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Foxes on Idol - New Bloomberg Article
« on: October 23, 2003, 03:39:48 PM »
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Clay at #1: The Measure of an Album
by David Bloomberg -- 10/23/2003
We now know that Measure of a Man debuted at #1. But how else can you measure the success of an album? Let’s take a look.
Surprising approximately nobody (except maybe Simon, if he’s still got his head buried in the sand), Clay Aiken’s Measure of a Man CD debuted at #1 on the album charts, with almost 613,000 copies sold. That sounds like an awful lot, but how do you measure an album?
Well, let’s start with a comparison to the first American Idol, Kelly Clarkson. She also debuted at #1 and was hailed as a huge success by the show, its producers, etc. But she “only” sold 297,000 albums in the first week – less than half of what Clay has sold.
It hardly seems fair to compare him to last year’s runner-up, Justin Guarini, whose album was definitely not considered a huge success as far as sales, with only 54,000 sold in its first week.
Who else was Clay competing against? Well, Barbra Streisand had a new album debuting last week as well – it came in at a respectable #5 with 162,000 copies sold. So Clay outsold Barbra almost four-to-one. Whoa.
What about last week’s #1? Well, that was Ludacris. This week, it sank to #2 with sales of 194,000 copies. But, you might say, that was the second week it’s been out, so of course it would sink. True, but it’s two week total was 623,000 copies – just barely over Clay’s single week.
How else can we measure this CD? Well, it is the biggest first week for a solo artist’s debut in ten years.
Of course, there are other ways to measure his album. Critics have already had their say, with most of them saying it doesn’t measure up. And we will have to look forward to future weeks to see if the sales were propelled solely by fans who were eagerly awaiting its debut or if it can keep up some of the momentum. Apparently, two million copies of the CD have been made (Clay was presented with a double-platinum album on a morning show already, though it really didn't mean anything other than for P.R. purposes because they haven't actually sold yet), and I’m sure they expect to sell all of those. The CD is still at #2 on Amazon.com’s sales chart, so demand is still there.
It should be noted that Measure of a Man is not the only place on the charts that you can find Clay right now. The American Idol album, The Great Holiday Classics, also came out last week, and it debuted at #72.
As of right now, Clay is definitely measuring up.