Idol Billboard Update for Issue 6/7/08

Jason Castro with 64,000 . . . Syesha Mercado with 18,000

Somebody remind me, please. Which contestant finished third?

Jason Castroà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Hallelujahà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  is #13 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles and #94 on the Pop 100.

Is this the televised performance of “Hallelujah” from top 16 week? I thought the downloads got yanked off iTunes by the grand finale. If so, his sales and chart figures are extra impressive.

MJ and Kirsten, thanks for the info.

Applause to MJ –

I gotta ask, what is the difference between:
Digital Song and
Digital Track?

Also between
Top Digital Albums and
Top Internet Albums

I’m puzzled. thanks.

Yep. I know plenty of people who voted for Syesha and wouldn’t dare touch her music.

Somebody remind me, please. Which contestant finished third?

I know a lot of people that won’t vote for a guy under any circumstances. No good reason for it, they just don’t like male singers. When she became ‘last woman standing’, she gained a voting base that was not necessarily a buying base.

I am glad Michael Johns is 4th on the list, he actually did very well considering how early he was voted off.

He had four weeks less than Castro on the show and three weeks less than Brooke. Had he stayed longer on the show he would be ranked much higher.
Fans will buy his music for sure. He has a great recording voice IMO.
Anyways,I can’t believe Syesha was third place, she stayed so long but no one will buy her music.

Can’t wait for Cookie’s and MJ’s CD’s.

mj, the link to the Idol Billboard Update goes to the page for Idol Headlines 053008, rather than the Billboard Update page.

Great work btw! It would be interesting to see the download numbers from earlier weeks. There’s no way the producers and judges didn’t know the way public sentiments were going, based on the weekly iTunes sales figures.

Are these numbers just from the finale? Because I know that Jason sold more than 64,000 downloads throughout the season.

Poor Syesha, she won’t sell records. Hope the girl goes Broadway,that will be her savior in the industry.

I just fixed the link to the Billboard chart. You can also find the link above along the bottom of the header.

Are these numbers just from the finale? Because I know that Jason sold more than 64,000 downloads throughout the season.

These numbers are for last week’s sales week. The downloads were yanked on Thursday, so it’s 4 days worth of Sales figures.

I gotta ask, what is the difference between:
Digital Song and
Digital Track?

Also between
Top Digital Albums and
Top Internet Albums

From Wikipedia:

The Hot Digital Tracks is a song popularity chart that ranks the best selling digital tracks in the United States according to Billboard magazine. It is not to be confused with the Hot Digital Songs chart, which combines different versions of songs for a summarized figure (for example remixes, “explicit” or “clean” versions, and/or any other alternate versions can chart separately here, whereas all versions of the same track occupy only one position on Hot Digital Songs).

I believe Top Digital Albums tracks the number of digital albums that are downloaded from iTunes, while the Top Internet Albums tracks albums bought on the internet at retailers like Amazon, etc.

These are from “last week”? That is skewed data. Other than the davids, the itunes were taken down. Plus, the davids had NEW songs to buy where the others had songs that have been out for awhile. So, statistically, you can accurately compare cook to archie but not davids vs. the others. And comparing jason to chikezie isn’t ‘fair’ either (really) since jason has newer songs than Chikezie. Davidx2 numbers: I think it is just for ‘shock value’ to report numbers from ‘last week’. I would like to know the exact numbers, for everyone, week to week. The ‘last week’ data just doesn’t ‘impress’ me other than to make me think it is ‘justification’ statistics.

Yeah, what you said, lovelylady. LOL

Jason Castro with 64,000 . . . Syesha Mercado with 18,000

Somebody remind me, please. Which contestant finished third?

Jason Castroà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Hallelujahà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  is #13 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles and #94 on the Pop 100.

Hence the ginormous bus that was sent after Castro 3 weeks in a row. I don’t know the vote totals, but it is possible he was nipping at a David’s heels (probably Archie given the final vote total) and all stops were pulled to dump him minus actually clausing him. After what they did to him publicly, I’m thinking it would have been far too kind to just be nice and clause him. And I don’t even like Castro all that much.

These are from à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“last weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ? That is skewed data. Other than the davids, the itunes were taken down. Plus, the davids had NEW songs to buy where the others had songs that have been out for awhile.

All of the songs from all idols were available for everyone to buy up until this week. Yes, only the Davids’ had new songs, but to be fair, both Davids’ older songs were doing quite well too. MJ, who was booted a long time ago, had a decent amount of sales as well. As far as time available online, everyone is equal. Selling power, that’s the difference…HENCE…the boys (the Davids’, Castro) are doing great while the girls are trailing even when they weren’t necessarily booted in that order.

When she became à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹last woman standingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, she gained a voting base that was not necessarily a buying base.

