Idol Billboard Update for Issue 1/17/09 – January Doldrums Set In

By On 01/09/2009 · 13 Comments · In Uncategorized

The January doldums have set in for the retail music business.   Except for the last of the iTunes gift card bonanza, sales were typically slow this week.   According to Billboard, album units are down 55% from last week, and 14% from the same week last year.

Here’s my Idol Billboard Update for you right HERE.

As an update to the HDD numbers I posted earlier in the week, here are the final Soundcan numbers for David Cook and David Archuleta, organized by numbers goddess, Kirsten.   The final numbers are pretty much in the same ballpark as HDD.   The percentage decreases are a bit worse than Kirsten’s original estimate:

16 David Cook David Cook 30,595 (-70%; lw 100,745 ) Total: 842,262 (10)
51 David Archuleta David Archuleta 14,157 (-75%; lw 56,368) Total: 580,210 (33)

Digital downloads faired a little better due to residual holiday gift card purchases:

29 David Archuleta à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Crushà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  68,043 (-47%; lw 128,226) Total: 1,372,708 (22)
39 David Cook à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Light Onà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  57,735 (-30%; lw 82,489) Total: 486,647 (42)
120 David Cook à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Time of My Lifeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  18K (-20%; lw 23,976) Total: 1.06M (179)
176 Jennifer Hudson à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Spotlightà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  11K (-27%; lw 16K) Total: 343K (OFF)

A few highlights from the Billboard chart:

  • Â  Elliott Yamin’s holiday album My Kind Of Holiday debuted on the Top Independent Albums chart at #26.
  • Speaking of the holidays, seasonal tunes are all but gone from the charts, allowing songs that were bumped off the charts to re-enter:   “Telluride”, Josh Gracin at #45 on Hot Country Songs, “One Step at at Time”, Jordin Sparks at #20 on Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks, Hot Adult Contemporary Recurrents are back, with   “No Air”, Jordin Sparks re-entering at #7, “Home”, Daughtry at #8, “Tattoo”, Jordin Sparks at #18 and “Breakaway”, Kelly Clarkson at #20.
  • David Archuleta’s “Crush” re-enters the Hot 100 Airplay at #69.
  • David Cook’s “Time of My Life” remains in the #1 position on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart. Cook is the only male artist to dominate the AC chart in the last 54 weeks.

 
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  • cochem

    HDD for sales this week… Looks like more of the same

    YOUR WEAKEND TOP 10 CHART PREVIEW: With everyone headed back to work and school this week, next week’s Top 10 looks more than a little bleak, with a collective total somewhere around 400. While that figure represents a drop of 50k (11.1%) over the corresponding charts in 2008 and 2007, ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s a precipitous drop from 2006, when the Top 10 for the week ending 1/15 racked up north of 650k. So weà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢re looking at a likely decline of 250k (38.5%). Ouch.

    Taylor Swift (Big Machine) 60-65k
    Kanye West (Roc-A-Fella/IDJ) 50-55k
    Nickelback (Roadrunner) 45-50k
    Beyonce (Music World/Columbia) 45-50k
    Twilight (Chop Shop/Atlantic) 40-45k
    Britney Spears (Jive/ZLG) 35-40k
    Keyshia Cole (Geffen) 30-35k
    Jamie Foxx (J/RMG) 25-30k
    Now 29 (UMe) 25-30k
    All Wrapped Up (Hollywood) 25-30k

    http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/rumormill.cgi

  • SashaB

    Thanks MJ. Way to go! Congrats to the Davids.

  • Jolene

    January. What can you do about it?
    Wait for February, I guess.

    I’m bad with numbers, what does the HDD prediction mean in terms of average percentage drops from this week?

  • Michelle

    So I realize January is especially bad because of holiday hangover, but when does the sales freefall start to ease?

  • tinawina

    Michelle, in theory its supposed to start inching back up around the end of January/early February. I THINK things are suppose to be back in a more normal pre-christmas sales state in March/April. But I’m not sure about that last part, I’m still learning!

  • JudyOhio

    Is there any way to know how many digital downloads ALTNOY had last week?

  • Hazehel

    Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢m bad with numbers, what does the HDD prediction mean in terms of average percentage drops from this week?

    Using a bit of quick mental arithmatics, it looks to be 30-40% which is roughly what I expect they’ll be extrapolating (or is that interpolating?) from previous years figures. So if you are thinking about the numbers for David Cook, then we are probably looking at 19-22K if the same applies, although as I’ve said before, I expect him to do better. Fingers crossed.

  • ladymadonna

    So I realize January is especially bad because of holiday hangover, but when does the sales freefall start to ease?

    I’ve posted this here before I think, but maybe not all the way into March. Basically I took a look at the albums that were in the top-10 going into the first sales week of January last year, and then tracked the average weekly decline rate for those same ten albums over the next two months. (I focused on these ten because I was trying to do some rough predictions on how Cook might trend after entering the New Year in the top 10). Here’s how the weekly increase/decline percentages looked last year:

    Sales week ending … Average increase/decline

    12/30/2007 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ -62%
    01/06/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ -54%
    01/13/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ -31%
    01/20/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ -10%
    01/27/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ ^2%
    02/03/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ ^4%
    02/10/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ ^10%
    02/17/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ ^24%
    02/24/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ -17%
    03/02/2008 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦ ^5%

    You’ll notice a nice, encouraging bump mid-February due to the Grammy-effect (which not everyone is going to see obviously). But then there’s usually another steep drop back before things slowly start to climb again into March. You can see, however, that it’s a pretty deep hole to climb out of by that point.

    Do note that these percentages are incremental. So if you started week 1 with 100K in sales, you would have 38K the next week, and then 17K the following, etc. But these are also just averages and not of the whole chart – just a select subset of albums from last year. But the entire chart pretty much follows this general trend, and not surprisingly, the 2009 week-over-week declines are looking even steeper than last year.

    So this is all just back o’ the envelope, lets steel ourselves for how bad things might look this spring, kind of math. All the standard caveats apply here.

  • Suzanne

    Man. What a bummer.

  • mac

    I just can’t imagine any artist that would want to release an album during this time. Why wouldn’t they wait? Did any of the idols release their first albums during this time? I somehow am remembering Katharine released sometime during this time frame????

  • jpfan

    Very few artists do release albums right after Xmas. The advantage to doing so is you could possibly have the #1 album of the week with sales of 60K or so. That wouldn’t put you in the Top 20 albums in the week before Christmas. And your album will get more attention because they isn’t much competition.

    Obviously the best time to release an album is mid/end November. That’s when you get the full benefit of the Xmas shopping season. And that’s when almost all the Idol albums are released. Except for Taylor (Dec) and Kat (Jan) and sales suffered because of it. Although in the end, it sort of evens itself out.
    To have superstar sales, you have to stay on the BB200 for more than a year or two. I think Daughtry is moving into year three as we speak.

  • FolkFan

    Thank you so much, MJ and Kirsten. And LadyM, I hate the percentage decreases but love knowing them, because it let’s you know what you can expect. Big drops don’t necessarily mean anything at this time of the year—it’s all a question of how you bounce back.

  • Michelle

    Thanks everyone. I guess I have to be grateful they push the kids hard to release in November even with all the strain on them and the compromises they have to make due to time.