The official Soundscan numbers are in for the first week sales of Kris Allen’s self-titled, post-Idol debut.
Kris Allen bows on the Billboard 200 at #11, moving 80K units. Unfortunately, the final number is lower than the HDD prediction of 85K
Kris replaces Jordin Sparks as the Idol with the lowest 1st week sales and Billboard 200 chart debut.
Here’s how it shakes out for all the Idols:
1. Ruben Studdard – Soulful – 416,569 – 10/14/03 #1
2. Carrie Underwood – Some Hearts – 314,549 – 11/15/05 – #2
3. Taylor Hicks – Taylor Hicks – 298,199 – 12/12/06 – #2
4. Kelly Clarkson – Thankful – 297,000 – 4/15/03 – #1
5. David Cook – David Cook – 279,578 – 11/1808 – #3
6. Fantasia – Free Yourself – 239,389 – 11/23/04 – #8
7. Jordin Sparks – Jordin Sparks – 119,119 – 11/20/07 – #10
8. Kris Allen – Kris Allen – 80K (rounded) – 11/17/09 – #11
Looking at iTunes for all the artists I listed above, all of them have more than one album. So, basing it on that, I would say that Kris is the only new artist among them.
One thing I’d like to add that I really don’t think most can argue with, is that the media seems to always ask Kris about Adam, but never asks Adam about Kris. In every situation where Kris has been asked about Adam he has handled it with grace, every single time. There are not many people you can say this about.
Dude I’m getting really sleepy, so let me just sum up my feelings this way: Susan Boyle = Adam Lambert. Both got a shitload of sales because people think both have amazing voices, yes. Was there promotion for their current albums? No, or at least, minute compared to say, Kris’s promotion of his album prior to its release. At the same time both have generated the most hype. SuBo has been on tabloids, she’s “the crazy cat lady” with the amazing voice, she’s awkward and quirky and became a media darling; videos and articles were written all about her, etc etc. What are the chances people bought her stuff without ever having heard previews of her album? High. They probably read about her on the Huffington Post, probably saw her audition video replayed again and again on CNN or some shit. If someone like Kris is inserted into this equation and he doesn’t receive nearly the same amount of coverage as SuBo, well obviously he’s not going to sell as much as she will because people won’t even know who he is. I didn’t even know Susan Boyle lost Britain’s Got Talent; didn’t even know who won the actual thing. I had to google it. I know OF Susan Boyle because of hype, reputation, etc. I don’t necessarily know what her album sounds like, but it sounds pretty good from what I’ve heard. Therefore let me order it.
That’s it. I’m off to bed. Lovely chatting with you folk.
I think Kris is doing very good in the charts, remembert this year the economy is bad.
Maybe he’s not the most popular American Idol winner (Carrie, Kelly etc) but by now, he is doing fine.
If anybody is looking to still buy Carrie’s album, amazon.com has Play On for $6.99 right now. Some Hearts is also for $6.99 and there’s a deal that if you buy both of them, it’s only $11.99! Pretty good deal for two CD’s…
O.M.G! Mentioning itunes suddenly made me very curious about something. I went to check out the itunes banner on Pop for Kris and it doesn’t even mention American Idol! Can someone tell me if it did last week? I don’t think it has changed. BUT, Adam’s does! It says American Idol favorite! WOW! I’m actually feeling a little speechless about what I think about this. On one hand I really don’t care because I think this proves that Jive is selling him as a new artist as opposed to the AI winner. On the other hand I think it also proves that TPTB want to rewrite AI history. Am I missing something? Am I wrong?
LOL. Yeah, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one.
The type of person who would buy the Hairy Angel is not the sort of music buyer RCA/19 is going after with respect to Adam. And conversely the type of person who is buying Adam’s album is probably not buying Subo’s too (well maybe for their gramma or cat-loving aunt). I tend to think what works on the Subo crowd (buyers of a bunch of covers) is not necessarily going to work on the Adam crowd (buyers of contemporary original music); I suspect one group is a little more into the music. Might be why Adam wasn’t on QVC pitching his album … and never will be.
Hope you get some rest.
I hope that you are being facetious, because if you honestly believe that the only difference between Adam and Kris as singers and musicians is that Adam can sing ‘higher’ and dress more ’stylishly’ then you aren’t supporting your arguments with valid points. These two guys are entirely different artists. Enjoyment of music is subjective, and if reviewers and members of the media tended to enjoy Adam’s singing more than Kris, then it’s their opinion.
