Billboard magazine debunks the Kelly Clarkson/Ron Paul sales bump. The magazine asserts that Kelly’s endorsement of the controversial republican presidential candidate did little to help the sales of her “Stronger” album, and in fact, her sales dropped when compared with the previous week:
In the week that ended on Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, “Stronger” sold 40% fewer copies than it did the previous week (25,000, as opposed to 41,000 in the week before Christmas). And while it moved from No. 39 to No. 17 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, its upward momentum this week was caused by it having a less-steep decline in sales as compared to the rest of the titles on the chart (the overall album market was down 49% in the week after Christmas). Its total sales stand at 451,000 after 10 weeks.
Its smaller drop, as compared to the rest of the market, is owed to its gain in download sales — it saw a 232% increase in the digital space (selling 14,000 downloads for the week). But Ron Paul probably didn’t have much to do with that rally, either. The bulk of digital album sales — for Clarkson or any other artist — come from the Apple iTunes Store. And last week, coincidentally enough, iTunes heavily promoted both her sale-priced “Stronger” album and her new exclusive “iTunes Session” EP (released Dec. 27) on the front page of the store.
In other words, it wasn’t Clarkson’s political preferences that pushed digital sales of “Stronger” — its $7.99 sale price (which was matched by AmazonMP3) and iTunes’ advertising were the real reasons behind the gain. Those spikes were usually cited as evidence of the sales gain in the “Ron Paul Sales Bump” articles.
Billboard also cites recent inroads Kelly’s second single “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” has been making on top 40 radio and the continued success of “Mr. Know It All” as factors that could be fueling the album’s digital increase.
So there you go. No 600% increase in sales for you to brag about, Ron Paul. Many of the news sites got it wrong. There was no way to know before yesterday when the Nielsen Sound Scan numbers came out, whether “Stronger” had an overall sales increase.
What did change– Kelly moved up the Amazon “Movers and Shakers” chart. And it looks like that had more to do with Amazon’s promo, rather than Kelly’s endorsement.
So yeah, the effect of Kelly’s political endorsement on her sales looks to be greatly exaggerated.
