That's a much lower first day number for B'z than I expected D:

Anyway I think Ayu has a real good chance of getting 100K+ this week!

Today's sales are pretty good ^-^b

haha. I doubt if it sells lower than 100K...

my expectation about 120K+

i will be very loyal)) not less than 150k)))

It has almost reached 600,000 copies!

oh wow i was expecting B'z to have a higher first day sales o_o (granted thats still pretty high...) but anyway, go ayu~~

Gone for 20 hours and this thread has exploded. Nothing like a release to brighten ayu's forum.

Truehappiness, i think your revenue estimation is quite conservative given that ayu's CD+DVD to CD only sales ratio is like 4 to 1. Didn't quite realise the money her releases are bringing in this year... Thanks for the calculations.

The funny thing about ayu tie-ins is that they don't seem more popular than her regular singles. For example Dearest, it sold around the same amount as endless sorrow and NEVER EVER and Heaven as fairyland and STEP you. I guess games and anime just need songs so for me there's not much to read into it. I know very little about hikki but i thought flavour of life was a kick butt song before i knew it was a drama tie-in. I was thinking maybe tie-ins tend to sell better because the song quality is generally better? Not solely based on the fact that it's a tie-in. Like the only songs of Do as Infinity i find above average are tie-ins. It was funny because i had established 2 of their songs as my favourites and a few years later when i watched inuyasha, THEN i realized they were theme songs.

Loving her 1st week sales (sort of given up the million thingy). Was hoping today's sales can surpass monday's but it's ok, the 5 figure index is encouraging.

I'm going to recalculate my data so that I don't account for tax. Apparently I used tax in all of my formulas before. LOL.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT CLAIMING THAT AYU HERSELF MAKES THIS MUCH. I am just calculating how much her releases are making for avex. Is that really so wrong? For some reason I think I was misunderstood along the way, but whatever.

Note: I took the average of CD+DVD / CD only sales so as to make it fair since CD+DVDs tend to sell a lot more.. but.. eeeh. You never know.

MW sales according to avex: 253,209

MW revenue: 354,492,600 yen

ASIA TOUR 2007 A ~Tour of Secret~'s "sales": 75,905 (so far)

AT07 revenue so far: 364,344,000 yen

ayu-mi-x 6's sales: 88,585

ayu-mi-x revenue: 210,920,885 yen

COUNTDOWN LIVE 2007-2008 A ~Anniversary "sales": 74,485 (so far)

CDL07-08's revenue so far: 357,528,000 yen

A COMPLETE ~ALL SINGLE~'s sales (so far): 538,876 (so far without the first day of the 2nd week)

A COMPLETE's revenue so far: 2,206,697,220 yen

GUILTY's sales: 568,288

GUILTY's revenue: 1,932,179,200 yen

New data without the taxes:
Total revenue gained so far for 2008:
5,426,161,905 yen = 51,434,588 USD = 36,190,957 EUR

Old data with taxes:
Total revenue gained so far for 2008:
5,692,536,110 yen = 53,840,007 USD = 38,070,999 EUR

Doesn't really make that much of a difference but eh. lol.

it hits 500k mark for first week! that's great! congrats Ayu!!!

^ Thx truehappiness.

Wow, and it just came from Ayu alone. man they are rich.

And this is really off topic but because I read about that husband of Hikki did all that concert stuff. I used to highly respect Hikki because she could manage both her career life and and her marriage life. Now that she divorced, I gradually disrespect her (that goes to Namie too). I mean, when u become an artist, u become a public figure. I am not gonna say that everybody should be perfect but at least prove to us (me) that u can handle it well. But, it is good that they didn't go as low as Britney. And this is just my personal opinions. (Please don't mad at me^^)
Now I am just hoping that my 2 other goddesses, Ayumi n Kumi, won;t be like that.

that's great but ?

When we Collect the 2Nd Week = 29,658

How it come 50,419

But good work Ayu ^^

^ U have to multiply it by 1.7, this number is margin of error or something

This is really off-topic, but I had to give my opinion. I don't see why artists like Hikki or Namie who have divorced should be disrespected. Divorce isn't a bad thing. If you don't want to be with your wife/husband anymore but of x reason, than why should you? If it's keeping you from being happy, why not?

Do you have something against divorced people? Their personal life is their business as far as I'm concerned <_<; I'm glad in Japan for the most part, people respect that.

