Idol Chatter is on hiatus until next week, and that's where I usually find the sales stats. I did look up the Independent Albums chart at Billboard.com, and found these rankings (they don't give the sales figures)
Sounds of the Season #22 (same rank as last week)
Elliott Yamin #23 (last week was ranked #17)

If anybody can find out more information, I would appreciate it!

I get my numbers from Ken Barnes or Pulse Music Board. Barnes won't be back until next week and Pulse doesn't have the Billboard numbers yet.

Just guessing, it would seem that E's Xmas CD probably sold a little more than 7K and the regular album probably sold less than 7K. The numbers won't show up until next Wednesday.

I was at Target today (first time in ages) and while E's Xmas CD was sold out there was plenty of the regular album. However, it was one of the most expensive albums there. I bought Chrisette Michelle's album on sale for less than $8. When does Target put Elliott on sale? It would def spur sales in the dog days of January when album sales tank.

Do you remember how much Elliott's CD was priced at?

Honestly, the pricing has been way too high for most of this year. Why is it so expensive compared to other CDs? Is this part of the indie issue again?

It's $14.99 at my target here in Richmond, VA.

My guess is that E's indie status would definitely effect price points. I'm sure that the volume of larger labels enables them to provide much deeper discounts than a small label would be able to afford. Issues of scale, and all.

that's definitely what it is. Check other RED label CDs (Tracy Lawerence, Jason Aldean, etc.), and I'm sure you'll find they have no discounts, either.

Of further note is that, since he is a partner, Elliott probably has to approve each pressing of the CD, and any discount which may apply. Thus, never alarm yourself if stock is low.... remember any unsold CD is a direct loss to Elliott, unlike major label artists, who absorb their losses through their advances (which Elliott never received, if I recall).

Target did have Elliott's regular cd on sale one week in December. That was the first time in quite awhile, and was the week he sold about 7400. The cd is priced lower at Walmart (11.98) and Best Buy (I think 12.99). I also noticed that KMart has all their cd's on sale through the end of the week, but they only had a couple Elliott cds the last time I checked. I was surprised to find them there at all since their music department is pretty flimsy, but they must stock up for the holidays and then try to sell off the leftovers.

I think the E albums were around $15 which made it one of the most expensive albums in Target yesterday. I think you can buy it on Amazon for 12.99 or something. Most of the albums I saw were priced between $9 and
$12 so E's album was very pricey indeed. Time for another sale, Target.

I do believe it would have gone gold sooner had it been on sale more often - but I'm sure that's a financial decision that Elliott had to make. No big record company to bankroll the whole process so there's less flexibility. I remember Elliott saying in an interview a while back that he wouldn't see money from the CD till around Christmas - so I'm sure he had goals he was holding back his profits to finance up until now. He can be even MORE proud of the success and Gold Record status of the cd given that people pretty much had to pay full freight for it.

The best buy of all was the week of March 20th when it was released....Target was selling it for $9.98, and it had the extra cd in it with I'll make you dance and Let your heart Lead.
Should have done my xmas shopping back then!

I got up really early the morning the CD released and made my pilgrimage to both Target and Walmart to buy the CDs with the bonus tracks!

So now I have two, and I recently won a third in a contest. Looking for someone to give it to!

If any of you were iSquad members (I hadn't visited that spot in ages), even though they're discontinuing their Elliott stuff, the store is still open to redeem points. I had enough to redeem for an autographed promo copy of his single "Movin' On," woooo-hoooo!!

As an artist who also only gets 50% of the proceeds from any piece I sell, I've always said I far prefer to sell less pieces for more money. But in E's position, it doesn't take him a month to make each CD, so I'm not sure the same strategy holds true. Especially in a business that counts "units sold" towards accolades like gold albums.

According to Billboard, the indy chart this week shows:
18 23 Elliott Yamin Elliott Yamin
Hickory | 90019


That means E moved up 5 places on the indy chart and probably sold more than he did last week. Overall, sales were up 42% this week for albums but that doesn't mean his sales went up that much.

Neither Taylor Swift or E's Xmas CD show up in the top 25 of the Holiday chart.
Does anyone here know what a "heatseeker" album is? That gets its own chart and #2 and #3 are indy albums. The #3 album by Levon Helm is actually 3 slots lower on the indy chart than Elliott. I'm getting closer to the actual number but it would still be easier if Ken Barnes just posted it. :santarotfl:

Elliott does not show up on the BB200. Neither do the Xmas CDs done by him or Taylor Swift. Ingrid Michaelson (#2 heatseeker and 16 on the indy chart )shows up around 191 on the BB 200. Unfortunately, they don't give the numbers needed to make the chart but I'll guess it was around 12K. I'm guessing Elliott's regular album went up in sales and possibly sold between 8-10K. That's just a guess. Hopefully, the numbers will leak for the heatseeker albums and then we'll have a ballpark figure.

So, did it leak yet?

Do we have any sales numbers for this week or last? I really don't know where to go to find them.


eta: I bought a few more copies of the Sounds of the Season today for $1.74......

