Two years ago, Chris Daughtry's group Absent Element won a battle-of-the-bands contest. The prize was a gig at Raleigh's Alltel Pavilion at Walnut Creek -- early on a Saturday morning during a ticket-sales promotion. "We'd been under the assumption we'd be on the side stage inside," recalls Daughtry, calling from an "American Idol" tour stop in Hershey, Pa. "Instead, we wound up outside, no stage, in the parking lot. But whatever, it was a little closer to the stage than we'd been a couple of years earlier. And I'd still be there if I hadn't been on the show."

The McLeansville rocker probably won't be playing any parking lots anytime soon after his run on "American Idol," which a lot of people thought he should have won. Instead, he was voted off May 10 for a fourth-place finish, which he attributed to fans' being so certain he'd win that they didn't see the urgency in voting.

Taylor Hicks went on to claim the big prize, but Daughtry has plenty of good things going on. He's on the "American Idol" concert tour alongside Hicks, Albemarle's Kellie Pickler, Rockingham's Bucky Covington and other season-five finalists. A homecoming show at Greensboro Coliseum is set for July 30.

But that's just a windup for Daughtry's debut album. He recently signed with 19/RCA Records, which will release the album this fall. A producer has been selected, but Daughtry can't say who it is yet.

Ian Pirie, head of 19 Records' U.S. division, describes a lot of real and virtual activity on the album.

"We're flying people in and out of the tour to work with Chris in hotel rooms before shows," Pirie says. "The great thing about technology is, with a laptop and some gear, you can trade ideas by uploading and downloading demos and works in progress. And he's got a lot of songs he's written himself over the years, which we're helping develop as well. We're not starting from ground zero."

While "American Idol" draws the biggest televised audience this side of the Super Bowl, it's different from most sporting events in one key way. As soon as the Super Bowl ends, everybody forgets all about the loser. But "American Idol" losers can wind up doing as well as the winners, and occasionally even better. Consider Raleigh's Clay Aiken, 2003 runner-up, who has surpassed that year's winner, Ruben Studdard.

"It's been pretty good for people who didn't come in first," says Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming for New Jersey-based Edison Media research. "Kimberley Locke managed a decent-sized top-40 hit. Josh Gracin is having a pretty good country career. Mario Vasquez and Bo Bice have done well. They're not atypical. It gets your record onto a program director's desk, and it helps to have 'former "American Idol" contestant' to talk about. But from there, it's up to the record."

Daughtry's album will be atypical "American Idol" fare in several ways. First, it will be the most rock-oriented album anybody from the show has made. Daughtry impressed judges and fans as a rock singer, especially his versions of Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" (which is on the "Season 5 Encores" compilation album) and Fuel's "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)." The members of Fuel were so taken with Daughtry that they invited him to join the band to replace recently departed lead singer Brett Scallions. He turned down the offer.

Last year's runner-up, Bo Bice, was also a rocker. But Bice's 2005 album, "The Real Thing," was closer to pop-rock. Daughtry is having none of that.

"I feel that anything less than a rock album would be ridiculous for me," Daughtry says. "That's where my passion is, what comes out of me. I've been writing for 10 years, and I have to believe in a song before I can sing it. They have to come from me for it to be real.

"I've been writing with people I respect as writers, Ed Kowalczyk from Live, Carl Bell from Fuel. All kinds of people want to work with me, so it's great to have street cred and respect from other artists."

That's the other major idiosyncrasy about this project, that Daughtry is co-writing all the songs on his album. His will be the first album from the "American Idol" orbit with that distinction.

"We've had occasions where they co-wrote a few songs on their debut," says 19's Pirie. "But never to this degree. Given the fact that Chris has a long history of writing for his band, he's already accomplished in that area. When he sat down with a guitar and played some of his songs for us, we were all blown away. So our No. 1 priority is to give Chris the opportunity to write songs that affect him, and that reflect who he is as an artist."

As for the fate of Daughtry's old Absent Element mates in North Carolina, that's up in the air.

"I know they'll have a shot in auditions to be the band for the road," Daughtry says. "Whether or not they'll make it, that's out of my hands, and I don't know for sure where that lies."

Thanks to "American Idol," Daughtry will have built-in promotional advantages when his album comes out. Most important, he already has a level of visibility and name recognition that record labels usually spend millions of dollars and years of effort to build.

"As radio has become more fragmented, TV and movies have emerged as the great equalizer," says Edison Media's Ross. "Going back 20 years ago to Billy Vera's 'At This Moment' on 'Family Ties,' TV could put any kind of record on the national docket just because of its critical mass. But once everybody began trying to use TV to break music, its effectiveness was sort of diluted.

" 'American Idol' is the last shared experience with the power to put so many records on the docket like that," Ross adds. "It's harder and harder to get a record in front of enough people to make a difference. 'Idol' is a great way around that."

Still, that cuts two ways. Dick Hodgin, a local producer who serves as a judge on Fox 50's "Idol" equivalent "Gimme the Mike," says Daughtry faces the sort of pressure most people can't even imagine.

"He'll have the weight of the world on his shoulders," Hodgin says. "It's like going from the playground straight to the NBA Finals, with nothing in between -- no college, rookie year, summer league or any of that. But [Miami Heat coach] Pat Riley's putting you into a game once to see what you can do. Is it an enviable position? Absolutely. Is it unenviable? Absolutely."