Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Scotty McCreery won again this week.

In the battle of the Billboard charts, that is.

Last week, exclusive Walmart EPs were released featuring five songs performed on Idol by each of the top four finalists — Scotty, Lauren Alaina, James Durbin and Haley Reinhart.

This week, those EPs showed up on the Billboard chart for the first time.

Scotty McCreery topped the Season 10 Idols, landing at number 10 on the Billboard 200 with about 40,000 copies sold. His EP also ranked second for the week on Billboard’s country album chart.

Lauren Alaina was a solid second at 24th on the Billboard 200 and number six on the country album chart.

Following Scotty and Lauren were James Durbin at 31 on the Billboard 200 and seven among rock albums, and Haley Reinhart at number 37 on the Billboard 200.

Most of those rankings aren’t eye-popping.

But, consider this: Most of the material offered on these EPs was already available for download.

That means avid fans of these four had probably already purchased most of this music in other forms before.

I’ll recap where all the Idols landed this week on the Billboard chart a little later.