Still think that not overpromoting is a good thing for her...

^^ :yes
Hopefully avex won't be a buttface next year and give Ayu some proper promotion. :mad But yeah, not TOO much. D:

I wonder how she'll do with better promotion, I hope NL can chart longer than Duty. :)

lol the 8-song broadcast on a-nation 09 was avex's reward for Ayu!

Can anyone tell me how many members (exactly) TA has? *offtopic a bit, sorry*

^ definitely less than tvxq's fanclub if that's what you're getting at.

I don't really get all this complaining about the promo. Ayu's name is big enough that people will know she has an album out, that's not the issue. Ever think that maybe people just don't like the material? Or they're just not interested enough to buy it? Word of mouth is one of the best forms of promo... that's how A Song for XX sold in the first place.

She might be a big name but it doesn't mean that people besides her fans or maybe some casual listeners check if she is releasing an album.

I think that more outdoors promotion would help not the TV/mags.
The album had a potential to at least sell 400,000-450,000 imo concerning the lack of big outdoors promo and the changing ayu style in the album (more up beat than depresive, deep, dark songs). This type of album was just new. You can compare it to LOVEppears because of the dance<>electro pop thingy but really, it's nothing similar to it (or any of her albums). If at all it might have been like a LOVEppears lite and so are the sales lite.

@Mitkki No, that's not what I'm getting at.

Based on your logic Sunrise should've sold way more than it did, but it didn't because it didn't appeal to people's interests. Reviews for Sunrise are flooded with 1 star ratings on amazon jp just like how NEXT LEVEL's top 3 ratings are of 1 star vs GUILTY's 5 star ratings.
You can promote something as much as you like but it's only going to sell to some point due to many other factors. Obviously promo will help sales but it only significantly boosts sales when an artist hasn't broken-through yet and clearly this is not the case. I wouldn't call NEXT LEVEL trucks parading around shibuya and stands being set up outside major record stores light promo anyway since that's where the sales come from.
(and LOVEppears >>>>>>>>>>>> NEXT LEVEL by FAR)

Sunrise ~LOVE is ALL~ just did as its tie-ined drama did.
Average.
And it's not like Sunrise had huge outdoors promo.
And we know how TV/Magazine promotion of just few (5-6) help. (They don't) not to get up sales anyway and for most they don't.
Sunrise wasn't a hit alright but it still did average, like ayu's status as of late.
As I said if she won't come with a hit (not just a song that most would agree that is great) but a real hit, and avex would manage her promotion and all correctly, she will be able to rise up again.
While she keeps being on the "doing what my hardcore fans like" side it won't happen. At the end of the day TA's fans numbers keep rising slowly but if she relies on satisfying them rather then "smash" the public (And trying to "smash" both) then yeah, average numbers will stay with the normal decreases.

For me - LOVEppears>>>>>>>Every album exists on the world lol.

I agree 100% with ayumisrael.
Also, I really don't see why you needed to bring up THSK... LOL.

If there is something I'm pretty sure, is that ayu is not trying to please TA Members with her music, usually when she releases some reused stuff, it appeals to the general public (summer/winter singles)
-
Japanese people are pretty tired of Ayu, over promoting her like she was doing back at her peak would just kill her image for good. She is having some time away from the spotlights (compared to how much she promoted before) and even if this may affect her sales by people not knowing she is releasing, it also prevents her from getting even older to Japanese eyes (considering people over there talks about her like she had a 60 years non-stop career with 3 studio albums a year).
-
And also, she didn't had any song that catch the general public interest (maybe Days, I wish I had a friend living on Japan to ask how big the song was), but for sure not a smash hit like Seasons-M-Dearest-Voyage. And that's normal considering Voyage is only 7 years old (Namie for example needed almost 11 years between her biggest and final big hit from the 90s, Can You Celebrate and her first BIG hit from the 00s, New Look), once your image gets tired, you need to wait until a new generation discovers you... So, she is doing average, thanks God she is not selling 20k per single and 100k per album (as it would be expected)... It's pretty much like Madonna between 1992 and 2000 xD

That makes a lot of sense, I guess we don't have anything to worry about really considering almost every artists has lags in their career. :)

I don't know why either but even ayu did. :dead2
I guess I was just getting tired of reading fangirls' proclamations about how they have the biggest fanclub membership in avex/asia/the world/the universe/whatever.

I agree with everything you said.
Though for trying to satisfy general public or fans, you could be right,
I still myself which of them for 100% but to me it looked like more for the hardcore fans for the reason that her singles first weeks revolved around the same t2m-S/S MW/D/G/R/S so it's like all of the fans are hurrying to get them (and as we know TA has more than 70,000 people).
So that's why I mainly thought it would be for the fans that them all buy it.
But you might be right and she tried to satisfy the general public.
I'm unsure about it.

With the rest of what you wrote 100% agree.

Well I think it's pretty obvious I have the biggest fanclub in the entire of Asia. ;)

That's true, even though it got nothing with my question obviously.

^ lol my bad, seeing your avatar/sig gave me the sensation of being at soompi or something.

Well... IMO she was discovering herself as an artist doing whatever she from ASFXX to I am..., from Rainbow to (miss)understood she started trying new things and experiement more, even with the singles, here she already knew what she liked to do... The sales decreased a lot and she started to try to please general public again, so, we got very safe summer singles and winter singles based mostly on old hits (but even so, she kept experiementing with the other singles and album tracks). Finally, on Next Level, she started to follow the trend, so she "eletropoped" herself and released a winter ballad on the mold of koda kumi ones (Days), but even so, she still IMO kept the Ayu feeling to everything.

So... IMO right now she is trying to get the general public again by following the trend without killing her own personality on her music (after all, this is what make her interesting on the first place)

Even if this is only a opinion... the number of ayu videos uploaded and comented by japanese people on youtube is increasing (and not only old ones, a-nation'09 videos were uploaded by japanese... and a lot of the comments are on japanese). She seens to be gaining more attention as a performer since At08

I agree with you about Loveappears. But for the other statement, I would actually say that she isn't doing what many hardcore fans like. I mean, most of her hardcore fans are likely to have joined TA during her ultra popular era (albums 1-4). We really don't know if TAs numbers have remained stable, increased, or decreased. The hardcore fans though are more likely to stick around through anything, even if they too miss the days when she released stuff like Seasons. :)

I know it probably seems weird to people to say what you said when Ayu's sales still are pretty good compared to other female artists and she still shows up on several polls but in general I agree as well. I do think she less and less is bringing in casual buyers but then occasionally will have some success with songs like Days. The feeling I've always gotten from being in Japan is that people either don't like her/are tired of her or that they really like her old material and image, but not the current one etc etc.


Your general concept I agree with, but there are some details that I disagree with. I would say Namie's comeback single was actually Baby Don't Cry and you totally left out Never End - that single sold a very impressive amount in 2000. But the biggest difference I see in the case of Ayumi and Namie is that when Namie had her major success in the 90s, she was younger than Ayumi was when she had hers. Which means that at the rate Ayu is going, her "revival" might not come until she is in her late 30s - which in Japan would be considered way to old.

Or Avex isn't being as hardcore about deleting videos left and right as they have been in the past. :)

And I agree with the first point totally and it is part of the reason why I didn't really like Next Level that much.