Pastor Pruitt of Danny’s church was instructing his parishioners publicly and on Twitter to vote for Kris because it was necessary to have a ‘believer’ win AI. It’s not unreasonable to assume that similar exhortations happened elsewhere among the fundamentalist community. Did some gays vote for Adam simply because he was gay? I’m sure that some did, but in reviewing gay Internet sites, it was very apparent that there was far more support for Kris among the LGBT community than Adam, therefore, likely net more votes for Kris from the gay community.
I agree that Kris won for a variety of factors: anti-Adam/gay vote, people who just like to regard AI as a ‘game show’ but have no intention of supporting anyone after the show is over, getting votes from supporters of other contestants as they were voted off because they may have liked Kris second/third/etc. best, massive power voting from residents of Arkansas, as well as people who liked Kris best of everyone. But we are talking about the reasons why someone with over 50 million votes (probably one of the largest vote totals ever) has sold the fewest CDs of any AI winner ever, and ultimately it boils down to only a very small proportion of the people who voted liking Kris’ singing enough to pay for his music after AI was over. Since all of the other factors I listed above apply to previous seasons of AI, the only factor specific to this year is the anti-Adam/gay vote, for which there is documented evidence. The AI viewing demographic is disproportionately represented by middle America and assuming that more of these viewers are conservative leaning and more religious is not unreasonable, so it is also not unreasonable (given the evidence) that the anti-gay vote was very impactful in the outcome of this year’s contest.
Is this said in an ironic sense? Sorry, I admit I’m lazy and skip most very long posts. You can’t seriously mean Adam on Oprah, AMA, The Letterman Show, The Early Show got less promo than Kris. Cause that just ain’t true.
Susan Boyle had QVC and the Today show. Plus lots of well placed ads.
So she probably had less promo than Adam. I’d agree with that.
Wait I just remembered, Kris did get to present at the AMA and had the gig at the football parking lot. So yeah, he did have way more promo than Adam.
Actually, I don’t think Kris would have outsold Adam even with the promo but let’s be fair about who got the lion’s share. It’s kind of obvious.
Well, I think we’ll have to check the Idol banner behind the contestants when the Season 9 promos start running. If we spot Adam’s big mug there front and center instead of Kris’s, then I think you might have a point!
(Seriously, not gonna happen.)
Okay, I may have overacted a bit about rewriting history, lol, but I think this does say something about the selling aspect. *shrugs*
I meant two things (didn’t exactly say them, I see, but I meant them): One — that they might as well keep trying to pitch Kris to the Top 40 market, because at least in the below-top-10 level there *is* poppy soft rock/singer-songwriter stuff so there doesn’t seem to be a reason why he can’t have moderate success there (not Britney level — because I don’t see soft rock/singer songwriters in the top 10 for the most part.)
And, two — if the Top 40 pitch doesn’t work (and while i agree with you that his music certainly should have some shot there, I also don’t think it’s a sure thing), it won’t in the least be the end of the world, because I can see him successfully going after the niche market and, despite what Idol fans think, you don’t have to be a platinum seller in American Top 40/HAC or country in order to have a great career.
Who’d write those banner ads? I would think that it would be the record labels. So if it’s the labels, then that just reflects that RCA wants to use the Idol thing and Jive doesn’t.
If it’s 19, then you’re probably right. However, since it’s the albums that are being sold on Itunes, I think it would almost certainly be the record labels that would create the ads for those albums ….
Anybody know for sure who’s responsible for writing Itunes ads? It seems logical to me that it would be the label that create the album, and not your management, but that’s just a hunch, on my part.
I wasn’t talking about demographics. Obviously Adam appeals to a different base than SuBo. Just saying the trajectories seem the same to me. But yup, we’ll agree to disagree.
I just used the same descriptions you used with Adam when you were talking about how those would factor into what justified the “hype” for him. To me it seemed like you were implying all those things factored into the hype. The quote of mine you used for the response above was to point out that the stuff you used to factor into the hype for Adam were applicable to Kris too, the difference being their musical styles, performance styles and personality. Had you mentioned those I would have gladly added them too.
This is news to me. I’ve never heard of this Pastor and I never did research on LGBT sites to see who they were voting for. But this is interesting, though!
