I don't listen to JUJU so I can't comment so much on this but I do know that she has some promo in line with both her best albums , such as appearing this Sunday on Shin Domoto Kyoudai & also she will be performing live on MUSIC STATION next Fri too

I just wish ayumi would do at least decent promo for her stuff especially since LOVE is the 1st of her 5 releases to celebrate her 15th anniversary but I don't know what's happening :shrug

Considering BENI's COVERS is going to pass the 200K mark very soon , I have a feeling COVERS 2 might be able to do equally as well as COVERS , given the content for both covers albums since BENI covered & sing prominent signature songs in English that were originally sung by Japanese male artistes

I was also referring to COVERS 2.
her first one, although popular, it was never a huge seller at the beginning. It was just in the top 10 for a very long time... it just never seemed to go away, lol. What I was saying was that covers 2 might do the same.

COVERS 2 will sell more than COVERS first week but it won't be nearly enough to give Ayu any sort of competition. BENI will be lucky to see 40-50k first week while Ayu has 70k in the bag at least.

Yeah, I have to agree a bit... :yes

I'll tell you - this world is UNPREDICTABLE, and ANYTHING can happen...maybe she might pull off the Acid Black Cherry act of November - NINKI not on top, but end up on top of the charts!

But we'll just have to see... A lot of uncertainties remain ahead... :yconfused

NINKI is an extremely bad prediction of sales. Ayu has had several NINKI ratings that were waaaaay off—I remember NEXT LEVEL was projected as one of Ayu's highest NINKI ratings and it actually garnered her lowest first-week at the time, PQ was also way off, as was MY STORY.

We don't really get all the details about the sample taken - standard error, deviations, sample mean versus population, etc.—, especially as it makes up less than .5% of the actual population. Because of the sample size's relative proportion, it's not large enough to make any inference of buying trends in the coming week. If we wanted even a remote approximation to infer buying trends, Oricon would have to poll at least 4,500 subscribers and ensure the samples from each demographic were independent samples.

NINKI is, at best, just a chart of irrelevant numbers that could easily be outside of any statistically significant range of the population data, and often shows little direct correlation to buying trends.

Bad numbers for Ayu, yes, but they really don't amount to anything.

EDIT: We really should get off the sales hump too. While Ayu is still popular, she isn't like AKB48 anymore. And this project is not supposed to be about getting a #1, it's about celebrating 15 years of music from the highest selling female Japanese artist of all time, something our Empress of J-Pop will be holding for a long, long time from now. And we have awesome, true-to-Ayumi songs too!

Honestly i'm not sure about ayu's sales anymore, BENI is a really strong competition

Ayu #3? Does it even matter now? Although it's fun to watch her album/single on the #1 spot...her album being in the top 5, considered to be an honour, since it was almost her 15th Anniversary!! Come on guys~Let's support her!! :) :)

I am even more worried if the album not even in top 5 because she lost 1 day and this will mark her 1st album ranked below top 2 excluding the remixes

I think it always matters!
I would love for her to get a number 1, but I just dont think it will happen.
At this point, I dont even thing A Best 3 will get a number 1 unless they release it in the deadest of dead weeks.

Didn't she say from the start these releases are not about sales? Since fans already know there's going to be 5, the sales may not be high anyway since many fans will have to pick and choose which releases to get. We're not made of money.

^ she hasnt really cared about sales in a very long time.
But she did go on the record and said this isnt about sales, but about the fans

She could chart #10 that I wouldn't care, tbh. Just keep the good releases like this one seems to be, I'm okay with that! Of course I'm rooting for a good position, but she doesn't seem that concerned, or else she'd at least try to do some promo (we know that she's very influential in avex.)

actually..NINKI reflects interest right? It doesnt show that they would actually BUY the CD?

人気 / NINKI in itself means "popularity."

So you could say it only gauges people's interest and ~popularity~ within Oricon Style's subscribers that get chosen to be part of the sample.

I love this mini album so i'm hoping Jpn would love it too and that the first week sales will break the 100,000 sales mark :)

I think with the tie in it will help to boost sales, but nothing to get it to a number 1 level... but you never know... those games crazies might order up that special edition to get those downloads! ( i know i did!)

she's still got it!

Like I said, it's an extremely small sample of their subscribers, so it's not even large enough to say anything about even their subscribers as a whole for popularity. :|

I'm pretty sure Ayu and her staff knew exactly what they were doing when they decided to release on the 8th of every month, regardless of the day of the week. They also knew the competition she'd be up against. Honestly, I think her fans are more worried about sales than she is.

In my opinion, breaking away from always having a #1 spot is a good move. The pressure is gone. She can experiment more if she wants to. She can release what she wants to release without worrying how the public in general will react. And as showing by these 5 mini-albums in 5 months, she can focus more on her hardcore fans than casual listeners :).

we may not care anymore with the chart.. BUT

people out there still judge the artist by chart position..

if they see someone who always #1 suddenly slip to #2 or #3 they will directly consider the album F-L-O-P