NBC’s ‘The Voice’ preview: iTunes favors Josh Kaufman, Kristen Merlin, Christina Grimmie

Usually, you don’t get a sense of who is safe and who is not on a singing competition unless well after the show has finished airing. That’s what makes “The Voice” a little bit different, since you get a good opportunity to see how most of the votes are implemented in real time courtesy of iTunes.

We’ve done this feature in years past, and we’ve always cautioned with it that this data is not the only factor in who stays and who goes. However, it does play an enormous part most of the time, and rarely are those performing very well in iTunes in any danger of going home.

As of around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, the following singers have all likely secured their position in the next round.

Josh Kaufman – Josh’s stellar “Stay With Me” cover is hovering around the top 10, meaning that he probably won this night by a mile. We do have to admit some regret in not rating Josh #1 on the night after re-watching the performance a few times. Christina Grimmie was great, but there were so many layers here that we’re starting to think this is one of the best performances ever on the show.

Kristen Merlin – Her performance of “Stay” benefited somewhat from public sympathy, but before the microphone issue, she was really tremendous. We’re glad that she is sticking around seemingly, and we’d find it very funny if the last country singer is not on Blake Shelton’s team.

Jake Worthington – While Kristen is just inside the top 50, Jake is right out of it for now with his Travis Tritt cover. This is what we call the Blake Shelton bump; there wasn’t that much special about this song, but Blake knows what his audience likes, and they’ll follow him to the ends of the earth.

Christina Grimmie – We’re somewhat surprised that Grimmie is outside of the top 50 right now with “Dark Horse,” but you also have to remember that many of her fans are younger, know her from YouTube, and may be less inclined to actually buy things. She’s got the biggest social-media audience out of anyone. She has over 400,000 Twitter followers; meanwhile, Jake’s the next-highest on this list with over 17,000.

We’ll be back tonight with our full review of the results show, so be on the lookout for that! Also, sign up now to get further updates worth singing about via our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: NBC