I love official leaks. That is all.
We only have Crystal’s numbers and given the declining January sales in general, she’s doing pretty well. Typically, one expects a fourth-to-fifth week drop of 25% with it being a bit higher while settling into the January doldrums. Crystal only dropped 13%. Crystal also managed to move up 15 spots on the BB200. There is always a lot of factors effecting the ordinals, but in general, you want to see an album steady in the ordinals. To go up is great. Especially when I don’t recall her doing any major promo last week so there really is no reason for it (other than the VH1 countdown). She doesn’t have any real presence on the radio, so I think it must be the video that is driving sales. If people are reacting to the video/airplay that means they like the song and are responding to it positively. One can only get on so many television shows (and each performance costs the artist/label money for travel and musicians), but once you outlay the initial costs of a video, if it keeps playing and generating sales, that’s just gravy. One is generally going to push a song to radio and make a video anyway. It’s nice when it pays off.
Updated: Now with Album numbersand the standard disclaimer!
Disclaimer: We do not have access to the full SoundScan stats each week. We are dependent on leaks from a variety of sources. The primary source of these leaks is Brian at Idol Chatter. He can have up to 3 updates a week for albums alone. The first set of numbers features those albums in the top 200 and some Nashville based artists. The second release features albums in the top 200 for the year and perhaps more Nashville based artists. The final release may include some special requests he gets from his users. At no point should anybody conclude that albums that are not listed sold fewer albums than the least selling album listed. All that one can conclude is that the album is not likely in the top 200 for the week or the year (Brian is human and does make the odd mistake which he later fixes). We have seen several times that the third release of special request numbers features albums that have sold more than the least selling album listed. We are grateful for any numbers we can get.
Album Numbers
47 Crystal Bowersox “Farmer’s Daughter” 9, 444 (-13%; lw 10, 801)Total: 115, 811 (62) #8 on Rock (10 last week)
103 Carrie Underwood “Play On” 5K (-30%; lw 6, 962 ) Total: 1.929M (93)
124 Fantasia “Back to Me” 4K (-28%; 5, 771) Total: 388K (130)
147 Lee DeWyze “Live It Up” 4K (-20%; lw 4, 411 ) Total: 106K (170)
170 Daughtry “Leave This Town” 3K (-17%) Total: 1.228M (OFF)
Daughtry “Daughtry” 2K (-19%)
Rounded numbers from Brian at Idol Chatter.
