The thanks price is a good point but japan has a very single-oriented music industry. That's why compilations generally sell better than studio albums relative to the artistes so i strongly feel that people should stop comparing A Complete's sales with say Heart Station's. Instead, why not compare with her recent Best releases and studio albums, i think that's more relavant. So when a single compilation is released, the interest level may even be higher than when a studio album is released. Normally fans who own studio albums will buy the compilation and so will casual and non-fans who are interested in some of her singles (which are promoted vigourously on popular media) but was never interested enough in ayu to buy them since it's more worth it to buy a compilation. You realize album tracks that do not appear on singles are seldom promoted. So with such a huge single compilation, i think it's natural that some of us were expecting great things with A Complete. It just didn't happen on that large a scale though. I also found it confusing at first that compilations sold so well in japan. But with some observation and familiarity with the music scene, you'll realize that's the case.

Japan is a lot different that the US music industry. Best albums arent really that important over here.

^Precisely. Generally best albums are viewed as a waste of money in many other parts of the world but somehow, it's not so in japan haha... Ayu is the only singer i buy best albums of. Other japanese singers, nah. And as for the western singers i like, they come out with albums like once every 2 or 3 years and none of them had a best album yet!

It depends on who is releasing the best album.

If it's someone BIG like ABBA or Michael Jackson, there will definitely be high unit sales. If it's some wannabe-popular-person.. you shouldn't even expect anything lol.

A Compilation of Singles sell very well to the casuals who don't normally buy the artist's releases.

But, Ayu has already sold >50 million copies of her releases to the consumer (most of them casuals) in the past 10 years.

Hard to find "new" casuals to target the promotional activities, LoL

Speaking of which, these best albums she's been doing has been raising her album-sale average. Like A COMPLETE + GUILTY is around 1.2 million+, and like A BEST 2 + Secret was about 2 million..

Had she only released original albums, her "album sales" would be a lot lower..

Wow! She cleared a 100k. That's great! At this point, it looks like she''ll prolly stop at or near the 850k mark. Her second isn't as strong as Best Fiction...or Heat Station at that. :tired Perhaps she'll keep it steady next week like this. :)

and because it's Utada Hikaru. :heart

Since when has Ayumi manage to really beat Utada Hikaru in average sales?

I just have to say it's doing a lot better than I actually hoped it would, so I'm pretty happy. I don't expect it to hit 1 mil, but honestly, this is doing pretty well.

Seriously. Ayumi's saving grace in that matter is that she produces singles and albums by the truckload, whereas Utada Hikaru can take years to put out an album. She may not be able to match average album sales, but Ayumi is still a force to be reckoned with (just, a different one).

Well, for average sales, she's never beaten Hikki [as Hikki's average is well above a million due to her first 4 albums or so and the best...]~

But in terms of material, Ayu has her beat. Ayu manages to please her fans and still be amazing (imo) whereas Hikki kinda just stops gears for a looooooooooong time..

Edit: Someone speedposted b4 me! OMG.

That has always been the point in the whole ayu vs hikki sales discussion, if you leave tie-ins and taste in music out of the picture.

If you compare to food, ayu keeps feeding the casual listener so a lot of people are gonna be like "nah, we're still full, we'll eat at the next meal". With hikki, she starves people and when she finally releases something, people are like "OMG must eat!!"

^ lol good analogy

What would you suppose would happen if Ayu disappeared, like went into hiatus and then came back with something new? Do you think an album after that would be a guaranteed million seller? Do you think people would realize what a world without Ayu would be like and freak out? (I know I would lol)

Personally, Ayu on hiatus would drive her crazy. Ayu + no work = !??

With Hikki she just blogs about random stuff and her bear, so she's fine.. but Ayu.. she needs teh workinz.

^ Her bear o.0 :laugh

Anyway im interested to see what will happen if ayu really went into hiatus; good or adverse effect on her future?...but to be honest, similar to jbrat2219 i will freak out/feel queasy if ayu really does that.

To elaborate on the bear thing:
Hikki once fashioned / sewed together a life size bear suit that she put on and had someone follow her around as she went to her record company's offices using her bear's ID tag [Kuma Chang]..

She stuck it on her blog and.. it's on YouTube.

She could still be working, but out of the public eye for a while, like no promotion or new singles or anything. But then she comes back with this project she's been working on and it blows our minds away... something like that! I know Ayu can't stand not to work, I wouldn't wish that on her. But I'm very curious to see how the public would react to No Ayu.

Well, she technically did that for most of this year.

I think she'll do what she did with GUILTY. She's gonna wonder about whether or not to release, and she's gonna be like: "I WANNA DO A TOUR NEXT YEAR WITH NEW SONGS. UGH." Perhaps that's why GUILTY was titled as such.. because she felt guilty due to the fact that she didn't have the energy to make a new album, but she did it anyway.

But still.

Compilation albums always sell much more than studio albums in Japan, so I find it odd that A COMPLETE isn't selling THAT much more than her studio albums. It isn't even surpassing (miss)understood and Secret.

^ That's depressing....

And this year is not the "out of the public eye" thing I'm talking about, I mean NOTHING, no tours, no promotion, no tv, no nothing.... maybe a TA message every now and then to insinuate a big surprise, and then she comes out with a hit single or something after several months to a year with other surprises envolved. That's what I mean.

Well, a year of no Ayu would mean for me, a year of no AHS.

If you haven't noticed, if Ayu goes on a major hiatus, I kind of disappear along with her. There's no real point for me here if Ayu isn't doing anything, lol.