The "Glee" juggernaut — music from the hit Fox dramedy about a struggling high school glee club — has sold over 1.8 million song downloads. Industry watchers have been speculating on the impact of such massive prior individual track sales on the recent CD release of "Glee: The Music, Vol. 1," a collection of 17 songs featured on the TV show.
Despite cannibalization by individual track sales, early indications suggest that the soundtrack will nonetheless be a success, though perhaps not to the degree of, say, the "High School Musical" CDs, which had a more traditional rollout.
The website Hits Daily Double has predicted that, based on first day sales, the "Glee" soundtrack will sell between 100K-125K copies and bow in second or third place on the upcoming Billboard album chart. HDD is predicting Carrie Underwood will top the chart, with "Glee" battling Andrea Bocelli for second place. Since issuing that early prediction, HDD has been reporting actual "Glee" CD sales figures tracking lower, with 20K sold based on 36 percent of sales reported.
Even with modest first-week sales, the CD is expected to get a huge boost from the show when it returns to the airwaves on Nov. 11 after a two-week hiatus for the World Series.
Official sales figures will be released on Wednesday.