Anyway, thank you truehappiness for the recalculations! Like you said, there isn't that much of a difference xD;

I thought the only misunderstood thing was between revenue and profits. Of course ayu doesn't make that much i'm sure everyone understood that. US53 million is great i suppose in japan. But i think of madonna's 100+million income and wonder how that happened. But yeah apples and oranges...

I also think that as long as the artiste's personal life doesn't get in the way of their work quality, it shouldn't be an issue. That's why i have never commented on what happened to ayu last year. It shouldn't be discounted of course but work and life should be separate i believe, as far as it is possible. I would like this week's sales to be at least 100k. I think it's highly possible if the sales index stays within 5 figure territory.

It's taboo in Asia and especially Japan. But I agree. If anything, it made me respect Namie even more that she managed to maintain her career and be a single Mom. (basically unheard of in Japan) And also that unlike most American artists who have bad things happen to their personal life - Namie didn't go off the deep end and become totally irresponsible.

That is true, but Ayu also has done many tie ins. Off the top of my head - Seasons, Endless Sorrow, Voyage, forgiveness, and Love Since 99 were all tied in with dramas. In fact you could argue her rise to success began when Love Since 1999 was used as a drama theme song, which led to her first #1 - so it's not just Hikki. But it does seem Hikki has a much better eye for what to tie up her songs with than Ayu does (or avex?) because none of the dramas Ayu has been tied up with have been considered classics. Where as Hikki has had three really big ones with Majo no Jouken, Hana Yori Dango 2, and now Last Friends.

edit: oops sorry, didn't read your later post that listed the dramas ayu had tie ins with. :)

Ayu really should consider putting more of her songs in Dramas again. Not sure why thats not happening.

btw, as to the topic about Hikki's concerts - I've seen a few of them and while I like her songs, her concerts are pretty boring. Just like in her tv lives, she doesn't have much stage presence. That's why I always see her as more of a great studio artists rather than great performer.

ok, back to our regularly scheduled oricon discussion.

Being a single mom is difficult, and being one while juggling a superstar career goes above and beyond. I may have my issues with BEST FICTION, but I have a ton of respect for Namie Amuro for taking care of her son and her job without compromising either. (I wonder if having a child made her work even harder? She definitely deserves all the success she gets.)

Remember, marriage is a union between two people. If anyone is going to claim that Utada Hikaru or Namie Amuro "failed," remember - there were husbands in that equation too. It wasn't marriage they couldn't handle - it was spending the rest of their lives with someone who didn't make them as happy as they could have.

I thought they both got divorced with their husbands because of conflicting schedules and they didn't see each other often... maybe I'm mistaken, it was either one or the other, or both.

That was Hikki. Most likely not Namie. I mean TRF wasn't exactly doing much at the time and comparatively Namie's career was quiet then too. The likely reason for Namie's divorce was that it was a shot gun wedding. They tried to do the right thing by getting married after she got pregnant but maybe found that in the end they just weren't right for each other. :shrug From what I understand though, they both have a good relationship still and the son spends time with both of them.

I think Ayu's tie-ins are not that strong (except for Inuyasha, maybe?), but Lumix and these other ones I don't think that help that much in sales. Same for animes in general, being in one doesn't mean success, I think Dearest would be almost the same even if it wasn't featured in Inuyasha (although it helped the song become a classic .
But there are some dramas that really boost sales. Like in Utada's case, her song was featured in Hana Yori Dango, that's really popular in Japan. I think the single would still have sold relatively good without the tie-in but it probably helped sales in general. Madonna had a tie-in in a drama recently and it really helped the sales of Hard Candy, and the song isn't even a single from the album, so it helped in the promotion. That clearly happened in NANA days, Mika and Yuna sold really well by being featured in the first movie, but as you said, the quality of the songs were superb as well.
I think tie-ins help only if the drama/anime/whatever are successful.. If they aren't that popular, the sales aren't affected that much only by being featured ^^'

I do think Ayumi (or Avex) needs to be more careful in their tie-ins. Although she seems to do fine with the panasonic commercials and such, a well-known drama really does a better job. It does a better job of looping in casual listeners.

Did any of the songs in GUILTY got a tie-in beside fated?

Granted, I was really really tired of Flavor of Life by the end of Hana Yori Dango 2, but I'm in the minority here.