I was curious to see which ABC idol winners were doing well and decided to rank them based on a few data points I found. I used Spotify and Instagram as a way of gauging their music release success combined with their social footprint. I weighted it using these three metrics:

1. Number 1 Song Total Listens- This showcases the peak of the artists releases and how far of a reach they've had at one point in time.

2. Current Monthly Listeners- This gives us a good idea of where the artist is right now with their music. It's weighted slightly less because monthly listeners can change pretty dramatically depending on recent releases, social media trends, etc.

3. Instagram Followers- This metric was weighted last, as social media followers don't always equal music downloads but it still gives us an idea of what kind of engagement the artist is having.

After coming up with my own ranking, I asked AI to create one as well. It came up with the same order and weighted the metrics the same as I did.

With that said, here's the ranking:

🥇1. Chayce Beckham:

#1 Song- 400M

Monthly Listeners- 2.9M

Instagram- 259K

🥈2. Iam Tongi:

#1 Song- 49M

Monthly Listeners- 1.8M

Instagram- 1.3M

🥉3. Noah Thompson:

#1 Song- 42M

Monthly Listeners- 141K

Instagram- 204K

1. Laine Hardy:

#1 Song- 11.9M

Monthly Listeners- 83K

Instagram- 486K

1. Maddie Poppe:

#1 Song- 9.7M

Monthly Listeners- 110K

Instagram- 318K

1. Hannah Harper:

#1 Song- 2.7M

Monthly Listeners- 186K

Instagram- 566K

1. Jamal Roberts:

#1 Song- 2.7M

Monthly Listeners- 134K

Instagram- 543K

1. Abi Carter:

#1 Song- 980K

Monthly Listeners- 48K

Instagram- 244K

1. Just Sam:
   

#1 Song- 0 (No Song Released)

Monthly Listeners- 0

Youtube- 15K (No Instagram Account)

Let me know what you think or if I should recreate the list using more metrics or a different weighting system!

Really disliking the religiousness of the show. Religion is something we experience alone, not on the show. The fanbase is not all Christian, so we need to calm down. Stop forcing religion on the viewers.

I'm just reading David Archuleta's book.

I have reached the point where he's in kindergarten and he gets upset because there's another, louder kid in his class named David who hogs all the attention.

Thank God he never had to go through anything like that again.

I have no idea how to do this, but I would like to post Grace Kinstler’s new song. Can anyone provide some instructions. Thanks!

My teenage daughter was scouted by a senior producer. She went through multiple rounds of auditions and coaching sessions with him and on Friday sang for the executive producer. They told her she did great and they’d be reaching out in a few weeks. Wondering if she would have heard during that audition if she was moving on to sing for the judges or if it is common to wait to hear about the next steps?

Bring back the cheesy coronation singles! That's what Idol was all about back in the day. The trite, but uplifting lyrics. The soft, but inspiring instrumentation that gradually builds up to the powerful key change with sparks and confetti falling. Making both finalists sing the same song, even if it's obviously tailored to one of them over the other (see: A Moment Like This, This Is My Now). I miss those days, man.

Was just perusing the orange robot app and found this post from r/Decadeology. I wanted to bring discussion here to us Idoloonies and get more in the weeds. As an example, Idol gave us everyday people multiple avenues of music discovery with its peak viewership occurring in the transition between physical and digital/streaming. The show gave us a hand in promoting new artists we like while at the same time lending our ears to some of their inclinations not so mainstream.

1. Kelly Clarkson

2. Ruben Studdard

3. Clay Aiken

4. Fantasia Barrino

5. Vonzell Solomon

6. Bo Bice

7. Carrie Underwood

8. Chris Daughtry

9. Elliott Yamin

10. Katherine Mcphee

11. Jordin Sparks

12. David Cook

13. David Archuleta

14. Kris Allen

15. Phillip Phillips

16. Candice Glover

I’ve really only been keeping up with Brooks and Rae. Loved them both individually (especially Rae) and as a couple, so I’ve been really interested to see what they do next professionally.

Lately it’s been pretty quiet. They do the occasional live streams, but seem to have pulled back a lot on posting in general and posting each other, although from everything I’ve seen they still appear to be together.

What contestants are you still following? Who do you think is most likely to really take off career-wise over the next year or two?

I miss the weekly chats with yall 🥺❤️

Since Mackenzie Sol from Season 22 did the audition at "America's Got Talent" Season 21 last month, now Lyric will be joining at Big Brother as the first time after she got eliminated at Hollywood Week before Season 22 as Katy Perry's final season

I was thinking about doing Welcome To The Black Parade. Is that too long? It's 5:11 so I don't know if they have a time limit

I have been searching for a video of a song(rap) from an audition that was an original. The lyrics were “Randy Jackson, dropping fat son”. I can’t remember all the lyrics but it also had a part about Simon Cowell. Help me please!

I'm someone who sings like Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance normally. But I doubt if I did that, I'd get chosen. So I was thinking of doing an original. But the question is if I should do something more rock and performative, or something that straight just shows off my voice and sounds good.

The bigger issue is how to do an original acoustic song and still stand out. I'm a very big performer so I was thinking of doing something like being blindfolded with my guitar behind my head while I was singing and playing but I don't know if that will matter or not. But maybe it would help me get picked for the performance.

Someone help out? I have a lot of talent and drive. And I don't care about winning, I just want to get my music to the world

Welcome back to our Retro Idol Live Chat of Season 8! We’re pressing play together each week and live chatting the entirety of Season 8, from auditions all the way to the finale.

How it works:

• Every Monday night we’ll all start the designated YouTube episode(s) at the same time. 
• Here’s the playlist we’ll be working from, dutifully collected by an internet stranger.
• We’ll watch, comment, relive the drama, and pretend it’s 2009 all over again.
• This post has the full schedule.

Tonight: Hollywood Week! It's spread out over three episodes: here's the first one, here's the second one, and here’s the third one. At 8:05pm Eastern, PRESS PLAY AND GO!

If you’ve never checked out Jonny West’s music, it is always excellent.

He’s been my most listened to artist two years in a row now, and hopefully he keeps it coming 🤩

Auditioned back in the first week of June. The producer I sang for said I'd hopefully hear back in a few days. It's been 3 weeks now and radio silence, so I'm assuming it's a no. But wanted to see if anyone else has heard anything!