Idol Sales News – Week Ending 10/28/12

By On 10/31/2012 · 33 Comments · In American Idol, Charts

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It’s official. BB announces that Taylor Swift moved 1.208M copies of “RED”. Amazing to see in this day and age. Nobody has sold that many in a single week since Eminem back in 2002. Also, this is the second highest debut for a female artist ever (Britney Spears holds the record for “Oops…”). And she did it without 99 cent fire sales because her label didn’t even service the digital version to vendors that do that sort of thing (they wanted the sales to count).

We’ll have to wait until later to see how our Idols, XFactorers and Voices did this week. This is the weekly sales thread. Please post numbers when you find them. Thanks!

 
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  • waitingforthe1

    111 Cassadee Pope – Payphone – (The Voice Performance) (187,451 Followers)

    Is that a typo for twitter followers?  how does she have almost 200K twitter followers?

  • http://twitter.com/eilonwya10 Eilonwy

    Short answer: Amazon’s share of digital singles sales probably is not huge, but since Home has been selling steadily, this sale is a reasonably good opportunity to get a sense of what impact an Amazon sale on a single can have.

    Long answer with explanation
    Market share of different music categories is shrouded in secrecy. For all 2011 music sales (combined album and single, digital and physical), market share in dollars (not units) goes roughly:

    iTunes = 35% (mostly digital singles, so HUGE advantage in number of units sold)
    Walmart = 12% (purely physical, as digital service was discontinued)
    Best Buy = 9% (purely physical, since giving up on Napster)
    Target = 9% (purely physical)
    Amazon = 8% (mixed physical and digital, probably with edge to physical media and to digital albums, very possibly with larger unit volumes than WMT, BBY, or TGT due to extensive discounting and digital albums being priced lower than physical)
    Transworld = 3.75% (physical)
    Everybody else <2% each (unless Google Play has REALLY picked up in past year)

    So Amazon's probably the second largest seller of digital singles behind iTunes, but the number of digital singles it sells most likely is a pretty small fraction of what iTunes does.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_F3XJE5GRAUMYR7Y5RYZUW7SC4U md

    It’s called a loss leader. Amazon used the 99-cent promotion to call attention to their new Cloud Drive service. The labels weren’t too outraged. You can still buy music there. Including “Red.”

    The folks at Amazon are “proactive businesspeople in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment.”

    They distribute digital music and create hardware like Apple (and are rumored to be buying Texas Insruments’ mobile chip business). They provide video downloads like NetFlix. They run a venue for other sellers like eBay. Amazon Web Services provides low-cost, scalable infrastructure for web-based operations. They also stock and distribute physical goods in a timely fashion — so
    efficiently that other retailers pay them to do the same for them.  

    Because Amazon recently agreed to begin collecting sales tax, they are ramping up their service by building new distribution centers that could bring same-day delivery to major metropolitan areas. At a minimum, they want to offer next-day delivery.

    Amazon is a force to be reckoned with but if you shop around you can sometimes find a better price. NewEgg for example is often competitive and doesn’t charge sales tax where I live.

  • OffLeash

    Muahaha! Amazon doing their “bottom-feeding catfish” thingy again. ;)
    Eilonwy, a poster here said that Amazon’s mp3 sales were significant enough, even though their album sales weren’t. Is that true?

  • fuzzywuzzy

    No, that’s not a typo. Cassadee was a member of a fairly popular group “Hey Monday” before she decided to go solo, so I think that’s why she started with a lot of fans.

    http://www.mjsbigblog.com/cassadee-pope-from-hey-monday-joins-blakes-team-on-the-voice.htm

    “The Voice” only started on September 10 (and Cassadee’s audition was shown on Sept. 25), and Cassadee already had 156,382 followers, and her followers started to increase a few days before her audition.

    http://twittercounter.com/compare/CassadeePope/week/followers

  • http://twitter.com/eilonwya10 Eilonwy

    Eilonwy, a poster here said that Amazon’s mp3 sales were significant enough, even though their album sales weren’t. Is that true?

    I’m glad you asked, as this forced me to look it up, and find a more accurate answer!

    Billboard.biz winkled pretty good numbers out of their sources, and here we go:

    Amazon is using featured discount pricing in an attempt to lure customers away from iTunes. That strategy has been effective at least in helping to grow Amazon’s MP3 market share, which in 2011 was 3.2% in overall U.S. market share, up one percentage point from the prior year’s 2.2%. (Amazon’s overall market share, including both CD and MP3 sales, is 7.93%.). But as much as it grows market share, it doesn’t seem to be laying a glove on iTunes, whose market share grew to 38.23% in 2011, up from nearly 33% in 2010.

    This looks to me like Amazon actually does better with CDs than with mp3s, and it doesn’t seem to separate mp3 singles from mp3 albums.

  • springboard2

    Thanks.  I have updated my list of artists of interest with the current Voice contestants.
    Here’s yesterday (Wednesday) chart for the songs above #200:

    206. Jolene (The Voice Performance) – Cody Belew
    210. You Know I’m No Good (The Voice Performance) – Loren Allred
    291. Paris (Ooh La La) [The Voice Performance] – Amanda Brown
    401. Lights (The Voice Performance) – Melanie Martinez
    424. Pumped Up Kicks (The Voice Performance) – MacKenzie Bourg
    433. She’s Gone (The Voice Performance) – Nicholas David
    438. Toxic (The Voice Performance) – Melanie Martinez
    459. You Found Me (The Voice Performance) – De’Borah
    468. (Everything I Do) I Do It for You [The Voice Performance] – Bryan Keith
    501. Stuck On You (The Voice Performance) – Dez Duron
    600. Titanium (The Voice Performance) – Avery Wilson
    681. Not Over You (The Voice Performance) – Cassadee Pope
    698. Listen (The Voice Performance) – Trevin Hunte
    796. Torn (The Voice Performance) – Cassadee Pope
    833. Vision of Love (The Voice Performance) – Trevin Hunte
    861. Good Time (The Voice Performance) – MacKenzie Bourg

  • Carriefan1

    Billboard 200:

    15 – Scotty McCreery (2 weeks)
    20 – Carrie Underwood (26 weeks)
    160 – Kelly Clarkson (53 weeks)

    Hot 100:

    14 – Home
    23 – Blown Away
    93 – Catch My Breath

    Country Airplay:

    3 – Blown Away
    22 – Crying On A Suitcase
    36 – Eighteen Inches
    60 – Airborne Ranger Infantry

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