IDOL LIVE predix: Carrie Underwood's 'Play On'

Hitting stores and digital retailers nationwide tomorrow is Play On, the latest release from Season4 champ Carrie Underwood. After making huge waves with her first two releases, Carrie looks to capitalize on good ol' fashioned promotion and a future no. 1 single in "Cowboy Casanova."

Play On will get a good amount of help from televised appearances by Carrie this week, including The Late Show with David Letterman tonight and Good Morning America tomorrow in addition to countless other radio station interviews and wall-to-wall coverage of the release on CMT.

Although Carrie's previous release, Carnival Ride, managed 527k copies in its debut week in October 2007, album sales as a whole have continued to depreciate since then. Therefore, even though Carrie remains popular and this is the first full new release from her in over two years, it would be conceivable that this album's first week sales will not eclipse those numbers.

As for competition, Carrie virtually has the whole week to herself, which will greatly increase her chances of getting a head start on the holiday shopping season. The fact that Play On will be beating the rush will increase its chances of being an impulse buy in the weeks to come when Idol fans are out purchasing the newest batch of releases from the franchise, but what will this mean for its launch week numbers?

Taking all these factors into consideration, it seems plausible that Play On will debut in the vicinity of 365k copies this week, and will most definitely pass the platinum benchmark by Christmas. On the Billboard 200 chart, the album will start out at #1, which will make it Carrie's third album to hit the top spot.

This of course is ahead of Some Hearts' 315k debut in November 2005 and behind Carnival Ride's maiden voyage, but is very healthy for this day and age.