Now with numbers!
We finally have the SoundScan figures for the week, though they arrived later than expected—something of a pattern when significant developments occur in the Idol world. Yesterday HDD projected a 198.5K debut for Scotty McCreery’s first album. Today we can compare HDD’s estimate with the official SoundScan numbers and see how Lauren Alaina fares in HDD’s one-day prediction. October is shaping up to be a busy month for Idol releases and chart activity.
Idol albums (from Idol Chatter)
1 Scotty McCreery “Clear As Day” 196,739 (NEW; lw 127) Total: 196,881
Mandisa “What If We Were Real” 2K (+104%; lw 1K) Total: 73K
Daughtry “Daughtry” 1K (+10%; lw 1K)
Idol-related
3 Tony Bennett “Duets II” 70,776 (-22%; lw 91,075) Total: 341,168
15 Jason Aldean “My Kinda Party” 20,194 (-2%; lw 20,609) Total: 1,903,752
69 Various “Now Country 4” 6K (+9%) Total: 172K
124 Aerosmith “Best Of: The Millennium Collection” 4K (-5%; lw 4K) Total: 345K (#124 BB200)
Notable milestones, from Brian at Idol Chatter:
– Scotty McCreery is the first American Idol winner to debut at number one since Ruben Studdard in 2003.
– He is the youngest male to debut at number one with a studio album.
– Scotty’s first-week sales represent the largest debut week ever for a male country act in SoundScan history.
– His opening week is the second biggest first week for any country act so far this year.
“My head is just spinning,” Scotty says. “It started out kind of low: They said 100,000 maybe. Then every day I saw the numbers climbing. It’s wild: it wasn’t a year ago that I was a normal cat, and now I’m number one on Billboard. It’s insane, it really is.”
Downloads (from Idol Chatter):
Kelly Clarkson “Mr. Know It All” 48K (+9%) Total: 275K
Daughtry “Crawling Back to You” 47K (debut) Total: 47K
Brad Paisley/Carrie Underwood “Remind Me” 28K (-13%) Total: 1.043M
Scotty McCreery “I Love You This Big” 18K (+106%) Total: 630K
Jennifer Lopez “Papi” 16K (+32%) Total: 102K
Scotty McCreery “The Trouble With Girls” 12K (+143%) Total: 85K
Jason Aldean/Kelly Clarkson “Don’t You Wanna Stay” 11K (-7%) Total: 1.715M
Jennifer Lopez “On the Floor” 10K (-10%) Total: 139K
Tyga feat. Chris Richardson “Far Away” 10K (0 change) Total: 170K
Scotty McCreery “Out of Summertime” 8K (debut) Total: 8K
Lauren Alaina “Like My Mother Does” 6K (+32%) Total: 290K
Kellie Pickler “Tough” 6K (+51%) Total: 66K
Scotty McCreery “Water Town” 5K (debut) Total: 5K
Carrie Underwood “Undo It” 5K (-5%) Total: 1.199M
Scotty McCreery “You Make That Look Good” 4K (debut) Total: 4K
Scotty McCreery “Clear as Day” 4K (debut) Total: 4K
Carrie Underwood “Before He Cheats” 4K (+13%) Total: 3.311M
Sales Week Summary (from Billboard):
Total Album Sales: 5.13M, down 8% from last week’s 5.57M, but up 5% compared with the same week last year (4.89M).
YTD Total Albums: 233.63M, up 3% versus the same point last year (225.96M).
This marks the 20th consecutive week in which year-to-date album volume exceeds the same period from the prior year, a sustained sign of continued consumer interest in full-length releases.
Total Digital Downloads: 20.59M, up 1% from last week’s 20.37M and up 5% compared with the same week last year (19.60M).
YTD Total Downloads: 972.33M, up 10% from 879.96M at the same point last year.
What this all means: Scotty McCreery’s strong debut underscores the continuing commercial strength of American Idol alumni, particularly within country music. The combination of high first-week album sales and multiple strong digital download tallies for Scotty’s singles shows effective crossover between traditional album buyers and digital consumers. At the same time, established Idol and country artists such as Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean, and Brad Paisley continue to register significant sales and download totals, reinforcing the genre’s important role in overall music-market performance.
As the week closes, industry watchers will be comparing HDD projections with the official SoundScan results and monitoring how Lauren Alaina’s single and future releases perform. With October full of releases and chart movement, the coming weeks should offer more insights into consumer preferences and momentum for both newer and longstanding artists from the Idol family.