predicting the future

So, American Idol fans. Have you downloaded any of the competitors' live recordings from iTunes yet? I've only downloaded one -- "Hello," performed by David Cook. Wow, that was an amazing version of that song.

There's another reason to check out the American Idol songs on iTunes: to get a feel for how well your favorite contestants are doing. It's not possible to see in (more or less) real time how people are voting on the phone, but you CAN see how people are voting with their money. It's that nice little "popularity" rating that iTunes shows.

So here's what you do... run an iTunes search for "American Idol Performance." When you get the results, sort them by popularity. If you take a leap and assume that people are also voting for the contestants whose songs they're buying, David Archuleta, David Cook, and Jason Castro are at the top of the pack. Brooke White and Carly Smithson appear to be the only girls with songs currently in the top 15 most downloaded.

It will be interesting to see whether the download trends match the voting trends for future episodes... or if iTunes will decide to hide the popularity stats at some point.