This is the week that every Idol numbers watcher waits for. It’s time to sift through the tea leaves. Time to make dire and optimistic predictions. Time to look forward and backward. Time to discuss what the coronation single sales mean.
For the first 5 seasons of Idol, an Idol coronation song went to number one on the Hot 100 each season. It hasn’t happened since and it’s not going to happen this year. In fact, since S5, only one coronation single has even managed to get into the top 10 of the Hot 100. Critics will say that this is proof that Idol has jumped the shark. People are no longer watching the show or interested in the artists it produces. While certainly the aging of the show is not helping matters, the story is actually a lot more complex than that. Read why it’s unlikely an Idol coronation single will ever top the Hot 100 again after the jump:
1. Timing – In seasons 1-5, Idol released coronation songs on physical CDs. These commercial singles would contain the coronation song coupled with 1 or 2 other songs. Because it takes a while to manufacture and ship a CD, these would typically only be available 2 or more weeks after the finale. While this would initially seem to handicap sales because people couldn’t immediately download them off of iTunes in some post-win euphoria, it may have actually helped sales. People could pre-order them from Amazon, and they did in great numbers. Those two weeks of sales would be combined together and would be considered to have sold on the first Tuesday of the release week. Then, the coronation single would have 6 days to sell. Now, the singles go on sale late Wednesday night and only have 4 days to sell. The first days of sales are always the best, but sales the following days are still significant.
2. Choice – In seasons 1-5, fans didn’t have a lot of choice. You could either buy the coronation single or the compilation CD/track (or both). Starting in S6, fans could buy a seasons worth of songs from their favourites. Coronation songs are often such dreck, that many fans chose not to buy the coronation song. In fact, many will declare that they will not buy the coronation song to prove to the Idol PTB that this is not the sort of song they want their Idol to put on their album. Certainly, people can and do download more than one song from their favourite Idol, but that doesn’t mean they will pick the coronation single as their souvenir where in years past, that was pretty much their only option.
3. Rise of iTunes – iTunes was launched on April 28th, 2003. That first year, they were thrilled to sell 70 million downloads. Last year, they sold 1.159 billion. It took iTunes until Feb 23rd, 2006 to sell it’s first billion downloads worldwide. Now, it sells more than that a year in the US alone. The rise of iTunes has been practically exponential. It didn’t even exist that first season of Idol. An artist could get certified Gold/Platinum with a mere 100K/200K in digital downloads until August of 2006 (Idols 5th season). Now, the top selling single each week regularly sells more than 200K. “Right Round” moved 636K units in a single week. When Idol first started, very few singles were sold other than coronation singles. People weren’t interested in buying CD singles with only a couple of songs on them and they weren’t often carried by retailers. People bought albums which were a good deal at a comparative price and Idol owned the singles game. Fans wanted their souvenirs. Now, the competition for single sales is much fiercer.
4. Hot 100 Formula Changes – Sales of digital downloads didn’t even factor into the Hot 100 calculation until February of 2005 (S4). But, that wasn’t the biggest change effecting coronation song Hot 100 rankings. That changed came in August of 2007 (just after S6). Because so few singles were selling in the first half of the decade, it was considered a minor miracle if you sold any at all. Thus, each single sale was worth double the corresponding airplay numbers. To generalize, one would get 2 points for every 1K in sales and 1 point for every 1 million in audience impressions. Due to the rise in iTunes, by the summer of 2007, sales were starting to overly bias the Hot 100. So, to re-balance it, Billboard changed the formula to 1 point for each 1K in sales and 1 point for each million AI (and some points for streaming). Because coronation songs rely mainly on sales, they needed to double their sales to keep up. Because top songs on radio can are often top sellers on iTunes, an Idol would probably have to move 400K or more to top the Hot 100 these days. And that’s tough to do when you are only on sale for 4 days. It could happen, but it’s very tough to do.
Sure, the age of the show is effecting sales. Fewer people watching means fewer potential customers. Idol loonies who may have rushed out to buy their souvenirs in the early seasons have now been sobered by a row of CD singles gathering dust on their shelf and drecky coronation singles that they skip over on their iPod. The bloom is off the rose. Couple that with choice and people realizing TPTB cannot be influenced by the sales numbers of coronation singles and there is even less reason to buy coronation singles like they were cans of food and the end of the world was nigh. But even if coronation singles were as popular as they were in Season 1, they still wouldn’t be topping the Hot 100 these days (well, maybe Clay would have).
Please post the numbers as you find them. Thanks!
