country-alb…RsYhGYSMy64s.99Note: Roughstock incorrectly ranked LA #19 on the Billboard chart this week. I’m going to guess that LA probably ranked #10.

  • irockhard

    With indie labels what usually happens is the label and artist will both contribute to the costs of production and then split the profits between themselves. Even on occasions when they do pay advances (which was probably the case for MOABD) the advances they give are much smaller. Benson’s not the cheapest rock producer (James Michael is cheaper but better than Benson), but he’s still cheaper than hiring him and a dozen other different producers. If you look at the credits on Kelly or Adam’s albums you’ll see that multiple producers were hired to produce their albums. One producer also saves time. Writing the music yourself and using your own musicians cuts a lot of costs. James is doing some co-writes this era but to my knowledge only for a few songs, and hasn’t hired other musicians, it’s just him, his drummer, guitarist and the producer. I’m pretty sure that this album is even cheaper to produce than the last one and Wind-up was able to make a profit off only 100k last time.

  • irockhard

    And still some bands can do it all themselves – writing, composing and production so these bands don’t even need to hire a producer and so the label spends no money on production.

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