I think it had to do with the fact that he overwhelming sucked on top 4 night. Every single critic in America ripped him a new one. Syesha didn’t get lucky; she (and everyone else) was just better than him.

But yes, I think Syesha’s lack of mainstream appeal, despite her talent (like Paris of season 5 and Melinda of season 6) is the reason for her dismal sales.

MJ, I do so appreciate your blog. Thanks for posting the billboard chart, and thanks to Kirsten for finding the info.

Does anyone know Chris Sligh’s sales numbers? I”ve only seen numbers for his first week.

Wow – that was a lot of work Kirsten & MJ put into getting all of that stuff together. Thank you ladies.

It sure is nice for me personally to see Jason & Brooke toward the top of the list instead of the bottom.

It’s also nice to know that after all of their hard work, the contestants at least get a tiny piece of the download pie. I’m sure the TPTB aren’t giving them too big of a cut, but it’s nice to see these kids generate more income than their crappy stipend.

I think it is just for à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢shock valueà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ to report numbers from à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹last weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢. I would like to know the exact numbers, for everyone, week to week. The à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹last weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ data just doesnà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹impressà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ me other than to make me think it is à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹justificationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ statistics.

We only HAVE numbers from this week. As far as I know, nobody who posts here is Steve Jobs, Nigel Lythgoe or Clive Davis. I think all of the fans of numbers would like to see the data for each week. Fingers are crossed that Ken Barnes will come through for us.

I personally think these numbers are impressive, by any measure. The fact that Chikezie hadn’t been on TV for months, had no airplay, had barely a chance to gain a fan base, only had a few songs for sale AND he still sold 5k? Have you looked at the numbers for last year? The tenth place finisher last year only moved 2.5K all season. Chikezie moved twice that in 4 days. What Chikezie did was amazing.

I personally think it’s great to know that these guys wracked up great numbers even outside of the Top 200 we found out about the other day.

The way I see it, the numbers will always be skewed. The longer you are on the show, the longer you have time to gain a fan base. Many people have mentioned that they didn’t care for so-and-so, but after such-and-such a performance, they went back and bought all/some of their songs. Plus, the higher up you go, the more songs you have for sale and the greater the chance that one of those songs will be good.

Comparing numbers is always hard because there are so many variables (I wrote a big post the other day explaining how every season, the coronation song could have an asteriks beside it), but this is all the data we have. By compiling them, I’m not trying to justify anything. Sometimes, the sales stats I report do the exact opposite of proving what I personally think about a given artist’s talent.

But, even if I didn’t like Cookie, I would still think that it’s extremely impressive to sell almost 15.7% of all downloads in the US last week.

Does anyone know Chris Slighà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s sales numbers? Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ve only seen numbers for his first week.

Chris sold 1.1K in his second week. Unfortunately, he’s fallen out of the Top 200. Ken Barnes at Idol Chatter is our most consistent source of data for those off chart Idols and he’s on vacation this week. Hopefully, we’ll get some more stats next week. Christian music is always difficult to track because many of the buyers purchase at Christian bookstores which are not part of the SoundScan system.

Thanks for posting these, mj. However, I feel that these numbers are not really telling us a whole lot about anyone other than Cook. The sales are for only a few days last week until everyone’s stuff was pulled except for Cook. Are the sales for all the songs that were previously available? I would be much more interested in total sales or sales by tune for each Idol for the entire season, that would really speak to selling potential for each of them. And don’t for a second think Idol and the record companies aren’t looking at those numbers, they have analyzed the crap out of them already. Of course, I think those of us here know who the top 3 for the season would be, it’s sort of a no-brainer.

Thank you MJ and Kirsten!

Regardless of all other factors, THANK YOU, MJ and Kirsten for the numbers and compilation.

No question about it, the top three sellers for the season were DC, DA, and JC. I don’t doubt that for a second. But, the numbers don’t necessarily have to match up with where one finishes in the race.

I’m very glad with how well Jason is doing!
Thanks for posting!! [:

Christian music is always difficult to track because many of the buyers purchase at Christian bookstores which are not part of the SoundScan system.

Thanks. I’ve learned a lot from reading your posts, but I somehow missed that bit of information.

I hate it that Chris has dropped off the top 200. He has talent. I hope he can maintain a career.

In one of his posts on VFTW, he said he’d be pretty happy with modest sales, given his genre. I THINK he was hoping for about 50K. It looks like a long haul to get there from where he is now.

If all the songs except TOML were pulled from iTunes, does this mean that will be the only Cook song on next week’s charts? So all this “bubbling under,” etc. is pretty meaningless? That’s my take on it, anyway.

The real measure of Cook’s success will be how well the song sells this week, where it charts, and how much radio airplay it gets. Then we’ll have a better way to judge.

