Idol Chatter & Voice Views

The Voice Top 10 includes, from left, Rd Marlow, Keisha Renee, Davon fleming, Shi’Ann Jones, Addison Agen, Ashland Craft, Noah Mac, Brooke Simpson, Chloe Kohanski and Adam Cunningham (NBC Photo)

An important message to fans of Chloe Kohanski, Addison Agen and Red Marlow: Downloads aren’t going to be enough.

Consider it a tale of caution after watching what happened to Lauren Duski on Season 12 of The Voice.

If there was a king or queen of iTunes during Season 12, it was Lauren. She hit number one twice. She topped Chris Blue every week on the iTunes singles chart.

Yet when it was time to announce the Season 12 winner, it was Chris Blue hoisting the trophy as confetti rained down upon him.

Why?

Well, if Lauren did truly finish second, it’s because Chris Blue fans took advantage of other means of voting.

Last week, fans of Chloe, Addison and Red vaulted them into the Top 10 on the iTunes singles chart. That means they not only had the distinction of scoring the most popular performances of Top 11 night, they also earned bonus points for their efforts.

But consider this: Each of those downloads initially counted as one vote. Landing in the Top 10 meant they counted as five votes.

Heck, you can cast more votes than that — many more — with a few clicks of a button on thevoice.com. The show allows 10 votes per contestant.

And that’s 10 votes per email address. Who among us doesn’t have multiple email addresses?

The show now counts song streams on Apple Music as votes, too. Heck, you don’t even have to listen to the entire song, just a 30-second snippet. In 300 seconds — just five minutes — you can cast 10 streaming votes.

Even if your favorite lands in the Top 10 on iTunes, that’s twice the number of votes your download is worth.

I mentioned Chloe, Addison and Red above because they topped iTunes last week. Obviously, the rationale works for any remaining contestant on The Voice.

And voting by multiple methods is only going to become more important over the next couple of weeks. Two singers go home Tuesday night. Next week, it will be four.

Here’s a review of the various Voice voting methods. It isn’t hard to envision a single fan casting 100 votes or more for their favorite by taking advantage of all of them.

So download away.

But don’t rely on downloads alone to make your favorite The Voice Season 13 champ.

1. The Voice app: As long as you’re 13 or older, you can vote through The Voice app after downloading it. Through the app, you can vote up to 10 times per artist per Facebook account or email address.

2. Online voting: Again, as long as you’re 13 or older, you can head to The Voice website and vote there. And again, voting is limited to 10 votes per artis per Facebook account or email address.

3. Xfinity voting: You can vote once per artist per Xfinity account, Facebook account or email address by using your X1 Xfinity box or going to xfinity.com. You cannot vote by both methods using the same account.

4. Apple Music voting: You can also vote up to 10 times per artist by streaming their song through Apple Music. A 30-second stream of a song counts as a vote. The streaming must be done by the Apple Music account holder. As with downloads, steams of songs outside the overnight voting window still count toward the artist’s cumulative vote total for the finale. In other words, if you’ve missed streaming eligible songs from past episodes, you can still help your favorite by doing so.

Here’s the definition of eligible songs, straight from the official voting rules, and it sounds as though even songs before the live shows started count: “Eligible songs means each song that an artist performs during the show that is available for purchase via iTunes and streaming via Apple Music, aside from certain non-eligible duet songs and group performance songs.

As for the official voting window, that runs from 8 p.m. the night of a performance show to noon the next day, eastern time.

Ranking the Top 10 on The Voice
iTunes results from Top 11 night
The instant save claims another West Coast victim