IDOL LIVE predix: Jordin Sparks' 'Battlefield'; Brooke White's 'High Hopes & Heartbreak'

Season 6 champ Jordin Sparks is the second major Idol alum to release an album in the span of a week, and just like Daughtry's first album, Jordin's self-titled debut eventually was certified platinum. The two releases also were each released Thanksgiving week, albeit a year apart (2006 for Daughtry, 2007 for Jordin Sparks).

This fact makes predicting first week sales for Jordin's latest album Battlefield a bit trickier, as proved by my overambitious prediction for Leave This Town just one week ago. Another important factor to consider in predicting the kind of numbers the album will open to is the relevant competition.

Opening against Jordin are Demi Lovato, Brooke Hogan, Sugar Ray to name a few. Out of that crop, the biggest threat to Battlefield is Lovato's Here We Go Again, which is benefiting from a top-selling single and Disney-related promo from her Disney Channel show Sonny with a Chance. As for Hogan, her single is not faring nearly as well, and with limited promo she should expect a very soft release.

Jordin's first album opened at #10 on the Billboard 200 chart with 119.1k copies, but again, this was Thanksgiving week and nearly two years ago. The story this time around will undoubtedly be the fact that "Battlefield" is not half the single "Tattoo" was, which will diminish the chance of a big opening week. Although Jordin is a part of the hottest tour (Jonas Brothers) at the moment, and she has more than 200k followers on Twitter, on which she has been alerting fans about her album's release for weeks now, it appears that a safe bet for a prediction would be somewhere in the 65k range. As for where it will place on the BB 200, a Top 10 showing at #7 sounds about right.

As for Brooke White's first post-Idol album High Hopes & Heartbreak, an extremely healthy pre-release week on iTunes has earned it between 8-10k according to estimates. In its first week of nationwide release, a slightly higher take should be expected, probably somewhere around 16k. On the chart side of things, an increase to #35 seems like a plausible scenario.