ONE-DAY SALES: DID HE STUDDARD?

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Christmas rush out there in retail-land, and this week, like last week, shoppers are rushing to buy J Records product.

That’s right: Hot on the heels of Alicia Keys’ major 625k showing for her sophomore effort comes American Idol’s Ruben Studdard with his major-label debut. According to early reports from national accounts, his Soulful is currently on track to sell 330k-350k.

That number (along with all the numbers with which we are about to lace your dome) could go up, given that this, the second week following Thanksgiving, is typically a big one for retailers, all those last-minute shoppers in our material-goods-oriented society begin to panic and buy, buy, buy.

Studdard also has a heavy slate of TV appearances scheduled for the week. Could the combination of mass-media exposure and a big sales weekend push his first-week number closer to 400k? It’s certainly a possibility.

Meanwhile, will Studdard’s number be big enough to best labelmate Keys? Depending on how her second-week number “settles” and how much oomph Studdard gets out of the weekend, we could very well see an intra-label brawl for #1 on next week’s chart.

Any way you slice it, however, Clive Davis’ J will claim both #1 and #2 next week.

Other records hitting the streets yesterday are moving at a rapid clip as well: Musiq’s Soul Star (Def Jam/IDJ) appears headed for a first week of over 200k, while the Westside Connection’s Terrorist Threats (another in a series of strong releases for Capitol) and Avant’s Private Room (Geffen) each look like they’ll wrap the week at about 125k.

The Offspring’s Splinter (Columbia) and Big Tymers’ Big Money Heavyweight (Cash Money/Universal), meanwhile, are each on track to sell upwards of 100k for the week. And just behind them are Hoobastank and Kelis, whose The Reason (Island/IDJ) and Tasty (Arista) look like they’ll come in at around 60-70k apiece.