I can't believe we're at the point (in ayu history, AND in Japanese Music History as well) where selling 10k is such an amazing achievement. sigh.

^ http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/8ecbe604...6eacf20b4b.gif

I need to see artists selling again 1 million copies, not only AKB.

She outsold her last remix album
Queen

we live in digital era now ) huge CD sales is not gonna happend again

How is she doing in terms of digital sales against the other top sellers in Japan right now?

^ She does well digitally. Last year A BEST slayed the charts again and ended up in #2, Zutto.../Last minute/Walk was #27 and Ayu was the #19 best selling artist overall on recochoku last year, which isn't bad at all (higher than physical rankings). And A BEST even outsold Sandaime's album, and they were the #1 highest selling artist of the year, so that's great for her. She was also higher than Namie, and we all know Namie is one of the best selling solo female artists on the physical rankings.

digital album sales have no meaning :(

^ Of course they do, it means more money in the artists'/companies' pockets. Besides, now a days it's becoming another more accurate indicator of popularity, because it shows the general public interests, while physical sales are becoming an indicator of the amount of hardcore fans (now a days not as many people will buy a physical copy of a release if they're not a fan of the artist to begin with).

For an artist any type of sale is important, it's the media that puts way too much weight on Oricon alone...

I think A BEST's just proof that general public don't care about her new releases anymore :D

digital release is most easy way to spread music worldwide

You can't really be serious if you think digital sales aren't important. We're in 2016, not 2006. The only reason some artists are profitable for their recording companies and are still releasing music is because of their digital sales. Also, casual listeners who enjoy one or two songs by an artist are not going to pay $20-30 for the whole album when they can easily get those tracks individually for less than $2 each. Digital music is a very important market nowadays.

I said "digital album sales", not "digital single sales" or "digital sales" @@.

makes no difference, they're equally important.

Now, if they're not important to YOU, that's another story but thats a matter of opinion. The industry is changing and adapting, the digital format is starting to become widespread. Why do you think digital sales and YouTube video views are being used around the world?

Digital sales are important, but they were stronger some years ago. At least if you look at digital certifications. There were much more of those around 2006-2007 than there are now. And higher as well. It's pretty hard for most artists to go over 100k now. Also digital album sales are really a lot smaller than those for single songs.

I have to agree that digital sales figures ARE EXTREMELY important. Currently, we don't know how much A ONE sold except for the physical CDs. (Or any other previous release, for that matter).

If A ONE sold 50k according to Oricon (I'm estimating, I don't know exact numbers), we don't know what the total sales are. Would it be increased by 25% or 50% or even 100%? We have no way of knowing. It's bullshit.

This is exactly what I wanted to say but I don't know how to write. My poor English :dead2
Because it's too small, it has no meaning :D

Digital album sales are, to me, a pretty bad indicator of an artist's relevance and popularity in current pop music.

It's like saying the Beatles are huge right now because people are still buying compilations of their albums. The same could be said of A Best sales.

Of course, Ayu has left a lasting legacy, but the fact that only compilations of her older hits still sell (relatively) well digitally means that people don't really care about her new music now.

From the point of view of a fan who roots for her both as an individual and as a pop artist, that's of course disappointing. At the end of the day though, it is what it is, I don't listen to her for her sales. (her current music generally sucks though, but that's a separate discussion altogether).

But to insist that she's still relevant as a pop artist in 2016 is stretching it a bit. If you're going to compare, compare sales of her current music against the sales of the top sellers' releases in the same period.

Projects like Napster's premium service are responsible for this. Honestly, the buy-individual-songs model is what's destroying music. In the early 00s, digital music offerings bowed to the idea of replicating Napster's single-track download into a pay-per-song concept. The whole point was to maximize profit by squeezing even a dollar out of a consumer who normally wouldn't buy the whole album just because they heard and liked one song.

Ultimately, companies need to stop offering individual album tracks for sale. It's destroying the overall value of an album, and thereby destroying the artist's work. The current model makes it easy for consumers and retailers to weigh the value of a dollar over the artistic or personal value of owning music.

The reason why Utada and Ayu sold so well at the beginning of their careers--and when overall sales were up--is because record labels and retailers pushed the benefit of owning the whole collection of songs, even the not-so-good ones. Music wasn't about spending $.99 for a 3-6 minute song you heard on the radio. Consumers bought an experience, inclusion in a community or club, and shelled out $15 because they loved their artist.

Part of why Adele and Taylor Swift sell so well is that they use similar tactics. Taylor Swift's singles aren't all that special if you don't have the album; the album has a whole story with it, each song was its own experience in Taylor's life. If you just buy Taylor's song, you know you're deliberately cutting yourself out of the Taylor Swift experience. Adele is much the same. Not offering 25 for pay-per-song sale was a smart move, and I hope she never allows it to be bought in pieces.

Record labels participating in and letting retailers get away with this revenue grab is what's destroying music sales globally, not just digitally but physically as well. It's only helping Apple's bottom line whenever you buy a song on iTunes. And as far as the label is concerned, they made something from the consumer that they might have made nothing from. However, the artist makes mere pennies off your pay-per-song purchase. In fact, a recent editorial from an indie musician showed they made only $17 from more than 1,000,000 streams of their songs. And we wonder why artists aren't investing much anymore... It's clear that the majority of consumers are only going to do what's cheapest (because record labels and retailers give them that option), and as a result, every artist is going to try to hop on the gravy train. It used to be that an indie musician could reasonably make it off 1,000 people buying their $10 CD and going to their shows. Today, with the ease that someone can pick apart an album, buy the one or two tracks that sound interesting then forget the rest of the record even exists, most indie artists aren't able to break into the industry. In Western Washington, I've seen some well-known artists playing free shows just to share their social media pages.

If you buy the record, you're buying the fan experience, the story and the hard work that went into every song, and you're buying the privilege to share that experience with others. Today's music industry has just twisted itself inside out to try to suck any amount of money out of consumers who wouldn't normally buy the whole album having heard one or two songs. It's their own fault.

I do wish that Ayu would step it up though. She's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and can certainly afford to take risks like refusing to sell her albums digitally or even refusing to sell them on a pay-per-song basis. Instead, sadly, she's fallen into the same trappings and gone along with this bullshit. The only way it's ever going to end is if artists like Ayumi, who have some clout with their labels, force their labels to make business decisions based on selling music as part of an overall fandom or experience. The industry simply isn't sustainable under this bits-and-pieces type of retailing.

All of this, so much.

For a market with so much potential and talent, it's really appalling how backward the Japanese pop music industry is in so many aspects.