Ken Warwick Disingenuously Covers His Tracks
Ken Warwick and his fellow American Idol producers must have been crapping themselves after Apple inadvertently allowed the iTunes popularity bars for Idol downloads to be visible last Thursday.
When asked about the glitch last night, he told FOX LA: “There are no download numbers from iTunes…it’s not true…there were no numbers released.”
Well, that’s not a lie, exactly
The iTunes folks don’t release numbers on their download site for any of their artists. What they feature are popularity bars, allowing iTunes users to sort lists of songs according to their popularity.
Normally, the popularity bars are hidden for Idol tunes. Last Thursday, for a brief time, they were visible.
And I’ve got witnesses, people.
- Blog reader Primeminister was the first to notice the glitch HERE.
- Within a matter of minutes, the kids at Idol Forums were creating their own charts HERE.
- Within about 90 minutes of the glitch being discovered, I snagged my own chart right HERE.
- And Apple has screwed up before. Check out the Wildcard episode leak right HERE.
Ask Rickey from Rickey.org. He was making charts based on the iTunes popularity bars through most of last season until the glitch was fixed. In hindsight, the charts proved to be pretty accurate snapshots of where the contestants stood in the competition.
The charts are easy to create when it’s possible-just dump the songs you want to compare into a playlist, and then create an iMix out of the collection.
So Ken? Nice try at covering your ass, but unfortunately you score an EPIC FAIL. Watch him duck and cover here:
After the JUMP, check out the judges reaction to last night’s surprising bottom 3. Simon Cowell admits he’s wrong. Oh My.
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80 Responses to “Ken Warwick Disingenuously Covers His Tracks”
Nope, and that is a BIG warning. 40 million votes/26 million viewers doesn’t necessarily turn into a long, lucrative career. Personally, I’d rather have the people who sell than the reverse. I also find it interesting, how the top sellers (Adam/Kris) also seem to have the largest online following…….
Anyways, it doesn’t make the show look good when the losers outdo the winners….. besides, the is about finding stars who can hang with the best of them.
I don’t understand the big deal about the Itunes release. For one thing, it was only for a day, and for another, they should care who sells!! lol Obviously, Adam was starting to get bigger than the show, and Kris was really creeping up there so we had to bring them both down a peg or two.
Oh well. the truth will be after the show. Not who wins. As we know, the winner doesn ‘t always do well. Actually, outside of Carrie and Kelly, the winner hardly does well. And Please don’t bring up Jordin Sparks…that single with Chris Brown saved her from a similar fate of Fantasia/’Ruben/Taylor. I don’t know much about David C. I missed last season so I can’t say anything about him.
Not to beat a dead horse….I’m wondering if our own perspectives cloud the reality of an AI’s contestant’s sales after idol. Who are we comparing the idols to: each other, the “average” singer who has a mainstream album, the super famous who have taken years to build up a fanbase, the working musician who is totally OK and blissfully happy that they have a “career” in music. I think that sometimes the weights and measures for Idol success is completely whacky. As far as I can tell each Idol champion is still in the business, is still making money doing what they love, are still very young. Maybe they haven’t had all of the awards or accolades that are available but who really has. They have found their niche and are comfortable. Kudos to them!
Album Sales (Soundscan):
DAVID COOK (David Cook) 1,106,166
DAVID ARCHULETA (David Archuleta) 689,798
First Singles Sales* (approximate numbers only):
DAVID COOK (Light On) ~900,000
DAVID ARCHULETA (Crush) ~1,700,000
Second Singles Sales (approximate numbers only)
DAVID COOK (Come Back To Me) ~99,000
DAVID ARCHULETA (A Little Too Not Over You) ~160,000 **
This is interesting. So David C. is selling more albums, but his singles arenà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t doing as well as David A. Very, very interesting.
Er, that would only be if you left out DC’s other single, Time of My Life, currently at 1.1 million.
Yeah, there’s some reasons why the winner’s single sells for different reasons, but it seems kind of odd to say, “hey Archie sells more singles– as long as you subtract a million from Cook ’cause he had a head start.”
theyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ve bitchslapped DI, and now ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s the bloggers turns.
It does seem like they really didn’t like how DialIdol was a) diminishing suspense and thus viewership for results night and b) giving fans what they at least believed was data they could use to check against producer manipulations. So they found a way to make it less reliable.
Like the Boston Globe article said about MJs, they’re probably both enthralled and frustrated with MJs, Idolatry, TWOP and the rest because of the “don’t look at the man behind the curtain” factor.
It’s not so much that they think any specific secret conspiracy is revealed is that explaining to the public how the tricks are done feels like a threat to their money-making magic show.
Like the Susan Boyle thing–if you’d seen the Brit show do the EXACT SAME THING with Paul Potts, and endless useless child singers, it wasn’t nearly as moving.
Concealing iTunes data is probably less about protecting a specific contestant and depimping others just this year as the fact that viewers armed with a better understanding of actual music sales would be far more skeptical about the show.
I say that even though my first instinct, like the fandiot I am, was “they just want to hide how well Kris is doing!”
But why pimping Danny when his music didnot sold very well? If he got into the finale or even won the title, what will the producer achieved? A winner without many much sales when his album come out later this year?
Why not pimp Adam and Kris to the finale cause they sold a lot and will probably be more sucess after idol end. . That will promote AI more like Kelly, Carrie and Daughtry done so far.