This is all that I could find:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/idolchatter/

By Ken Barnes

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Idols score big on final 2007 airplay list

I'm buried in statistics for the rest of this week (today, final airplay totals from the USA TODAY-commissioned Nielsen BDS all-format national radio chart; tomorrow, final sales figures from Nielsen SoundScan). Obviously, some of thos stats will pertain to Idols, and I'll try to post results as soon as possible, but as today's late posting demonstrates, that may not be as quick as you (or I, for that matter) would like.

Anyway, we tracked the 380 songs that made our weekly top 100 chart (which also incorporates input from Arbitron and Radio & Records), and Idols made a notable showing. Most impressive to me was the datum that no less than five of the top 40 songs of the year were by Idols. That's real industry impact.

Carrie's Before He Cheats was the top Idol song of the year on this chart, which differs from Billboard's and Radio & Records' by running through the complete calendar year of 2007 (theirs ended in November). It was No. 5 overall, trailing only hits by T-Pain, Beyonce, Fergie and Rihanna, and becoming the only song in the top 5 not to hit No. 1 on the weekly chart during the year.

Daughtry's Home came in at No. 12, while the band's It's Not Over also made the top 20, at No. 16. Elliott's Wait for You was No. 37 for the year, and Fantasia's When I See U was No. 40.

The rest of the Idol achievements follow.
Read more...

Ken Barnes should have the sales numbers for the past two weeks tomorrow.
The BB200 chart is up but only shows the Top 10 albums so far.

Sales figures for the last two weeks of the year are always hard to come by, because much of the industry is on vacation (including music insiders that leak info, and people like Ken Barnes over at USAToday). I assume we'll get some numbers from Barnes tomorrow.

Hopefully, we'll have seen an upward climb that week before Christmas, and then a modest drop Christmas week. After that comes the January massacre, as album sales go into the toliet. If you or someone you know needs an extra copy (or a replacement) of the general CD, January is the time to buy it. Note that stores usually re-do their CD aisles in Jan/Feb, so any album not selling an expected amount is pulled, reduced in number, or put on special order status.

Downloads came in and Wait for You returns to the list and sells another 22K. Probably thanks to all those count down shows. I think the song is selling around 6-7K on the weeks it hasn't made the Top 200.

– 183 YAMIN*ELLIOTT WAIT FOR YOU 22308 229 6778 836469

Those are the numbers for the week ending 12/30. So the big countdowns were actually this week. We'll probably see WFY back on this chart next week.

was this a combined two week total? We might be seeing all those iTunes gift cards handed out at Christmas coming into play. Impressive, and heading straight to 900K.

The.song.won't.die. LOL

It might be a longshot, but I really hope WFY can get to Platinum. Slow and steady and all that.

These are the numbers for the week ending 12/30 which included Christmas.
Just one week as far as I know.

Here are E's official numbers:
183 Elliott Yamin “Wait For You” 22,308 (229%; lw 6,778) Total: 836,469 (OFF)

This was a huge week for downloads. His sales the previous week were 6,778.

Wow thats cool! :elliottelliott:

Biggest week for downloads in history, apparently. Jordin, who came in tenth in downloads, moved nearly 220,000 last week. Amazing.

Could it be because a lot of people received iTunes gift cards and such? or any suggestions as to why?

Yes, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. ...

Last year, post-Christmas week also was huge, apparently, though less huge than this year. I suppose because we're all getting more aware of online-music gift cards as time goes by.

A strange detail -- Jordin and Elliott both approximately tripled their sales of the previous week. I haven't looked across the board, but I wonder whether this is a common ratio for how sales improved.

Interesting article!

http://www.pe.com/ap_news/California/CA_Mu...s_321885C.shtml

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.

More and more, we just want individual songs, even in digital format. ... This is so contrary to my experience with albums. I've virtually always ended up loving stuff best on an album that I discovered only after buying the whole thing. .... Putting together that whole album used to be one of the places where artists really expressed themselves and got to include stuff that wasn't your immediate-catchy fluff. I wonder where all of that goes now.

just heard WFY on the radio :-) a bit off topic but just thought I'd share that

My local DJ's play WFY every time I request OW, so it still gets lots of play here. They are trying to be nice, but I'm still not sure what's going on. Oh well - I'm still hopeful.

almost without fail, my favorite tracks on any CD are not the singles that are played on the radio.

Ken Barnes .... more to come:
Making a surprise return to the chart this week is Elliott's Sounds of the Season, which must have snagged a lot of last-minute pre-Christmas buyers. It sold about 11,000 (up from 8,800) to return at No. 123, bringing its total to 56,000

Regular album 5K this week, 11K last week
Elliott: 5,000 (11,000; 482,000 total

:woot:

500k here we come!!!!

Selling over 50K of a Xmas album that's only in one chain is absolutely great. I wonder what Taylor Swift's numbers were for her album. Her album is going 3xplat and I bet she only outsold E by 30K or so. This really proves he's more than a guy with a hit song on the radio.

If Target put his regular album on sale, it'd return to the BB200 very quickly also. It's really overpriced compared to the bestsellers on the charts today.

So, 482,000 (first CD) + 56,000 (Christmas CD) + about 50,000 (first CD outside the US) = about 590,000 total.

:etrain: