This week’s Digital Tracks chart represents the first week that iTunes released American Idol sales data to SoundScan, and as a result it has an Idol quotient of 17.5%; season-seven winner David Cook placed 17 of his songs on last week’s chart (all in the top 100, with three in the top ten and the coronation song “The Time Of My Life” at No. 1 with 236,000 paid downloads), second-place finisher David Archuleta got 14 songs on the big board (his highest-placing song, at No. 23: “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” which was downloaded 51,000 times), and third-place runner-up Syesha Mercado didn’t sell enough of any tracks to crack the 200-song list. (So much for the strength-in-numbers of the Fanesha 300.) Jason Castro, Brooke White, and Michael Johns also cracked the digital-tracks top 200, and White’s pre-Idol album, the Billy Joel-cover-free Songs From The Attic, even managed to make the digital-albums chart, selling 1,900 copies. Chris Molanphy will have more on these numbers, and their impact on the big board, in tomorrow’s 100 & Single, but for now we’ve got sales totals after the jump.
In which we try to predict whether or not Randy’s dubbing Syesha “No. 3” of the final three American Idol contestants was some sort of astrological prediction written in the star-chart shirt he wore last night–or another piece of the mounting pile of evidence that the producers have been gaming the system for a David/David finale since the night Chikezie was eliminated. For anecdotal purposes, DialIdol ranks the hopefuls Cook-Archuleta-Mercado, while the top Idol-related search term on Google Trends is (ugh) “Switchfoot,” at No. 57. America: It can’t get enough of that post-millennial grunge! Vote after the jump.
In preparation for tonight’s American Idol liveblog–which starts at 8 ET!–here are some headlines that have crossed the transom… More »