Hence the ginormous bus that was sent after Castro 3 weeks in a row. I donà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t know the vote totals, but it is possible he was nipping at a Davidà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s heels (probably Archie given the final vote total) and all stops were pulled to dump him minus actually clausing him. After what they did to him publicly, Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢m thinking it would have been far too kind to just be nice and clause him. And I donà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t even like Castro all that much.

Dulce, I guess I should have added a sarcasm alert [/sarcasm]. I’m all too aware of the Nigel bus o’ death, but I really appreciate your testimony as a non-fan of Jason.

Chris sold 1.1K in his second week. Unfortunately, heà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s fallen out of the Top 200. Ken Barnes at Idol Chatter is our most consistent source of data for those off chart Idols and heà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s on vacation this week.

I’m a Sligh fan who routinely checks his blog, so that’s why I know this and Ken Barnes doesn’t. According to Chris:

Apparently (thanks to Rosalee for pointing this out) Ken Barnes over at USA Today reported that i sold 1100. I just checked with my label and 1100 is what we sold in the mainstream (iTunes stores) and we sold about 1200 in the CBA (Christian) market. Apparently, Ken just missed those sales.

Kirsten, you were right — as usual! — about the Christian bookstore sales. Adding those to iTunes, Sligh’s sales are more than double what Barnes reported.

Personally, I am VERY impressed with these numbers. For DC to sell 15% of ALL downloads in the US….that is CRAZY!!

And, it is also very impressive that songs that the contestants performed WEEKS ago are selling well/appearing on charts. I think this show still has some legs. And, I think that this IS the most talented group ever. These kids are great.

Is there data somewhere showing a ranking of how many total songs each contestant has sold for the season? I would imagine it goes something like last week’s ranking, but I’m interested.

Thanks for all the numbers, MJ and Kirsten. Congrats to the kids, too!

I too am hoping for some season totals, but we may never get them.

I hate it that Chris has dropped off the top 200. He has talent. I hope he can maintain a career.

I think the Christian music fan base may even be more loyal than the country fans, so I think Chris has an excellent chance of maintaining longevity in this genre. This reminded me of something I was going to post last week in Chris’s cd thread – but forgot:

My neighbor is the pastor of a very large non-denominational Christian church where they have this humongous auditorium that features Christian rock and musical acts all the time. On a concert night, if I drive by, that place is PACKED. Although it’s not my church, I do take the kids there for some of the children’s shows they put on, because they’re really good. We were just there last week, and Sligh’s cd was for sale in their bookstore. It was in a pretty prominant display in the teen section, which is great. If he can capture the teens in that market now – he’ll have some of them for life.

Parents who attend these types of churches take purchasing Christian music for their kids very seriously. Anything to keep them from bringing rap music into the house LOL! So, while it may be slow going, I think Chris can make it to the 50,000 number. Personally, I think his cd is quite good. If his people can get one of his songs on the Christian compilation cd’s they sell on late night tv, then he’ll be way ahead of the game. Those things sell like hotcakes.

The real measure of Cookà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s success will be how well the song sells this week, where it charts, and how much radio airplay it gets. Then weà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ll have a better way to judge.

Does anyone know how his airplay is doing? I figured RCA aren’t actually going to push the magic rainbows song to radio so I dont know what the norm is and I have no idea how to look at that stuff but I’ve been checking iTunes regularly and from what I can see he hasn’t dropped any lower than #3. He was at #1 for maybe 3 days into the 2nd sales week then has been between #2 and #3. I don’t know how that will show in actual sales and a drop will be inevitable but I like seeing him still remain pretty high.

The downloads are incredible. However, 900K dls translates into 75K albums (at 12 tracks per album.) Still an amazing number to sell in four days just on iTunes. However, Cook is selling these at the height of interest in Idol. It’s immediate gratification for the fans. It’s not like they’re waiting 5-7 months for an album and have kind of forgotten about the show.

I still think he has great commercial appeal but just putting his numbers into perspective.

If all the songs except TOML were pulled from iTunes, does this mean that will be the only Cook song on next weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s charts? So all this à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“bubbling under,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  etc. is pretty meaningless? Thatà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s my take on it, anyway.

Yes, the bubbling under is meaningless because the songs got pulled (they can’t bubble up). I wasn’t paying attention, but it’s my understanding that the songs from the Final 2 did not get pulled until Tuesday (or maybe even Wednesday) so it’s possible that those songs may appear in next week’s chart as well.

Cookie just may set a record for the number of songs to fall of the Hot 100 in a week. I, for one, do not understand why they couldn’t be available for sale longer. It’s not like they were talking up floor space at Walmart.

If I remember correctly, Rubens “I need an angel” Christian album went almost gold. I cant remember the first week sales numbers but they were great. I do remember at that time, an article said an average Christian album sold around 8000 units the first week. That was several yrs ago so don’t know what they sell now. I have that album and absolutely love it. I hope Chris does well with his as Mandisa has. I read that Melinda is working on an album but I dont know if shes under contract or if its a demo.

