http://mjsbigblog.com/idol-sales-news-week...8.htm#more-5061

The # 23 in parenthesis is last week's chart ranking. The 2nd figure in bold is this week's sales #'s and the 3rd is the decrease in sales from last week to this week.

Pam - thanks for the update.

Your welcome

Where do you guys think it will stop?
Has the tour really made an impact on sales last year?

I am pleasantly surprised that TOML sales are 557,852. I can't wait to see the sales on one of his own songs.

Considering this is the winning song, it's not too shabby.

Yup that is a decent number. I wonder if the tour will give him an added bump?

hopefully...and with all the tv appearances and radio airplay.. it won't be soon till it goes platinum

That is an amazing amount for a coronation song in one month.

Hi, can someone please answer this question for me --

If a singer's fan puts a song on the internet for free download (even with the good intention of sharing with fellow fans), wouldn't that hurt the song's sales???

In my search for David's pre-Idol music, I often come across free copy of TOML. Glad I already paid for my copy via iTunes, else I probably wouldn't be able to resist.

I wish that when David's new album's out, people will not put complete songs on the Internet for free download. I want David to have a smashing sales record. It doesn't matter to us true fans of course, but it's how the rest of the world measure a singer's success.

Wait, theoretically, if an album doesn't sell very well, there might not be a next one, and the singer may end up working in a gas station in five years... So eventually everyone's affected...

Piracy exists. There is no way to absolutely get rid of it. Remember, back before ITunes, the industry predicted that it would never work because the public could get music for free on the Internet. Why would they choose to BUY music when they could get it for free? And why would they buy studio versions of the songs of any Idol contestant when they could get that for free from YouTube?

Yet David Cook sold almost 1 million copies of his music in a week. Combined with the other Idol contestants 1.5 million copies were sold during one week. Of course, established artists outdo that (or come close) regularly despite piracy being available so if the demand is there a few MP3s floating around in CyberSpace will not kill him. The success of the album depends on a lot of factors but chances are it will do very well.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm surprised you would even ask such a question. If the fans are doing nothing but downloading the song for free, of course it would hurt the sales of the artist in question, however, as far as the downloading issue goes, some people have trouble downloading from i-Tunes for whatever reason and end up resorting to downloading it for free or using other sites that are mp3 compatible with their PC's. Of course we all know if an album doesn't sell well what could happen. We know that winning doesn't guarantee success as we've seen with Reuben and Taylor. As far as talent goes, they had it, but if you look at what is popular with today's mainstream radio, they were both complete mismatches and they both didn't have the right "look" as it were. As for Jordin, she had the right look and the right sound and has been a success for her label Jive and is considered a success for the Idol franchise as well. I have to disagree with you that just because someone doesn't sell well that they will end up working in gas stations because that just isn't true. Right now is honestly not the time to panic because the first single from the CD hasn't even been released yet. If the first single from a CD does well, then for the most part it might give you somewhat of an ideal of the future success of the CD. The rule of thumb is if the first single does well, then it sort of paints a picture of how some of the other singles may do. Usually a record label will test samples of songs with the radio listening public through callouts. Mediabase does such callou tht surveys. If the single tests well, then it most cases, it usually charts well. We were told that TOML tested very high with the radio listening public with the callouts.

This isn't just David Cook's problem. However, Radiohead let fans buy their album online for as much as they wanted and it still sold when it was released to stores. A lot of people use ITunes and other DL services. People are willing to pay for the music. I don't think this is at all behind why the sales are down for TOML.



Ruben had Claymania to deal with as well. And Taylor is a huge enigma to me. It was just never, ever going to work with him. I do think there's a good reason Fuller has such high hopes for David and why the label is putting such a push behind the single so that it's performing on the level of the two superstar winners. They want him to be that big one that comes around every 3 years and proves that winning Idol means something.



Cook made the gas station comment because he's a humble guy and he doesn't need to put any more pressure on himself than he has already. But Ruben and Taylor are not working at gas stations tomorrow. Any guy that can bring in 50 groomsmen for his wedding is not short on dough. Taylor is doing well on Broadway apparently. Neither of them were right for the show in the end but they're better off for having been on it.

As far as the sales go, TOML is nearly at 600K after 5 weeks and that isn't bad. Payola is no doubt responsible for a good deal of the airplay but the truth is that there's been much less of a drop as the song's been out there and at the end of the day one has to face the truth. This is a cheesy coronation song. Its appeal in itself to audiences was never going to be that high. If Carrie is at 700K years after the fact and her song got airplay and took months to get to that level David is doing pretty well. There are also lots of songs being played more frequently in these formats than his is that aren't even a blip on ITunes so radio in itself is a whole other beast.