135 Blake Lewis ‘Heartbreak on Vinyl’  4K (NEW) 4K ‘“ 89 on digital Albums Chart (1K) (NEW)

Ouch! Those numbers are low … guess Blake’s genre really doesn’t sell well. or is it just Blake?

Which makes me hope that Adam’s album is more rock-ish than dance-ish.

And I kind of have my doubts about Jordin as a big solo draw or a big merchandise seller. That’s been my question about Jordin all along at pop ‘” I don’t see anything aspirational about her image for the pop audience.

Lucy, ITA with your points on Jordin. I don’t think Jive has successfully created a strong brand with her, for all the reasons you stated above. She’s not the disney princess, she def has a more mature sound (and even look), but at the same time, she’s still a kid. She doesn’t really attract any one demographic strongly enough. To the person who said that people like her singles, but maybe not HER enough, I think that might be correct. Her singles are catchy, hooky, and you want to buy them. But there’s not enough of a pull (imo) to really get invested in Jordin the artist. And pop, especially is SO brand driven.

Here is a really interesting analysis of the current digital music marketplace from Billboard.

Q3 - thanks for posting this – I really enjoyed the read. My take on it is: everything evolves, it’s the nature of business cycles. The ipod, albums, digital sales, are all reaching maturity. EVERYTHING in business goes through this cycle.

Music ain’t going anywhere, so, as with everything in this world, it simply must adapt to survive. The strong and smart will predict the changes, and move ahead with them to stay ahead of the curve. The weak and slow will fall by the wayside and fail. And if I knew what the winning move was, well, I’d probably be much wealthier right now

Similar struggle is happening right now with newspapers ‘“ many of which are struggling to stay afloat now that most people get so much of their news for free on the internet. In fact, the internet alone is probably the most responsible for all of these huge shifts in business practice. It will be interesting to see how it will all play out.

Seems right to me. But I also think that they don’t know ‘” at this point ‘” just how to go about correcting the problem, right?

I hope they are planning something, lucy. Because as much as I bitch about Jordin’s albums sales, its because I like her. She can sing and I think that the fact that she’s fine with her size makes her a good role model for young girls. She worked so hard on that first album. I just want the kid to do very well.

I don’t have any answers for any of your questions. I don’t know how they can get people to take another look at her. I don’t know how they are going to make more money off her. Fingers crossed.

And congrats to Archie!

Albums -
Jordin Sparks, Battlefield (3,000 weekly, 123,000 total)
David Cook, David Cook (2,000/1.24 million)
Mandisa, Freedom (2,000/68,000)
Phil Stacey, Into the Light (less than 1,000/8,000)
David Archuleta, David Archuleta (less than 1,000/734,000)
Chris Sligh, Running Back to You (less than 1,000/54,000

Digital tracks -
David Archuleta, Crush (1.83 million)
Kelly Clarkson, Since U Been Gone (2 million)
David Cook, Light On (1+ million)
David Cook, Time of My Life (1.3 million)
Daughtry, Feels LIke Tonight (740,000)
Daughtry, Home (1.82 million)
Daughtry, What About Now (633,000)
Jordin Sparks, No Air (3 million)
Jordin Sparks, Tattoo (2 million)
Carrie Underwood, Before He Cheats (2.82 million)
Daughtry, What About Now (633,000)

23 19 KELLY CLARKSON ALREADY GONE
14 20 CARRIE UNDERWOOD COWBOY CASANOVA
– 30 GLEE CAST IT’S MY LIFE / CONFESSIONS PAR
– 40 GLEE CAST HALO / WALKING ON SUNSHINE
35 44 JORDIN SPARKS BATTLEFIELD
41 46 DAUGHTRY NO SURPRISE

Kellys 11th top 20 hit on the Hot 100.

As far as I’m concerned, Rickey did him no favors. Just fired up the Kris haters on his blog.

Rickey? Rickey’s not promo. He’s a f*cking whackadoodle. He has a small audience of die-hard idol fans who have either purchased Kris’s single already, or are such hard core fantards of an AI competitor, they’d never even consider buying it.

A couple of radio spins in major markets reach about 10,000 times the people that might hit Rickey’s lame little blog. That’s where Kris’s new fans will come from. And that’s what he needs. He’s already sold this single to the fans in the bubble. It’s the radio spins that will reach those outside.

Take Light On (a.k.a. the “boat anchor”), for instance. That song didn’t sell platinum overnight, and it didn’t immediately zoom up the charts either. I still remember how it languished for a while near the bottom of the itunes Top 100 songs chart. There weren’t many people predicting a “platinum” future for that song at that time. Slowly but surely (with increased exposure and airplay), more ears were able to hear the song. As a result, the song began creeping back up the itunes charts and sales picked up. The rest is history.

I don’t know whether LLWD will eventually sell platinum or not, but I think it’s way too soon to declare this single a mistake on Jive’s part. We’ll see what happens in the next couple of months.

RE: Jordin-I’m sure Jive was hoping for much better album sales at this point for Battlefield. It all depends on what they want from Jordin and what they are content with. If racking up platinum singles isn’t enough for Jive, they’ll let her go (I seriously doubt that will happen). At this stage, all Jordin can do is keep pushing forward with touring and promo. I don’t think there’s anything more Jive can do apart from what they’re already doing. Maybe she’ll have another monster single like No Air that will help increase her album sales. Who knows?

zoya: Just to comment on Jordin and international airplay quite a few posts back. She is one of the 3 Idols that get airplay in my country ( Kelly and Daughtry being the other two ) but I think the sales are much worse than in the USA (just a feeling based on knowing the not buying singles tendency in my country).

Carrie gets airplay and has charted in Australia.

As far as I’m concerned, Rickey did him no favors. Just fired up the Kris haters on his blog. Kris will steadily make a name for himself outside the Idol bubble. I’m not denying the perks he has won through Idol, but as he has stated, he’s just starting out in the music business. From my perspective, I want him to work for it, to earn it, whether he won a reality show or not. The acclaim and accolades will follow in due time.