David Cook’s “Billie Jean” is currently ahead of all the Idols who come up in my search of “American Idol” in iTunes. According to Rickey from Rickey.org, “Billie Jean”, as of Saturday, is in the #2 spot on the iTunes Top 100, behind “Touch My Body”, Mariah Carey.
BTW, thanks to Ricky for the long email describing exactly how he came up with his overall chart. This stuff is an inexact science, but it does give you a rough idea of where the Idols stand overall.
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I am confused about the itunes info. MJ, perhaps you or other posters can explain this–
From the list generated by American Idol popularity shown above, “No Air” has sold A LOT more than “It’s Not Over”, “Tattoo” and “Home”.
Yet last week download sales numbers shown on this site (MJ’s) for those songs were:
No Air: 835,236
It’s Not Over 1.7M
Tattoo 1,445,344
Home 1.4M
I understand that itunes is not the only place to get downloads for Jordin’s and Daughtry’s music, so the totals may include other download sites like Rhapsody or Amazon… yet we know itunes is the biggest seller of downloads. Looking at the download number for everything but “No Air” shows they are all over 1M songs sold. Yet on itunes they look less popular than “No Air”.
Is the itunes popularity bar partly to show the most recent of purchases combined with the velocity of purchases?
Or are the download numbers understated? Something seems off to me.
Thanks!
huh…i find it ironic that David Cook has an album out, and yet he doesnt get any garbage from the media for that.
dukes, I may be wrong, but I believe that David Cook’s album is self produced; not on a major label. Anyone can put out their own cd. My 16 year old is in the process of doing so with his band. (Unlike Carly’s $2M pre-idol deal)
Yay for our little Cookie! I’m still not sure how those iTunes charts work, but either way, I’m really happy for him. :D
@dukesterathlete: I believe the main reason for that is because his solo album was released independently; he didn’t have $2.2 million spent on him my a major record label only to have the album sell barely 400 copies. A huge failure like Carly’s would have landed (and it did) in the media’s laps much faster than the previous release of an indie album from another contestant who’s been struggling in the music business for 6 to 7 years now.
Jersey’s right. DC hasn’t been signed to a major record label. I would compare his pre-idol work to to Taylor’s and Daughtry’s rather than Carly’s or KLC’s.
There are only a few who haven’t recorded a CD before. Heck, even Brooke recorded pre-idol!
I know…it’s confusing. The bars measure only a short span of time. Most of the other song’s sales happened before the polling period. Thus, “No Air” is outselling all those other songs at the moment.
I believe Itunes shows weekly sales.. not total…so it looks right…
No air HAS sold more for the week..based on the below it sold over 128k while Tatoo only sold 34k
Sales ending 3/23
(Billboard issue date 04/05/08)
Digital Download Numbers
4 Jordin Sparks “No Air” 128,745 (16%; lw 110,524) Total: 835,236 (3)
24 Carrie Underwood “All-American Girl” 36,351 (17%; lw 31,103) Total: 343,979 (27)
31 Jordin Sparks “Tattoo” 34,589 (18%; lw 29,275) Total: 1,445,334 (34)
42 Paula Abdul “Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow” 26,975 (-30%; lw 38,684) Total: 215,900 (21)
53 Daughtry “Feels Like Tonight” 24K (13%; lw 21K ) Total: 250K (51)
138 Carrie Underwood “Before He Cheats” 11K (11%; lw 11K) Total: 2.24M (135)
140 Daughtry “Over You” 11K (-10%; lw 11K) Total: 944K (106)
152 Daughtry “Home” 19K (6%; lw 9K) Total: 1.40M (140)
185 Daughtry “It’s Not Over” 8.5K (11%; lw 7.5K) Total: 1.70M (185)
ita mj and ealbino, itunes “popularity” rankings must be over a day or a week, not over all time. for example, i strongly doubt paula’s new single has already surpassed Daughtry’s “Home” in total sales :)
and…go david! i know amazon is still a minor player in music sales but wouldn’t it be crazy if analog heart charted?
I think it’s a long way from charting anywhere, but yeah, that’d be crazy! And great for him, too. :D
Thanks for the responses. I understand that “No Air” is selling more currently than either of Daughtry’s that I mentioned is selling currently.
Trying to understand why other artists, like an Elton John, Josh Groban, or James Taylor who are not on charts just now–their “sort by popularity ” seems to show their most popular songs by sales–in order. (Time does not seem to be a factor, but that may be an incorrect assumption). Still trying to sort it out.
Trying to understand if Cook’s “Billie Jean” is selling in the 100,00 range (as “No Air” has in the past two weeks) or the 800,000 range (”No Air’s ” total sales. :) Thanks.
I’m guessing when you do a sort for just one artist (i.e. going to “All songs by Elton John”) then that is cumulative over all time.
