CMJ RECAP ISSUE 1348, WEEK 23

Summer is a funny time. We lose anywhere from 50-100 stations but it is never the same stations week after week.  So you could have a record that gains 3 stations from the previous week but along with those 3 you have a return of 10-15 stations that might of not reported the week before and a loss of the same that decided not to report that week. So 3 ends up being a significant number.  More than any other time of year every station matters and yet its the hardest time to get in touch with anyone and even harder to get them to report on a regular basis.  

This week my eye was fixed on Parquet Courts as I wanted to see what they would do their first week out. Would they have they type of week the Black Keys or Thee Oh Sees had or would they be more in the Conor Oberst area.  They ended up coming in at #8 on the top 200, pretty good for a first week.  The big moves came from Conor Oberst, jumping from #8 to #2 and Sharon Van Etten going to #3 from #5.   Lykke Li surprisingly dropped from #3 to #6. I really thought they had a chance to push for #1 considering the history of her on the charts.   

The Orwells and Clap your hands say yeah also had great debuts coming in at #14 and #17.  I would really take a LOT for either one of them to get to #1 But if Sharon Van Etten can start at #22 and methodically work her way up to the top 5 no reason they can't.  

The Jack White record took #1 most added pretty easily but I was surprised it did not get over 100 adds. Last week when Parquet Courts got under 100 adds I thought it might be due to CMJ crashing.  

IN looking at it now compared to this week it looks like the CMJ crash of last monday had little to no impact on the charts.  Last week there were 216 reporters, This week there were 223.   Last week there were 191 ADD reporters, this week 201 so really not a huge increase.  If you look at percentages over the last 2 weeks then Parquet courts had the better week with 51% stations adding them while Jack White had only 46%. If we go back to the Black Keys week they had 54% . I would consider 50% to be that somewhat magic number to reach for on adds if you want to project to going #1.  I won't say you can't do it if you don't get 50% but it sure does help.  

So that brings us to a pretty exciting next few weeks I think.  We have The Black Keys at #1. Connor Oberst at #2, Sharon Van Etten at #3 then we have Parquet Courts charting at #8 and this weeks #1 most added Jack White most likely landing somewhere in the top 10 next week.  Should be a lot of fun to watch what happens. In the Fall and Spring most records reach their peak amount of stations in the 3rd week after going for adds before starting to trail off.  So we are entering that week for all of the top 3 records.  But then you have to consider who is working what. Having 2 records that both have a chance at #1 is a hard position to be in as you don't want to misplay your hand and get neither.  

Should be fun to watch!  Lets talk about it on the internets, hit me up on Twitter!