American Idol Flaws

I admit, I've become a huge AI fan this year. Up until today, I couldn't understand why certain people had not been voted off (Kristy Lee, Ramiele, Jason, and Syesha).

As you know if you've been watching the show, Itunes is offering exclusive downloads for their typical 99 cent fee. You can go onto the itunes store and preview the studio recordings (for the top 10 only). When you do this, you get a totally different feel for the artists.

Automatically, when Ramiele sang "Alone" last week, I hated it. It sounded as if she was screaming and yelling through most of the song. When you click on studio recording, she sounds amazing.

I think this is a flaw in the American Idol voting process. There's no telling how many people download, but Ryan Seacrest did say last week that if they tallied on the top downloads on itunes for the week, 5 of the top 10 would have been AI singers.

Many people go and listen to these studio recorded versions, which are much more polished than the live versions (except David Cook, he's just awesome). The voters then begin to vote for what the studio recordings sound like instead of their ability to perform live in front of the judges.

Thoughts?