Blake Lewis’s debut album Audio Day Dream debuts at #10 this week on the Billboard 200. His first week sales come in at 98K.
For some compare and contrast, check out the first week debuts of former Idol second place finishers:
1. Clay - “Measure of a Man”(Oct 14, 2003) - 612,859 (# 1)
2. Bo - “The Real Thing” (December 13, 2005) - 226,976 (# 4)
3. Katharine - “Katharine McPhee” (January 30, 2007) - 115,761 (# 2)
4. Justin - “Justin Guarini” (June 10, 2003) - 57,000 (# 20)
5. Diana - “Blue Skies” (December 7, 2004) - 47,000 ( # 52)
And just for fun, here’s a chart of all the Idol’s first week album debut stats.
Thanks to Nevada and Kirsten for compiling the numbers…
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someone here or elsewhere made a comment about the record company not putting $$ behind blake’s album….but I don’t believe rec comp’s are putting too much money behind anybody’s album these days….they’ve lost a ton of money promo’ing Britney, which failed; JLO reportedly was given $300,000 for her Do It Well Video and that failed….so we cannot blame record companies for being stingy with new artists….they’re being stingy with all artists, even established one…I think there’s too much product out there if that’s possible….and of course, albums have to compete with other media forms for the audience attention.
The music video certainly looks cheap, but Blake’s album has been adequately advertised on iTunes , I think.
…WOW I didn’t realize the magnitude of Clay’s feat until now. And the album wasn’t even that good (compared with his Christmas and cover albums). I heard rumors about a new album sometime late next year? Is that confirmed?
That could be Blake’s fault… it was his concept, as was the fugly album cover. Perhaps he should stick to the music part.
RE: Clay. I don’t think anyone will ever touch his first week sales coming off Idol, for a variety of reasons.
The BB 200 numbers leaked. Here are the official SS entry for Blake:
1 ARI 10 LEWIS*BLAKE AUDIO DAY DREAM 97,500 999 189 97,691
1 = Number of weeks on the chart
ARI = Label
10 = Current Position on chart
97,500 = Total sales this week (I saw this number elsewhere and thought it was rounded…LOL)
999 = Percentage increase over last week (999 basically means an overflow because the column only has three digits. The actual percentage was 51487%)
189 = Number of units sold last week
97,691 = Total number of units sold (so there were a total of 191 steet violations. 189 last week and 2 two weeks ago)
Here are the rest of this week’s Idols:
7 ARI 7 9 7 UNDERWOOD*CARRIE CARNIVAL RIDE 106,801 20 89,313 1,269,151
3 JIVE 10 18 24 SPARKS*JORDIN JORDIN SPARKS 52,482 1 51,804 222,473
55 RCA 33 37 32 DAUGHTRY DAUGHTRY 42,986 31 32,926 3,408,140
108 ARI 68 62 60 UNDERWOOD*CARRIE SOME HEARTS 23,082 30 17,746 6,087,194
1 HKRY 168 YAMIN*ELLIOTT ELLIOTT YAMIN 7,421 55 4,773 457,828
4 BNA 187 194 PICKLER*KELLIE SMALL TOWN GIRL 6,359 20 5,305 670,992
Note: At 108 weeks on the chart, Carrie is currently the second longest on the charts (Nickelback at 114 weeks is the longest)
Woo Hoo! The countdown to 5 million is on!
97,691 down, 4,902,309 to go!
Ooops…I forgot one:
3 HKRY 170 79 190 YAMIN*ELLIOT SOUNDS OF THE SEASON 6,567 -51 13,313 29,110
Yay Kirsten
thank you
Nice. Elliott has TWO albums that are charting. And to think, this time last year, he didn’t even have a record deal.
And Blake managed to finish ahead of….um, Justin Guarini and Diana DeGarmo. Good for him, I think.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the one that compiled the numbers for the Idol Debuts. I blogged about it right after the the Finale. I had all that information because I keep stats being a 5-season Idol fan. I do take issue with including a pre-Idol Constantine album on the list since it isn’t an Idol debut.
http://therewasaman.blogspot.com/2007/05/american-idol-runner-ups.html
Nice job on adding all the release dates though.
Information sure makes it’s way round the net, doesn’t it? Sorry about that. I’ll add your name. Thanks for compiling the list.
You are probably right about Constantine’s album…it’s not technically an “Idol Debut” It is kind of interesting to contrast it with his actual debut, though.
You did an excellent job of compiling the statistics. I’m always impressed by my fellow numbers fans, but you were not the source of this particular data. I have never read your blog before and did not use it as a source for the updates that I made to Nevada’s list.
I used as my source the list published on December 5th by MJ herself where she says that Nevada posted on this site over a year ago:
http://mjsbigblog.com/?p=3385&cp=1#comments
You’ll note that recent releases such as Bucky and Elliott are missing (and other posters help to fill in the details). So, since Nevada’s list comes from a year ago and is different than yours, it’s not likely that this is uncredited copying.
