ONE-DAY SALES: SPIKE THIS (UPDATE)

Viewership for Sunday night’s Grammy Awards may have been off compared to recent years, as Desperate Housewives addicts were unable to kick the habit. Nonetheless, early reports from retail indicate that the generally watchable show has inspired those who did tune in to shell out for the current releases of the key winners and performers.

The most significant beneficiaries of the post-Grammy buzz appear to be Ray Charles’ Genius Loves Company (Concord), which should be up 200% to 230-240k units, and Green Day’s American Idiot (Reprise), which is heading for a 100% increase to 245k, giving it the edge by a nose to land at #1 on next week’s chart. Usher’s Confessions (LaFace/ZLG) should also be up around 100%, putting it in the neighborhood of 165k.

Here’s how the rest of the field shapes up—and remember, these numbers are guaranteed to change before the horse race is over.

Grammy Nominees 2005 (Capitol): +100%, 140k-150k
U2 (Interscope): +120%, 90k
Maroon 5 (Octone/J/RMG): +90%, 90k
Alicia Keys (J/RMG): +120%, 70-80k
Gwen Stefani (Interscope): +40%, 75-80k
John Mayer (Aware/Columbia): +125%, 75k
Gretchen Wilson (Epic/Sony Nashville): +50%, 75k
Kanye West (Roc-A-Fella/IDJ): +240%, 50k
Tim McGraw (Curb): +50%, 50k
Joss Stone (S-Curve): Will more than double, to 50k-60k
Queen Latifah (Vector/Fl. Unit/Cr. Batt./A&M): +130-135%, 40-44k

For the week ending Sunday, Top 200 sales were up 25% over last week. Record sales were up a robust 13.9%, or 1.6m units, compared to a week ago, and up 2.6%/+300k units versus the comparable week in ’04. Total scans for the week were13 million on the nose. All that action helps a bit on the year to date, which is under last year by 6.6%/-4.6 million, with current releases down 8.4%/-3.6 million and catalog titles down 3.7%/-975k. Total scans for 2005 so far: 64.7 million.