Kris has sold the fewest CDs ever? I thought we were only talking about first week sales? I hope that’s just a typo LOL
Re: power voting – hasn’t this been going on in all seasons of American Idol? Why are people making it out to be like Arkansas is so special and they have superior voting techniques? Didn’t other previous Idol winners have hometown advantages too?
As for the anti-gay voting thing, was this not used as an excuse during Clay and Ruben’s season 2? I’m only familiar with season 8, but from what I’ve heard of season 2 people were saying Clay lost because he got the anti-gay vote, etc. and blamed Ruben’s mom’s power voting/campaign/etc for Ruben’s win. Didn’t Ruben debut with a strong first week of sales?
Ruben had the highest first week sales of any Idol winner.
unique28v, even though Ruben had higher first week sales than any Idol WINNER, Clay outsold him by about 200,000 cds and has the highest selling debut week of any idol ever. and i watched Clay and Ruben’s season but i dont ever remember there being any of the sort of controversy that happened this year. I dont think most people assumed that Clay was gay because there was no evidence of it, like there was evidence with Adam with the photos. Sure there was some speculation but i dont think that had anything to do with the vote. Clay just lost by about 1500 votes if i remember correctly. it was the smallest margin in AI history.
I think in terms of Idol fanbases they were about equal but Clay’s fans were just more passionate i guess. Oprah supported Ruben so that right there is huge. They were also both featured on the cover of Rolling Stone in separate issues and both performed on the AMA’s that year. Clay and Ruben both had hype but Clay had more. If you wanna compare it to the Kris/Adam thing this year though (i dont know why anyone would since it’s apples and oranges) Adam has eclipsed the amount of hype any idol contestant ever had and Kris’ hype was pretty much non existent. Its just perplexing how all of this panned out with Kris’ sales and yet he had the most votes of any idol finale.
I also think that as the winner, Kris was at a disadvantage that he was hung with “No Boundries” as his coronation song. It did not carry him thru the summer as TOML did for DC. He was somewhat out of the spotlight with all the AL hype and the negative media stories as he was “the guy that beat Adam Lambert”. The media sucked all summer for Kris and when he was interviewed, the interview turned to Adam. Sloppy, lazy reporting and that is why I don’t pay too much attention to album reviews. I know what I like and will buy and don’t need a “critic” to tell me.
True – even Daughtry never got extra face time the next season over Taylor, despite his higher success than Taylor by the time the next season rolled around. However, the AI S9 commercials are featuring Feeling Good being sung, an Adam signature.
2009’s 80k is probably about the same as 2007’s 119k, though. Does anyone actually have numbers of how much the industry has decreased, percentage-wise, in those two years, so that we can actually calculate? They should have calculators for that. Kind of like inflation adjustment calculators except for for album units, and it’s deflation.
Sherena
“2009’s 80k is probably about the same as 2007’s 119k, though. Does anyone actually have numbers of how much the industry has decreased, percentage-wise, in those two years, so that we can actually calculate? They should have calculators for that. Kind of like inflation adjustment calculators except for for album units, and it’s deflation.”
Excellent point!!! But oh well, I think the non-Kris fans aren’t going to go for that argument either. So no point finding reasons for the 80K sale number. What does comfort me a little is knowing there is people out there who wasn’t able to buy his CD because it’s out of stock. So hope that coming weeks his sale number won’t be a drastic drop like in other seasons.
If you go back and check the media interviews this last six months, in Kris’s interviews Adam is brought up within the first two questions….in Adam’s interviews Kris is never mentioned.
Hype at it’s best. Kris never stands a chance in most interviews and even less so now with all the recent happenings. Ellen’s recent interview was a good example.
I wish Adam well and just hope at some point he decides to base his future on his voice rather than his….as they say in sports… “off the field” antics.
Idolnewby
“If you go back and check the media interviews this last six months, in Kris’s interviews Adam is brought up within the first two questions’ ¦.in Adam’s interviews Kris is never mentioned.
Hype at it’s best. Kris never stands a chance in most interviews and even less so now with all the recent happenings. Ellen’s recent interview was a good example.”
I agree with you. But don’t give up on Kris yet. Still too early in the game. Maybe you haven’t read this article http://topidol.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/kris-allen-might-be-the-most-likeable-american-idol-winner-ever/comment-page-1/#comment-15095