Carrie Underwood Surpasses Kelly Clarkson As Top ‘American Idol’ Earner Options

[stuart]

http://www.andpop.com/2011/05/20/carrie-un...an-idol-earner/


Carrie Underwood has officially become ‘American Idol’s’ top earner, surpassing season 1 winner Kelly Clarkson.

As of May 16, Underwood’s album sales topped 12,296,000 and she’s moved more than 18,482,000 digital tracks since winning season 4.

Clarkson is close, though, selling 10,600,000 albums and 15,900,000 digital tracks since 2002.

Underwood has also spent a healthy chunk of the last two years on the road, racking up more money from touring. While Clarkson’s international presence is stronger than Underwood’s, who plays mostly to U.S. and Canadian audiences, she’s devoted less time touring and more time working on her as yet unreleased fifth album.

To compare the two, Clarkson’s tour revenues since her win is around $32,000,000, while Underwood has pulled in twice that amount since 2006, around $66,000,000.

As for the rest of the idols, we have rocker Chris Daughtry in third place with 6,104,000 album sales, while Clay Aiken comes in at fourth with 4,990,000 and Fantasia at fifth with 2,809,000.

Clarkson and Underwood are definitely my favourite ‘Idol’ winners, so I’m glad they’re on top. Underwood is lucky she has the country music scene on her side – that genre generates so much money, it’s ridiculous.