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‘The Voice’ Season 9: iTunes Ranking, Twitter, And How We’ve All Been Duped

By Toni Matthews
Published on: 07:47 PST, Nov 29, 2015

Season 9 of the NBC series The Voice has been ridiculously hard to predict — at least concerning who would be leaving. The easiest way in the past to get an idea of who would be in danger would be to check out the rankings on iTunes. Without fail in seasons past, the singers with the lowest ranked sales would also make up the Voice Bottom 3 (which is suddenly the Bottom 2).

Why is it a system that has been previously accurate to a fault in predicting both the Bottom 3 and the singers most likely to go home failing miserably? Well, there may be a few reasons for this. And one of them may harken back to the India Carney debacle during The Voice Season 8.

But first, let’s look at what iTunes has gotten right this about The Voice season.

First, I noted that each of the persons named safe, according to the PopVortex iTunes ranking results, were safe. This may not seem like a big deal until you consider who went home last week: Evan McKeel. While I didn’t peg him as in a position to win, objectively, he out-sang Korin Bukowski. He was also my long-shot for the Bottom because, as I said, it’s possible that voting blocs for other singers (Braiden Sunshine, Shelby Brown) could lift them out of danger. That’s exactly what happened.

While iTunes ranking predicted the singers most likely in danger based on sales alone, that ranking system is not able to account for dedicated voting blocs who call, text, or use the Voice app. Even so, the interest that people have in buying music based on good performances usually indicates which artists are most safe.

If left to predict “most safe,” it seems iTunes is more likely than not to get it right. It’s when other factors are added in that the iTunes ranking is thrown off. So how is it that iTunes, for all its perceived importance, has been failing to predict just who leaves the show? The answer is surprisingly simple.

First of all, we’ve all been duped as to what helps someone stay on The Voice. It’s not the Voice app, iTunes, the phone lines, or texting. It’s social media, Twitter in particular. I’m particularly ashamed of how quickly I forgot this important tidbit, given how I examined each and every contestant’s social media following ahead of the Top 20.

What I found made the fact that Korin Bukowski stayed on The Voice less of a shock. If you go to her Twitter account, you’ll note she has thousands more followers than Evan McKeel. This is extremely significant when you factor in the instant save. The instant save pretends that all viewers have an equal voice across the board in saving their favorite.

I witnessed first hand that this was a blatant lie. Enter India Carney.

Now, it’s not that India Carney had a huge following, but one of her major Twitter supporters did: Ansel Elgort of Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars fame. At the time I first wrote about it, Ansel had more than 2 million followers, who themselves could reach millions more. He would get his millions of followers to tweet about saving India Carney.

This resulted in India Carney becoming a top world trending tweet. For that to happen, a phenomenal amount of tweets must be sent out each second. And she often trended for hours after the live results show was over.

I addressed the odd nature of the situation and noted two things happened immediately afterwards. Ansel deleted the offending tweet, and India Carney went home. Yet, the instant save remains.

I think social media followings of individual Voice singers is something that fans cannot afford to ignore at this point. It’s not enough to look at iTunes ranking to see who’s headed home — the Twitter factor can be of major importance. It’s something that will prove a huge advantage to some on The Voice and massive disadvantage to others — and their singing talents may soon become irrelevant.

What other reasons do you think the iTunes ranking has been off? Share your thoughts below!

[Image via Screen Grab From The Voice Official YouTube Channel]

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