Idol Sales: Lee Dewyze's Singles Off to a Slow Start

After having a the second-lowest Finale ratings in the show's history, this year's 'Idol' champ, Lee Dewyze, and runner-up, Crystal Bowersox, singles are already lagging in terms of sales compared to previous predecessors.

In total, Dewyze and Bowersox sold more than 400,000 downloads last week with 9 tracks ranked among the week's 200 most popular downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Maybe that's a lot, but it's less than half of what Allen and Lambert sold exactly one year ago or even the Davids after Season 7.

Kris Allen and Adam Lambert sold a total of more than 800,000 downloads with 23 tracks on the Top 200. Archuleta and Cook, on the other hand, sold a whopping 1.26M downloads with 29 tracks on the Top 200.

Now, Billboard reports that Lee Dewyze and Crystal Bowersox have five (5) combined songs on the Billboard Hot 100:

24. Lee Dewyze - Beautiful Day
44. Lee Dewyze - Hallelujah
57. Crystal Bowersox - Up to the Mountain
66. Lee Dewyze and Crystal Bowersox - Falling Slowly
88. Lee DeWyze - The Boxer

Lee Dewyze’s #24 debut for his winner’s single is 9 spots lower than Jordin Sparks, who had the previous lowest winner’s debut on the Hot 100. Good thing, his coronation song bows atop Billboard's Rock Digital Songs survey. With that, all nine American Idol winners have now tallied at least one No. 1 on a Billboard ranking.

Just for comparison - since it will happen regardless - David Cook's Time of My Life debuted at #3 two years ago with 236,000 downloads on its first week outselling last year's winner, Kris Allen's No Boundaries at #11 with only 134,000 downloads. But Lee Dewyze had a more disappointing numbers. His single, Beautiful Day, debuts at #24 with only 95,000 downloads.

Crystal Bowersox, this year's runner-up, didn't do well either. She sold a total of 112,000 copies for all her charted songs as compared to Adam Lambert and David Archuleta, who sold 390,000 and 323,000 copies respectively. 

Here are the comparative figures:

First Week Total Sold by Season 9:

Lee Dwyze: 274,000
Crystal Bowersox: 112,000
Casey James: 14,000
Michael Lynche: 3,000
Aaron Kelly: 2,000
Siobhan Magnus: 5,000
Tim Urban: 2,000
Katie Stevens: 3,000
Andrew Garcia: 1,000
Didi Benami: 2,000
Paige Miles: less than 1,000
Lacey Brown: 1,000
Lee and Crystal Duet: 44,000
Casey and Michael Duet: 3,000

SEASON 9 TOTAL:  467,000

First Week Total Sold by Season 8:

Kris Allen: 479,000
Adam Lambert: 390,000
Danny Gokey: 25,000
Allison Iraheta: 9,000
Kris and Danny Duet: 11,000
Allison and Adam Duet: 22,000
*no data released for the other contestants

SEASON 8 TOTAL:  936,000

First Week Total Sold by Season 7:

David Cook: 942,000 (60% of S7 downloads, 15.7% of all US downloads).
David Archuleta: 323,000 (21.5% of S7 downloads, 5.4% of all US downloads)
Jason Castro: 64,000
Brooke White: 47,000
Michael Johns: 40,000
Carly Smithson: 33,000
Syesha Mercado: 18,000
Kristy Lee Cook: 10,000
Chikezie Eze: 5,000

SEASON 7 TOTAL:  1,482,000 

First Week Total Sold by Season 6:

Jordin Sparks: 123,000
Blake Lewis: 127,000
*no data released for the other contestants
SEASON 6 TOTAL:  250,000

Got to give props to David Cook, who had a really great final week sales two years ago as well as setting a new record for the most debut entries in a week by any artist in the Nielsen Music era, which began in December 1991. Moreover, Cook's numbers that year were far better than the combined sales of last year and this year's winner. Having said that, it was a good feat for Kris to sell over 134,000 copies of a terrible, terrible song and Lee for selling 95,000 copies in a terrible, terrible season. Haha.

Now, as for the other comparisons, here are the sales numbers for coronation singles on it's first week:

01. Clay Aiken - This is the Night (393,000)
02. Ruben Studdard - Flying Without Wings (286,000)
03. David Cook - Time of My Life  (236,024)
04. Kelly Clarkson - A Moment Like This  (236,000)
05. Taylor Hicks - Do I Make You Proud (228,418)
06. Carrie Underwood - Inside Your Heaven (170,528)
07. Fantasia - I Believe (142,141)
08. Kris Allen - No Boundaries (134,458)
09. Bo Bice - Inside Your Heaven (121,423)
10. Lee DeWyze - Beautiful Day  (95,000)
11. Katharine McPhee - Over the Rainbow (74,965)
12. Jordin Sparks - This is My Now (74,303)
13. Diana Degarmo - Dreams (65,000)
14. Crystal Bowersox - Up to the Mountain (49,000)
15. Adam Lambert - No Boundaries (35,984)

• Justin Guarini, Blake Lewis and David Archuleta did not get coronation songs released.
• Katherine McPhee’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow was released as a double A-Side with her coronation single, My Destiny, and since the former outsold the later on iTunes, sales of the commercial single were all attributed to Somewhere Over The Rainbow.