Thank you, MJ and Kirsten, for all the hard work in compiling these numbers every week. They do add a dimension of understanding to the whole Idol puzzle that would be missing otherwise.

Considering TPTB’s desire for $, can anyone explain the rationale for pulling all those songs so quickly? It makes no sense to me. I don’t really understand the way song clearances work. Is it possible that these songs were cleared for the Idols only for the period while the show was on the air? If that isn’t it, why did they willingly choose to stop earning money? Very odd.

The only reason I can think of is the “fire sale” brand of marketing, where you hope to maximize your sales by telling people they have to get it now or it will be gone. Print publishers do that sort of thing — they know that magazines will sell the maximum number of copies if they’re on stands for a week (or a month or whatever) and no more, that category romance novels will sell their max if they’re in stores for a month and no more, that mass market paperbacks have a shelf life of three months or so…

Okay, I can think of another reason. Maybe they know if they let the stuff stay there forever, it would be much less likely to break the charts. This way they can promote the fact that AI dominated the charts for one week, even if there won’t be any of those songs (except, what? Seven of them? Or just the one?) on the charts the following week. But they get a week’s worth of boffo publicity out of the four-day fire sale.

If it were me, I’d make all the singles available as long as people were still buying them. But then, I’m not running focus groups and polls to figure out what to market to whom when, and I DEFINITELY don’t think like Simon Fuller and/or Nigel Lythgoe or any of the other people at the top of the Idol food chain.

I think for them to pull the songs they must have had a good reason, maybe something to do with contracts or rights. Because I see no other reason. If Cookie sold even half of what he sold last week Fuller & co. would probably be ecstatic. Could it be they want people to keep buying TOML? Now I read it is in fact impacting radio this week so maybe they want more focus on it.

Okay, now that the dust has settled — what does this do for the Idols pocketbook? Kaching? How much kaching do they get per digital download?

I would have to say that Cook’s numbers would probably be even higher because he had many #1 iTunes (Idol and all of iTunes) sales prior to the finale and they stayed #1 for more than a week, much more than any other contestant even taking into account that Archuleta’s had a #1 for Imagine and Jason for Hallelujah which was # 1; however neither Archuleta’s or Jason’s stayed #1 for as long as Cook’s Billie Jean and Always Be My Baby did. It would be interesting to find out what the total sales were for everyone of the contestants from the very beginning through 4 days after the finale. I know that rickey posted some charts (not numbers) off of iTunes and Cook pretty much dominated the charts after Billie Jean. He cut down reporting the iTune sales because Archie’s fans were getting upset. As good as Cook’s iTune downloads were, many people waited to download them and frankly some people waited too long because they pulled them and left only Cook’s TOML on iTunes.

Idol announced from the very begnning that people could download Idol performances off of iTunes and that they would only be available for 4 days after the finale. I heard this over and over again as Ryan announced it every single week. This should have not been a surprise to anyone and Idol stuck to it because on the 4th day–everything but TOML was gone off of iTunes.

I don’t know how much the contestants got for these downloads but they did get something. Carly mentioned it on Larry King Live but wouldn’t say their cut other than the fact that they had to belong to some union which would guarantee they reaped their share of the profits for their hard work. Afterall, these people are adults and this was “their job” for the past 8 months and they certainly were paid to be on Idol while they were there and were paid for their iTune sales. People just can’t take off work for 8 plus months and pay their bills–it had to be worthwhile. Though they got exposure–Idol wouldn’t have a show without them so they all got compensated. The longer you stay on, the more money you would make. In addition, while on tour the more solos you do, the more money you make per performance. Each contestant has at least one solo and one group song. I think someone mentioned that last year a solo was worth about $1,000 per performance while on tour and obviously a group performance would be spliting the payoff for that performance.

He had four weeks less than Castro on the show and three weeks less than Brooke. Had he stayed longer on the show he would be ranked much higher.

Oh please. According to Billboard, majority of the sales for Jason came from Hallelujah and Over The Rainbow and a huge bulk of Brooke’s sales came from Let It Be. All of these performances were done while MJ was still in the competition. Geez, MJ is 5th best-selling, just be happy for him instead of trying to undermine the other finalists’ selling power.

actually, Jordin Sparks new single à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“One Step at a Timeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  debuts at #2 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles

they would only be available for 4 days after the finale.

All but the 2 Davids’ songs were off iTunes by Thursday–the day after the finale, not 4 days after the finale.

They may have planned to pull the stuff other than ToML for a couple of reasons. (1) To reduce the risk that an older song would outsell ToML this week, as they did not know how well it would sell, and/or (2) because they plan to do a cumulative sales release, possibly in connection with awarding certifications of songs that made gold, etc. (That last may be wishful thinking on my part, because I would like to know the cumulative numbers.)