Idol Sales News – Week Ending 08/23/09

Sales:

15 16 SPARKS*JORDIN BATTLEFIELD 55796 -7 60193 801990
44 38 DAUGHTRY NO SURPRISE 34815 9 31953 680432
57 40 CLARKSON*KELLY ALREADY GONE 31543 20 26289 183292

Airplay:

No. 19 – Jordin Sparks (-1.5 million)
No. 20 – Daughtry ( 3.1 million)
No. 74 – David Cook ( 1.1 million)
No. 205 – Kelly Clarkson ( 2.0 million)

Can someone please explain to me what the million represents in regards to airplay? is it listeners/sales? thanks!

Can someone please explain to me what the million represents in regards to airplay? is it listeners/sales? thanks!

Airplay is expressed using a metric called Audience Impressions (in millions), which is calculated based on the estimated number of listeners a station has during certain parts of the day. The audience size is measured by a comapany called Arbitron, which uses different methods such as listener diaries and portable meters that detect radio signals in order to assign AI levels to each station. When a song is played on a particular station, that spin is detected and given an Audience Impression value that varies depending on the time of day it was played. Drive-time dayparts, for example, deliver higher AI values than overnight spins, etc. Every time a song is spun it accumulates AI, which is then used to determine certain airplay-driven and hybrid charts such as the Radio Songs chart and the Hot 100.

(However, keep in mind that format-specific airplay charts such as Mainstream Top 40, HAC, Country, etc. are determined by number of spins in a week, not AI).

Thank you ladymadonna =)

Brian posted the Idol sales:

Digital Tracks:

Jordin Sparks, Battlefield [Main Version] (56,000, -7 percent, 802,000 total)

Daughtry, No Surprise (34,000, 9 percent, 671,000)

Kelly Clarkson, Already Gone (32,000, 20 percent, 183,000)

Kellie Pickler, Best Days of Your Life (18,000, -13 percent, 761,000)

David Cook, Come Back to Me (9,000, -2 percent, 327,000)

Kelly Clarkson, My Life Would Suck Without You (9,000, -7 percent, 2.070 million)

Kelly Clarkson, I Do Not Hook Up (7,000, -12 percent, 611,000)

Albums:

Daughtry, Leave This Town (33,000, -12 percent, 547,000 total/5,000 digital, 21 percent, 104,000 digital total)

Soundtrack, Hannah Montana 3 (22,000, -19 percent, 389,000/29,000 digital total)

Jordin Sparks, Battlefield (7,000, -14 percent, 93,000/17,000 digital total)

Kelly Clarkson, All I Ever Wanted (6,000, -14 percent, 680,000/1,000 digital, 20 percent, 145,000)

Daughtry, Daughtry (4,000, 4 percent, 4.517 million/378,000 digital total )

Various, American Idol Season 8 EP (4,000, -21 percent, 34,000)

Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride (4,000, -13 percent, 2.954 million)

Kellie Pickler, Kellie Pickler (4,000, -21 percent, 298,000)

David Cook, David Cook (4,000, -18 percent, 1.226 million/152,000 digital total)

Various, American Idol Season 8 (3,000, -20 percent, 61,000)

Carrie Underwood, Some Hearts (3,000, -4 percent, 6.831 million)

Would love to know what “Light On”‘s numbers are.

Would love to know who sold 2,000 and 1,000 albums (like we used to be able to know) and would love to know how many singles many of the idols have sold that don’t make Brian’s list (that we used to be able to know also). I wonder if Ken Barnes still gets that info. If so, sure wish he’d pass it on to Brian.

Brian has said in comments to the Idol Chatter sales columns that he’s looking into getting the Light On numbers. He’s pretty responsive to requests for info, so I do think that we’ll get those numbers. That said, his source may be waiting to give it to him until Light On hits platinum, which will probably be in the next 4-8 weeks. So….

Mmmm. Ken was not able to get us routine updates for albums that were not on the BB 200 (or another album sales chart) or songs that were not on the top 200 digital tracks chart. He may have had a better relationship with soundscan in some ways, but generally, both Ken and Brian were getting info that related to certain charts, and then got us extra updates as their source(s) permit.

^^With the disclaimer that I have WAY less experience in the matter, I seem to remember Ken printing “off chart” numbers on a fairly regular basis. I may be misremembering, but I thought it was (almost?) weekly.

In any event, Brian’s unique spin seems to be reporting airplay while Ken’s was off-chart minutiae. But, as always, I could be wrong. LOL

^^With the disclaimer that I have WAY less experience in the matter, I seem to remember Ken printing ‘off chart’  numbers on a fairly regular basis. I may be misremembering, but I thought it was (almost?) weekly.

Yes, Ken used to do that weekly. He’d report pretty much all the album numbers. For a while, he even had a race between two Idols to see who could sell more (they were selling 3 or 4 CDs a week), but SoundScan told him to knock it off and that he wasn’t allowed to report numbers lower than 100.

Thanks consumedbywords and 123abc456 for the numbers. I’ll update the main post.

I was looking at Brian’s Idol Airplay Chart

3 3 David Cook, Come Back To Me (4697) (#14 AC, #7 Hot AC)

You have got to be kidding me. Out of all the songs on the chart this is the 3rd highest? WTF? Is Idol airplay in general lower than normal now? Can someone please kill it off so we can have a new single?!

It is possible that CBTM’s weakness on the chart has been overstated.

Anyway, that reminds me. I had a thought the other day as to why we didn’t get any singles from any of the AI8′ers in August, and still don’t have one from any of them scheduled in September. The Grammys’ cutoff for eligibility was moved up a month, to August 31, 2009, which means that you had a number of high-profile singles released this month, presumably to grow throughout September. I wonder if any of the labels decided to delay releasing a single for any of the Idols to give them more room to grow. Just a guess. Could be totally off, but it just seemed strange to me that Jive, in particular, had not released a single for either Kris or Allison, given the release dates for Tattoo and Crush, and this might explain it—the label wanting to give the singles the best shot of success.