Nevada has long been a member of the American Idol on-line community and is probably the root source for much of the Idol related statistics. If you are ever fortunate enough to encounter her, you will find that she has the most amazing archive of data (and that includes for non-Idol artists…just try asking her how many units Kelly moved in December of 2004 or what Nickelback’s last album debuted at). She is also extremely witty.
I’m not sure what your sources for the data were, but it is entirely possible for two people to compile the same set of statistics since, fundamently, the stats are the stats.
I’m sorry that you feel that your work was unfairly copied without attribution, so I just wanted to ensure you that this was not the case.
Well said Kirsten.
The typos alone show it wasn’t a copy and paste job.
So can I claim credit for every news article I post???
Kirsten:
Other posters = me! lol :)
One thing I was trying to do (and never followed up on) was to locate the exact data for Diana and Kelly, since both of their totals are rounded.
ETA: I found Diana’s already. lol
Her exact first week total: 46,795.
And I don’t know how relevant this is, but I also compiled a list of 2nd week totals (I did this last year) Feel free to add to it:
1. (-29%) Bo Bice - “The Real Thing” (Week #1: 226,976 | Week #2: 162,600)
2. (-34%) William Hung - “Inspiration” (Week #1: 37,675 | Week #2: 24,869)
3. (-36%) Diana DeGarmo - “Blue Skies” (Week #1: 46,795 | Week #2: 29,831)
4. (-40.60%) Carrie Underwood - “Some Hearts” (Week #1: 314,549 | Week #2: 186,836)
5. (-41.08%) Ruben Studdard - “Soulful” (Week #1: 416,569 | Week #2: 245,443)
6. (-46%) Mario Vazquez - “Mario Vazquez” (Week #1: 11,812 | Week #2: 6,362)
7. (-49%) Chris Daughtry - “Daughtry” (Week #1: 303,677 | Week #2: 155,510)
8. (-51%) Kellie Pickler - “Small Town Girl” (Week #1: 79,133 | Week #2: 38,716)
9. (-54%) Tamyra Gray - “The Dreamer” (Week #1: 39,091 | Week #2: 18,143)
10. (-55%) Kelly Clarkson - “Thankful” (Week #1: 297,000 | Week #2: 134,000)
11. (-62%) Fantasia Barrino - “Free Yourself” (Week #1: 239,589 | Week #2: 90,089)
12. (-63%) Clay Aiken - “Measure of a Man” (Week #1 612,845 | Week #2: 224,854)
Thanks a lot, Tony! Wow!! Interesting numbers indeed..
Bo had a good first week and minimal drop in second week. All things looked good. I don’t understand what happened after that..
No radio play? He sure got a solid fanbase back then. Sad to see his second album opening with a 10K.. 
The dates to some of those releases would also help to put some of those into context. Bo, for instance, had his release right around Christmas so his 2nd week total was heavily cushioned by Christmas sales.
OK. I went back and took a really good look at what I had. The original list was compiled last December by Nevada. I’m not sure where she got those particular numbers. She posted a bunch of other stats that day she attributes to some articles from Idol Chatter.
And honestly, I forgot what I posted on the 5th. So, confusion all around.
I just took a look at my web stats…
My ears are burning…burning…
Oh the drama, the drama…LOL.
Thanks Tony, for the extra numbers.
And thanks to all you number crunchers, including Nevada, who’s welcome to drop by and set me straight at any time…
That makes sense. I hope Jordin and Blake get some big Xmas sales cushion. Things could get really ugly next month. Suddenly McPhee’s numbers don’t look so bad now..
I agree. That’s why I compiled a list of the dates. That context makes a difference when comparing the numbers. Sales should trend up for this week and the next.
BTW The source for the dates are Amazon. They list the release date for each album. Plus, it’s always interesting to see who gets linked to whom (some Idols are dead ends while others daisy chain together nicely)
The dates definitely add context. Contrasting the list to current stats is also pretty interesting.
Wow - you guys never cease to amaze. I’m constantly impressed by how people can post numbers and facts in no time flat. If I want to comment on them I need to do it now because once tomorrow gets here, I won’t remember any of it! I’ll just blame it on the fact that I have young kids… yeah that’s it.
If you like numbers, go check out the headlines thread. I posted many numbers dealing with the Billboard Year End charts. Sum up, Daughtry has the album of the year (Billboard year). Elliott has the #3 (ironic) Independent album of the year.
#3… hee hee hee
Blake’s numbers weren’t great but not bad after Jordin also had low numbers. I hope he gets some traction like Kellie & Elliott did. It makes me wonder about future Idols and what kind of numbers we can expect.
He said he is aiming for a spring release.