I’d be deliriously happy for David C if his Billie Jean has sold 800k ;) but I’m almost 100% sure that’s not the case. to be honest even 10k would be very surprising. It would help if we knew how much music itunes sells in an average day…
Let’s try this: just seach for “Billie Jean” on itunes; then sort the results by popularity.
David Cook’s rendition is first by a longgg ways.
Then Chris Cornell’s.
Then Michael Jackson’s.
If you search for “Michael Jackson” and sort him by popularity, you see that the same rendition of “Billie Jean” is the second most popular single he has–second only to “Thriller”.
Looking at the relative position of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean to his Thriller…and then David Cook’s Billie Jean to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, it appears that David Cook has sold a heck of a lot more of Billie Jean than Michael has even ever sold of Thriller ( on itunes ).
I would just guess that Michael Jackson has sold a lot more than 100,000 or so copies of Billie Jean and Thriller on itunes over the past few years.
So, what does this mean for David Cook’s level of sales?
Okay, you all have completely confused me with all of this math! I know nothing about any of this stuff, so I’ll just say - Good for David C. I’m happy for him. And, good for Chris Cornell finding a wider audience through some AI exposure. Sometimes AI can use it’s powers for good instead of evil.
And, as much as I’m ashamed to admit it - as big of a freak as Michael Jackson is - Thriller is still pretty much one of my all time favorite albums. I try to change the channel when one of those old tunes comes on the radio, but I just can’t. I love them all - down to the cheesiness of PYT. What a sad, sad ending for such talent.
Hey, I got an idea…
Someone should do an alternative rock version of ‘Beat It.’
Or maybe its been done?
There’s an Alt rock version of “Smooth Criminal” that’s pretty good from a few years ago:
You Tube
The band is Alien Ant Farm.
There is an alt-rock over of “Beat It” on iTunes now by Fall Out Boy, featuring John Mayer on guitar. It’s #5 overall right now.
I can’t figure out how to do this search on my iTunes. Which field do you plug American Idol into? When I put it in the “Artist” field I just get the compilation albums, and when I put it in the “Title” field I just get this season’s studio recordings. *clueless*
Thanks for the reminder MJ - I absolutely loved that when it came out. Now I’m wondering if maybe Jason could folk up Wanna be Startin Something? LOL
I have the cd…. I LOVE that version!
I purchased Analog Heart last night after reading about it here - I love it. I didn’t even know Amazon sold digital songs and albums
but it was pretty easy to buy and get into my iTunes so I am a happy camper. I learn so much here! Go David Cook!!!! but I still love Jason too.
eta: mj - I would have clicked your link to Amazon if it had been here last night. I always click through here to go to iTunes.
I do not believe that is true. I still think that they report sales for an artist over a polling period. I think that the reason you see the same Elton John songs consistently outselling his other songs is because those songs are popular. There are enough people randomly deciding that, this week, they will buy “Tiny Dancer” or whatever. Each week, about the same number of people buy that song. Until there is a reason (a disturbance in the force…er…a song gets used in an episode of Gray’s Anatomy), the sales rate stays about the same.
For instance, to prove my polling interval theory, as of last week, Jordin’s “No Air” had sold a cummulative total of 835,236 downloads and “Tattoo” had sold 1,445,334 (129K and 35K respectively for the week). This week, if you search by “Jordin Sparks” you will see popularity bars for “No Air” that are almost twice as large as those for “Tattoo”. If the popularity bars reflected cummulative sales for those two songs, that would mean that “No Air” was at 2.9M downloads having moved 1.1M this week. Believe me, if that had happened, we would be snowed down under press releases because nobody has come anywhere close to moving a million downloads in one week before.
But it would be believable that “No Air” sold twice as many downloads as “Tattoo” last week. Therefore, I believe the popularity bars are based on a polling interval, but we don’t length. It’s certainly more than 24 hours (or we’d see faster movements when popular songs come out), but perhaps not as long as a week.
That makes sense Kirsten, and it’s kinda what I’ve been thinking too. And that’s kinda why I think these iTunes popularity charts don’t really matter except for the week after the songs are released. Of course, after that, they indicate the staying power of the songs above the others, so I guess that’s important too.
So, if DCook’s popularity bars consistently stay around or equal to Jordin’s “No Air” for the next few days, would it be valid to assume that he could have sold around 100,000 downloads of Billie Jean this week? I know the total for “No Air” and other AI alum’s singles include downloads from other online retailers, but as someone said up there, iTunes is definitely the largest.
I’ve done the “american idol” search on itunes, and I understand that after you get the results list, you have to click on the “popularity” column in order to see the songs in order of popularity which - we assume - gives us an idea of sales. I’ve been wondering about the numbering of the songs BEFORE you click on “popularity.”
Last week, “No Air” was consistently listed as number one, ie, first on the list. This week, “Billie Jean” is listed first, “Let it Be” second, and “No Air” is number six.
Does anyone know if the numbering on the left-hand side of the chart is also related to sales? If not, how do they decide what order to number the songs?