Idol Sales News – Week Ending 03/22/15

Big exciting news with the new Idol songs appearing on iTunes already. They won’t do much until the show airs and might not do much after. Too bad they hid most of the results when Idols were kicking butt on that chart. David Cook owned so much of the chart when they finally stopped suppressing the results at the end of the season.

Kendrick Lamar tops the sales and combined charts this week by a very comfortable margin (by more than 230K in both cases). This is Kendrick’s first number one album with his previous album ” m.A.A.d. city” debuting at number 2 with 241K. The labels continue to experiment with release strategies. “To Pimp a Butterfly” release wasn’t even mentioned until March 11th and it was given a March 23rd release date. Suddenly, it was available on iTunes on March 18th and slowly made its way to bricks and mortar stores. His last album received 7 Grammy nominations – let’s see if this album continues to gain him acclaim.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of debuts this week in the top 10. Aside from Kendrick, we have Modest Mouse, Marina and the Diamonds, Sleeping with Sirens, Mark Knopfler and AWOLNATION. That’s 6 out of 10 and that pushes a lot of our recent mainstays out of the top 10 in sales. Of course, the mainstays push their way back into the chart when combined download/streams are considered. Only Kendrik (at one), Modest Mouse (at four) and Marina and the Diamonds (at 10) manage to stay in the top 10 on the combined chart.

Empire continues its run of success by only dropping 19% in sales for its second week. Usually, the drop is in the 70-80% range these days (speaking of which, our sales leader last week drop 80%. Madonna ends up 16th on the sales chart). But for Kendrick’s sudden early release, Empire could have held the top of the combined chart for two weeks. Of course, having a big season closer probably helped with the sales. Idol’s Jennifer Hudson has a track on the album.

Others in the top 10 for sales were Taylor Swift at 7 (rising to 5 on the combine), Luke Bryan at 8 (14th on combined) and 50 Shades of Grey at 10th (moving up to 3rd on the combined with what looks to be the biggest TEAs&SEAs this week).

Kelly Clarkson is 21st on sales 24th on combined. X-Factor’s One Direction manages 49th on sales rising to 42nd on combined. Survivor’s Chase Rise manages 43 in sales, but falls out of the top 50 on combined. Idol’s Carrie Underwood suffers the same fate and is 45th on the sales chart. Rising onto the combined chart (but not on the sales) is X-Factor’s Fifth Harmony at 49th. Now 53, featuring One Direction, is 17th on sales and 26th on combined (it gets no TEAs/SEAs as they are credited to the original albums).

Sales Chart
LW TW Artist / Album Label Sales Index % Change

— 1 KENDRICK LAMAR TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY TDE/AFTERMATH/INTERSCOPE 318,988 —
2 2 EMPIRE CAST SOUNDTRACK, SEASON 1 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/COLUMBIA 86,513 -19%
— 3 MODEST MOUSE STRANGERS TO OURSELVES EPIC 69,257 —
— 4 MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS FROOT NEW ELEKTRA 37,956 —
— 5 SLEEPING WITH SIRENS MADNESS EPITAPH 35,911 —
— 6 MARK KNOPFLER TRACKER VERVE 34,806 —
4 7 TAYLOR SWIFT 1989 BIG MACHINE 34,341 -12%
3 8 LUKE BRYAN SPRING BREAK…CHECKIN’ OUT CAPITOL NASHVILLE 31,153 -63%
— 9 AWOLNATION RUN RED BULL 30,730 —
5 10 FIFTY SHADES OF GREY SOUNDTRACK REPUBLIC 28,527 -22%

10 17 NOW 53 VARIOUS ARTISTS NOW/LEGACY 18,836 -22%

15 19 MAROON 5 V 222/INTERSCOPE 16,788 -7%

9 21 KELLY CLARKSON PIECE BY PIECE RCA 15,510 -40%

42 43 CHASE RICE IGNITE THE NIGHT DACK JANIELS 4,932 -13%

47 45 CARRIE UNDERWOOD GREATEST HITS: DECADE #1 19/ARISTA NASHVILLE 4,498 -14%

45 48 MIRANDA LAMBERT PLATINUM RCA NASHVILLE 4,302 -19%
50 49 ONE DIRECTION FOUR SYCO/COLUMBIA 4,240 -8%
— 50 TOVE LO QUEEN OF THE CLOUDS REPUBLIC 4,089 %

Sales Plus Streaming Chart (sales+track equivalent albums+stream equivalent albums)
LW TW Artist / Album Label SPS Index % Change [TEAs/SEAS, Position Change]

— 1 KENDRICK LAMAR TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY TDE/AFTERMATH/INTERSCOPE 355,372 [36.4K, 0]
1 2 EMPIRE CAST SOUNDTRACK, SEASON 1 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/COLUMBIA 105,745 [19K, 0]
4 3 FIFTY SHADES OF GREY SOUNDTRACK REPUBLIC 73,639 [45K, +7]
— 4 MODEST MOUSE STRANGERS TO OURSELVES EPIC 72,809 [3.6K -1]
5 5 TAYLOR SWIFT 1989 BIG MACHINE 54,956 [20.6K, +2]
7 6 DRAKE IF YOU’RE READING THIS, IT’S TOO LATE YMCMB/REPUBLIC 51,751 [27K, +7]
8 7 ED SHEERAN X ATLANTIC 46,455 [20.5K, +5]
9 8 MAROON 5 V 222/INTERSCOPE 42,187 [25.5,+9]
6 9 SAM SMITH IN THE LONELY HOUR CAPITOL 39,153 [15K, +5]
— 10 MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS FROOT ATLANTIC 39,023 [1K, -6]

12 24 KELLY CLARKSON PIECE BY PIECE RCA 21,056 [5.5K, -3]

19 26 NOW 53 VARIOUS ARTISTS NOW/LEGACY 18,836 [0K, -9]

37 42 ONE DIRECTION FOUR SYCO/COLUMBIA 10,290 [6K, +8]

35 49 FIFTH HARMONY REFLECTION EPIC 9,642 [Not on Sales Chart]

25 50 IMAGINE DRAGONS NIGHT VISIONS KIDINAKORNER/INTERSCOPE 9,521

Sales: 1 16 MADONNA REBEL HEART INTERSCOPE 22,800 -80%
SPS: 2 19 MADONNA REBEL HEART INTERSCOPE 24,761 [2K, -3]

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Kirsten has had a long love affair with numbers. Marry that with her love of cheese and the Numbers Threads at MJs were born.