5.13.12 - 5.19.12 Numbers Thread

TVOL was performed a few weeks after it had been out, just like NCOE. Casual watchers didn't have an album to buy after that performance, and it never broke the top 100. It sold about 7K that week. Cook was releasing a stand-alone single and that night was the first time you could buy it off of iTunes. All of his fans purchased it that night. It sold around 15 K.

Imagine if Adam would have released his debut single (with no album available to purchase) and performed it the same day on Idol. You would have been looking at a top 10 or 20 iTunes placement and probably about 50K in sales.

What we are seeing instead is an album boost. An album boost is far better and much more important to Adam and to RCA! A single rises and falls by Saturday after the AI performance. The fact that people are buying the album means that casual fans or watchers are investing in Adam as a whole, as an artist. He is making new fans, or getting back some old ones.

This will help Adam get that #1 spot, which will be a historical moment and one that will garner tons of media now and in the future.

That is another great point tigerlily. Even if there was only the single to buy, and people bought like crazy and sent it top 10 on iTunes, it would be slipping back down by Saturday. Without radio to sustain sales, any boost a song gets is short-lived. Better to have people buy the album.

The fact is, the single will live or die by radio.

For the first time NCOE is ahead of TP on itunes. NCOE at 124, pop 43. TP is 127, pop 46.

Thinking about sales by Donna Summers (RIP).

Checked a Billboard article about Whitney's sales after her untimely death (RIP). Said 65,000 albums sold in the one day from Saturday, when demise reported, to Sunday. (4 of Whitney's albums went on to enter Top 200 by the next week.)

It also makes a point pertinent to Ms. Summers. There weren't many hard copies of her Greatest Hits - or any albums - in the stores. This lead to more digital downloads than is common in album sales.

In Ms. Summer's case that could be why Amazon ranks so high. Her biggest fans, people who remember her from back in the day, are probably physical CD buyers. And online shippers of physical CD's are the only place to get that. So, if Adam is right behind her on Amazon, hoping this means his CD sales also up there. (Knock wood)

Also, at least a lot of her fans ordering CD's will get to see Adam's name, picture, and high ranking sales. (Though the 73 weeks in Amazon's top sales is a big confusing about an album out for a week if you don't know about pre-orders.)

Now, Whitney had several album's people bought, which spread out any one album's sales numbers. Donna Summers really only has Greatest Hits that people might buy in tribute, which concentrates that record's sales figures. (ETA: Oops, she has 3 albums in iTunes dl's now. Still think people will concentrate on one of the Greatest Hits for physical CD)

Here's a Billboard article about week 2 for Whitney. Greatest Hits sold 174K more that week. So we'll see if Donna Summers impacts either week. www.billboard.com/news/whitney-houston-has-no-2-album-grammys-push-1006248552.story#/news/whitney-houston-has-no-2-album-grammys-push-1006248552.story