Grab some popcorn and a huge vat of salt (you’ll need the grains), because we are going to make some Wild A$$ Guesses as to how many downloads the S7 Idols sold this week.
Disclaimer: These are speculative guesses based on a LOT of unknowns. If Ken Barnes ever posts the real numbers and they turn out to be a lot different than these numbers, don’t attempt to use these numbers to discredit Ken’s numbers. Ken gets real numbers. End of story.
Basis of these guesses:
1. Sound Scan numbers for last week (sales week is from Monday Morning to Sunday Night).
2. MJ’s iTunes Popularity Report on Monday morning.
3. This recent article where iTunes claims it has an 80% market share of the digital music sales.
If we use “No Air”’s 137,170 number (iTunes adjusted 109,736) as a basis
1) “Billie Jean” David Cook : 112,871
2) “Let It Be” Brooke White: 31,353
3) “Eleanor Rigby” David Cook: 25,083
4) “You’re the Voice” David Archuleta: 25,083
5) “Hello” David Cook: 25,083
6) “We Will Rock You/ We are the Champions” Michael Johns : 25,083
7) “Imagine” David Archuleta: 25,083
8) “Hallelujah” Jason Castro: 21,947
9) “Every Breath You Take” Brooke White: 21,947
10) “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Carly Smithson: 15,677
Now, the problems easily become apparent. Using “No Air”’s numbers to predict “Tattoo”’s sales using the same methodology results in iTunes sales of 40,759 when it actually only sold 32,428 downloads for all vendors last week. Plus, “It’s Not Over” has the same iTunes popularity bars as “Tattoo” but it is much lower on the SS charts.
It’s quite possible that iTunes does better sales of older Idol songs because of the exclusive deals it has to sell Season 7 Idol performances. Meanwhile, “No Air” is all over the airplay charts so it’s selling well at a number of vendors and iTunes may account for less than 80% of its downloads.
If we were to use “Tattoo”’s 32,428 download number (iTunes adjusted 25,942) as a basis, here is what the guesses would look like:
1) “Billie Jean” David Cook : 71,840
2) “Let It Be” Brooke White: 19,956
3) “Eleanor Rigby” David Cook: 15,965
4) “You’re the Voice” David Archuleta: 15,965
5) “Hello” David Cook: 15,965
6) “We Will Rock You/ We are the Champions” Michael Johns : 15,965
7) “Imagine” David Archuleta: 15,965
8) “Hallelujah” Jason Castro: 13,969
9) “Every Breath You Take” Brooke White: 13,969
10) “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Carly Smithson: 9,978
If we say 90% of “Tattoo”’s numbers come from iTunes, “Billie Jean” would have sold 81K…see how big an effect the unknown variables have on the guesses?
The numbers would look different again if we use the “It’s Not Over”/”Home” numbers which should come out later today.
Also, I’m assuming that the iTunes popularity bars reflect a week’s worth of sales. Smaller polling periods would likely mean lower numbers for the songs that came out last week because they had only 4 days to sell songs. If the popularity bars only reflect 24 hours worth of sales and are representative of the 4 days of sales, “Billie Jean” would have moved only 64K.
So, lots of disclaimers and 5 minutes of fun with Excel.
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Let me get another cup of coffee, and I’ll read through that again….slowly.
Thanks MJ..
Gwendolyn, I better do the same!
OUCH….My head hurts.
Thanks MJ..
Kirsten put this post together. I suck at number crunching. :). Interesting stuff. Thanks Kirsten!
Oops. Sorry guys. I didn’t mean to induce headaches and runs to the coffee store.
I’ll try to simplify it next week. I just wanted to highlight how rough these estimates are.
Kristen, even though it’s all just WAG, I absosolutely LOVE this! :)
Thank you so much!
Okay, Kristen. I’m all coffeed up now. This is very interesting, and I like putting actual numbers with the possibility of the iTunes sales. Considering all of that, is it safe to say that “Billie Jean” was pretty much an astronomical hit?
I’m having a nosebleed. LOL
Kirsten- Ok I have reread thru your post and it makes so much more sense to me now. Thank you. I’m a math-tard and it took me a while to understand all the bars and sales and …..stuff!!
So it looks like Billie Jean made AI a nice pile of coin this week.
Cool!
This was an interesting aside in the article about Doxology:
That’s bottom line actual sales, I presume, maybe because it’s credit based and they have to wait until credit card payments go through?
i’d be shocked if David Cook’s version was THAT MUCH higher than the rest…not surprised about it being numb 1 tho
I should think so. Jordin had the 5th most downloaded song last week. If the popularity bars are to be believed, “Billie Jean” had more downloads than “No Air” on iTunes. Not many songs accomplish that without tonnes of airplay and few do it the week they are released unless they are from a huge name.
Some may argue that David C was seen by 30 million people on TV and that’s better than any airplay or prior name recognition, but clearly the popularity bars show that the other S7 contestants did not reach the same heights despite the same exposure and lots of name bands have gone on the show and not had that much of a response. Also, S6 didn’t seem to produce these kind of results (so much for the theory that being an iTunes exclusive prevents moving major units). So, full kudos to David C (and of course, Chris Cornell…I don’t want an angry rocker sending out press releases about me).
LOL. I bet it’s because Apple is a big company and big companies always avoid paying their bills until the last minute possible so that they can earn interest on the money they hold. Little unsigned bands pretty much have to take the terms they are given. And they actually have it better than signed bands who I seem to recall get paid royalties by their label once a quarter (or maybe it’s a twice a year).
If Doxology moves enough units to chart, the AI fandom will somehow find the numbers and post them so they won’t have to wait the two months. LOL. Chris’s numbers are on the sales thread.