For reference, here are the sales numbers for coronation singles (since comparisons will happen):
1 Clay Aiken “This is the Night”: 393, 000 – BB1
2 Ruben Studdard “Flying Without Wings” : 286, 000 – BB2
3 David Cook “Time of My Life”: 236, 024 – BB3
4 Kelly Clarkson “A Moment Like This” : 236, 000 – BB1
5 Taylor Hicks “Do I Make You Proud”: 228, 418 (CS: 190, 619) – BB1
6 Carrie Underwood “Inside Your Heaven”: 170, 528 (CS: 131, 504) – BB1
7 Fantasia “I Believe”: 142, 141 – BB1
8 Kris Allen “Nou Boundaries”: 134, 458 – BB11
9 Bo Bice: “Inside Your Heaven”: 121, 423 (CS: 108, 158) – BB2
10 Lee DeWyze “Beautiful Day”: 95K
11 Katharine McPhee “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”: 74, 965 (CS: 47, 394) – BB12
12 Jordin Sparks “This is My Now” 74, 303 – BB15
13 Diana Degarmo “Dreams”: 65, 000 – BB 14
14 Blake Lewis “You Give Love a Bad Name” 70, 133 * – BB18
15 Crystal Bowersox “Up to the Mountain” 49K
16 Adam Lambert “No Boundaries”: 35, 984 – BB 72
* Some may not consider this the coronation song.
Justin and Archie did not get coronation songs released.
Clay and Ruben released their singles the same week.
Kat’s SOTR was released as a double A-Side with her coronation single and since SOTR outsold it on iTunes, sales of the commercial single were all attributed to SOTR
CS = Commercial Single
Some preliminary numbers:
From Idol Chatter:
Season 9’s Idol champ and runner-up sold about 400, 000 downloads last week, with nine of their tracks ranked among the week’s 200 most popular downloads, according to preliminary data from Nielsen SoundScan.
“It’s about half the sales total of Kris Allen and Adam Lambert following the finale last year, ” says Nielsen Entertainment vice president Chris Muratore. Top finishers Allen and Lambert placed 25 songs in the top 200 during the 2009 finale week
Download Numbers
12 Lee DeWyze “Beautiful Day” 95K (NEW) Total: 95K
Carrie Underwood “Undo It” 69K (+165%) Total: 220K
20 Lee DeWyze “Hallelujah” 63K (NEW) Total: 63K
32 Crystal Bowersox “Up to the Mountain” 49K (NEW) Total: 49K
38 Lee DeWyze & Crystal Bowersox “Falling Slowly” 44K (NEW) Total: 44K
Adam Lambert “Whataya Want From Me” 31K (-12%) Total: 1.251M
61 Lee DeWyze “The Boxer” 26K (NEW) Total: 26K
Lee DeWyze “Everybody Hurts” 22K (NEW) Total: 22K
Kris Allen “Live Like We’re Dying” 16K (-11%) Total: 1.443M
Crystal Bowersox “Black Velvet” 15K (NEW) Total: 15K
Crystal Bowersox “Me and Bobby McGee” 14K (NEW) Total: 14K
Lee DeWyze “Simple Man” 14K (NEW) Total: 14K
Daughtry “Life After You” 12K (-6%) Total: 726K
Carrie Underwood “Cowboy Casanova” 10K (+21%) Total: 1.359M
Carrie Underwood “Temporary Home” 10K (-3%) Total: 487K
Carrie Underwood “Before He Cheats” 5K (+22%) Total: 3.009M
Carrie Underwood “All-American Girl” 4K (+15%) Total: 1.209M
Kellie Pickler “Best Days of Your Life” 3K (-1%) Total: 1.027M
Totals:
Lee: 220K
Crystal: 78K
Duet: 44K
Combined: 342K
Albums
15 Various “Now That’s What I Call Music! 33” 20K (-8%) Total: 521K percent, 521, 000 total)
24 Carrie Underwood “Play On” 16K (+36%) Total: 1.56M (Digital 2K -9% Total: 176K)
72 Adam Lambert “For Your Entertainment” 6K (6%) Total: 652K (Digital: 86K)
77 Daughtry “Leave This Town” 6K (-26%) Total: 96K (Digital 1K -39% Total: 187K)
110 Various “American Idol – Season 9” 5K (-19%) Total:
139 Various “Now That’s What I Call Music! 32” 4K (-3%) Total: 904K percent, 904, 000)
156 Various “WOW Hits 2010” 3K (-12%) Total: 374K
159 We Are the Fallen “Tear the World Down” 3K (-1%) Total: 22K (Digital 1K -78% Total: 6K)
185 Various “Radio Disney Jams 12″ (feat. Daughtry’ No Surprise and Jordin Sparks’ Battlefield” ) 3K (-10%) Total: 56K
Danny Gokey “My Best Days” 3K (-10%) Total: 158K
Crystal Bowersox “Season 9 Favorite Performances” 2K (NEW) Total: 2K
Lee DeWyze “Slumberland” 2K (+30%) Total: 7K (Digital Total: 3K)
Lee DeWyze “Season 9 Favorite Performances” 2K (NEW) Total: 2K
Various “Now That’s What I Call Country, Vol. 2” 2K (+1%) Total: 291K
Carrie Underwood “Some Hearts” 2K (+16%) Total: 6.983M
Kris Allen “Kris Allen” 2K (+46%) Total: 304K
Carrie Underwood “Carnival Ride” 2K (+13%) Total: 3.091M
Mandisa “Freedom” 1K (-53%) Total: 110K
Kellie Pickler “Kellie Pickler” 1K (+1%) Total: 410K
Idol-related
111 Poison “Best of Poison” 5K (+117%) Total: 777K
Bee Gees “Ultimate Bee Gees” 3K (+20%) Total: 94K
