thanks for this info!

Plus: B'z had 28 albums and 43 singles; Mr Children had 30 singles and 16 albums; Southern All Stars had 52 singles and I'm not sure how many albums (i guess around 32?); Ayu had 29 albums (incluinding her remix albums) and 40 singles and Dream Come True had 39 singles and 21 albums.

So, even if she was the last one to debut, she has as many releases as the others on the lists (of course, lots of them were remix albums).

Omedetou Ayu!! Great news!!
Arigatou for the info!! ^^

Great, love to hear and know, Ayu is the only one solo artist and she is the only soloist female there. Good job, Ayu ^^ One way to go..

ayu is just absolutely amazing...youngest, only female...
thanks for the info!

That's really cool, very impressive :)

Go Ayu!

LOL she's also the first artist who managed to be on top for not releasing boring songs XD I mean, I'm yet to listen to a song from those other groups who doesn't YAWN me.

wow! thats good achievements ayu have made!! congrats to ayu!

Wow! That's GREAT!
Also, Ayu is the highest ranking female singer!

:laugh

I would have to agree!

Nice...

yay! :)

all those other people have been around for sooo long, and ayus not even at 10 years yet haha thanks for the news :D:D

Good, she widened the gap between her and Dreams Come True and closed the gap a bit between her and SAS. Her placement is even all the more impressive since she hasn't been around nearly as long as the other artists in the top 10 (same for Utada.)

That's not really fair to those groups. :) I used to think that too, until I actually really listened to any of them. Southern All Stars has some great classic j-pop songs like Itoshii Ellie. Mr. Children - though I do think a lot of their singles sound the same - really stand out for their lyrics and I especially like their recent singles Fake and Shirushi. And B'z is just great - they have many excellent songs. Of course I prefer Ayu to them all. :) But any artist that the Japanese public reveres so highly I think is worth giving an objective listen to.

yes, its pretty amazing. she is the most efficient japanese artst ever, according to this ^^
I mean, 9 years, 8 albums, 1 mini [im not going to count remix albums, they amount to almost nothing in sales ...] only female, youngest, most efficient, ect ect ect. really what this is saying is, the others have sold more, but ayu is the best XD

LOL yeah, I really generalized and was somewhat unfair since I never listened to even 1% of their works (except for B'z, which i listened to them a little more), but it's just that anything I try from them, I feel turned off. B'z does have some cool songs indeed, but I generally tend to forget most of them and a lot of their songs sound uninteresting, maybe because I'm not that much into the type of rock they produce.

That's good impressive really.

wow!! go ayu!!!

edit: and mink!! lol!

That's a bit deceptive, since only 8 of her albums were studio and her remix albums usually sold less than her singles did.

I think she might slip farther behind soon though, since her sales are dipping while the other top artists are fairly consistent. Mr. Children's newest album's first week sales are higher than Secret's overall sales.

I have a question! is ayu the first one to be on the top 5? is she the first solo female EVER? or was there some1 before ayu? as a solo? or female?