Idol sales from USA Today - 4/13/2011

[Pi314CA]

Excerpt from the weekly Idol sales article by Brian Mansfield:

Performances on April 3's Academy of Country Music Awards helped several country singers, including Carrie Underwood, who saw a 77% spike in weekly sales of her Play On album following her awards-show performance of Undo It and Walk This Away with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.

Carrie Underwood, Play On (7,000, +77%, 1.984 million) (#73 BB200)

Link: Adele re-takes top album spot; Jennifer Hudson drops from Top 10 - Idol Chatter: American Idol News, Rumors, & Information

Track sales:
Carrie Underwood, Undo It (9,000, +43%, 1.058 million)

[utlovescarrie]

Yeah! Unfortunately, if I had wanted to buy a copy of PO in my Walmart or Target they had none so I would have been out of luck. Hopefully next CD they can get the stores to keep more supply on hand - although I ran into the same thing with CR.

[Zman312]

ONLY IMAGINE HOW MANY COPIES PO WOULD SELL IF THERE WERE ENOUGH IN STOCK and a SINGLE OUT!!!!

[IdolofCarrie]

Praise the Lord!! That's what I like to see! Thanks for some good news finally!

[rainbow1]

Great! I love good news!!

[abbeyjones18]

That's great to see ...my theory has always been that it's up to the stores to, you know, restock their inventory. I don't know...but that's always been my theory.

[thaifood]

If you don't find the cd in your store, tell the music sectoin manager & they will restock it. Don't just complain...do something about it.

[opry051008]

Wow, I'm surprised that she sold that many. Without a new song at the ACM's I was sure she was going to sell about the same as last week because last week's numbers were already increased because of the iTunes sale.

That's a higher percent increase than any album on the top 50.
HITS Daily Double: Building Album Sales Chart

[robinannhunt]

That's great to see ...my theory has always been that it's up to the stores to, you know, restock their inventory. I don't know...but that's always been my theory.

Not sure about that. My guess is that there is a person/company that suppies the limited space in a box store. The store has no control over the CD's that are inventoried. With limited space the cds are all bunched together in about 2 shelving units these days. There is a bid spanish section though.

[Brie26]

WOW! Great numbers!

[carriebest]

great !!!!!!

[epicamends]

Nice! How many more copies until PO has officially scanned 2 million?

[robinannhunt]

16,000 more

[Gator]

Not sure about that. My guess is that there is a person/company that suppies the limited space in a box store. The store has no control over the CD's that are inventoried. With limited space the cds are all bunched together in about 2 shelving units these days. There is a bid spanish section though.

Robin, I had a discussion with a manager at one of our Targets about this very thing. He told me that their "Corporate" office decides which stores will sell which albums and orders them accordingly. That particular Target had 3 spots for Carrie's CDs, but only 3 total POs on the shelves, yet had some SH and a few CRs. He checked in the back and had no more POs in inventory. Interestingly, they had the least SN than any store that I've noticed, including other Targets and Walmarts. It was his opinion that Corporate ordered the inventory from the label's distributor, but that was his assumption. Also, he said his preference would be that they order at the store level.

If that's indeed how store inventory works, then I would question if the labels approach stores corporate offices to stock their stores with their artists' music. If that is the case, then obviously Carrie's label is not doing a good enough job getting her CDs stocked as proven through the CR and PO eras. They can't sell what they don't have, thus people move on and select something that is available.

[Pi314CA]

I think Amazon's $3.99 sale for Play On last week helped.

[epicamends]

16,000 more

Nice! So it could scan 2 million in less than a month if sales hold, up, but even if sales fall back to approx. 3,000 per week it'll still be less than 2 months for it to scan 2 million.

[robinannhunt]

Robin, I had a discussion with a manager at one of our Targets about this very thing. He told me that their "Corporate" office decides which stores will sell which albums and orders them accordingly. That particular Target had 3 spots for Carrie's CDs, but only 3 total POs on the shelves, yet had some SH and a few CRs. He checked in the back and had no more POs in inventory. Interestingly, they had the least SN than any store that I've noticed, including other Targets and Walmarts. It was his opinion that Corporate ordered the inventory from the label's distributor, but that was his assumption. Also, he said his preference would be that they order at the store level.

If that's indeed how store inventory works, then I would question if the labels approach stores corporate offices to stock their stores with their artists' music. If that is the case, then obviously Carrie's label is not doing a good enough job getting her CDs stocked as proven through the CR and PO eras. They can't sell what they don't have, thus people move on and select something that is available.

I wonder if there is a distributor that goes to the corporate offices to sell their music and not sony. A middleman with multiple music publishers behind them. They probably sell a progam to restock the stores and have no allegence to a music publisher. It would also seem that they would stock only CDs that were profitable. If you can buy a CD for $2 and sell it to target for $4 why stock a Cd that might cost $3 and you can only sell it to target for $4. Money talks. I believe that is patially why SWSRN can sell $1 mil the first week.

[Gator]

^^ Great thought, Robin. I wonder at what point the stores actually "pay" for the CDs. If they pay upfront, then I could see them stocking more if they were assured that the label would buy back the unsold stock.

[epicamends]

It's interesting to note that 4,000 of PO's sales the past week were digital sales. So perhaps the people who can't find the album in stores because it's not stocked properly are taking the time to search for it online instead.

Carrie Underwood, Play On (7,000, +77%, 1.984 million/4,000 digital, +132%, 238,000 digital total) (#73 BB200)

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...-from-top-10/1

[Gator]

^^ Thanks for the digital info. That's very encouraging news.