I'm still happy she can make the top 5 even if it isn't number 1.

me too.. i thought it would sell like 60k on its debut week..

It could stay in the charts for awhile... we dont know.
Because it was sold out in a lot of p[laces, people my buy a lot of copes the next week.
While it wont get number one... it might get number two or 3 because of this.

well, actually it sells normally. there was almost NO promotion for this album. yes, we have 2 billboards in Shibuya, 2 buses riding in SHibuya, 3 magazines released with her on the cover and only one tv-live. is it enough to make it sell well? I doubt so. I'm in Tokyo now and I hoped to hear You & Me in the shops and etc., but all I hear is LOVE CHASE by Yamapi, Kaze ga fuiteru by Ikimonogakari, Gingham Check by AKB and ANDROID by Tohoshinki. also some new songs from Kuwata Keisuke. that's all. no ayu. no ayu at all! I heard her songs only in Rainbow House.

oh, and I saw the CM of ASB on TV right after she performed on FNS.

idk, but nobody actually cares about this Best. and btw, I've seen SMAP's new album ads in conbini and other places. I also saw lots of billboards of Kuwata Keisuke's new album.

I believe, that if there was more promotion, this album would sell well. Ayu herself and avex.. I guess, they don't care about sales and no.1 strike anymore.

even if tv-programmes don't invite her anymore, I'm sure she could perform there if she wanted to.

Maybe this will be a signal to Ayu and Avex that they shouldn't be sloppy with her releases. This album is definitely not worth my money, and neither was Party Queen.

Avex definitely cares about sales. My guess is, they aren't promoting her more because they don't see the returns in sales; its not worth it to spend tons of money on promotion if the sales aren't really going to change.

Yeah, I don't think promotion is going to do much at this point in her career. Could a lot of promotion help sales? I guess there's the slight potential. But I think people are just over her and I don't think there's any use trying to shove her down people's throats when they don't care.

She's only released two mini-albums though... Lol.

ayumi is going the way of Seiko..
she was always be making music, but its only natural for her not to be on top for forever.

But I don't see the point :shrug. Artists need promotions to gain sales and attention.

If you don't promote your product, who would buy it? Nobody. I feel it's like avex don't know how to promote Ayu properly and thinking instead: 'well, she's ayumi hamasaki so we don't need any specific promo for her'. That's wrong. It doesn't matter if there are billions of trucks playing her latest song around Tokyo or big billboards in Shibuya. If the promotion is not good, the sales would be the same.

I agree that she needs promotion, but I think that if Avex resists promoting her forwhatever reason, she should step up and do something about it. I find it hard to believe that she has no say if they refuse to promote her but I think it her or her team that isnt doing a good enough job. So what if she has to ask to be on shows? After her unprofessional behaviour with MS then can we blame music shows for not wanting to book her? I think it's her who is expecting to be able to sell without any real promotion or effort. I mean, It just boggles my mind why a summer best that only needed ONE song to be recorded, ONE PV to be shot and a handfull of pics only gets released when summer is nearly over.

Worry not guys. It's Ayu we're talking about here. She never failed to surprise us, and she's been doing that for almost 14 years. Who knows? She may have something that can again shock the music scene.

Does that mean Ayu is gonna release compilation after compilation?
Just look at Seiko's discography: (Bible, Bible 2, Bible 3 and Complete Bible. Bible 2 to Complete Bible was a span of TWO years give or take a few months).

Because going the way of Seiko also means to release anything. In 20 years, she released over 30 bests.
I don't want to see any more best albums until after 2-3 more albums.

^ even though she releases so many best, the woman also releases about an album every year.
And most of Seiko's best albums are from the peak of her career.
Also, you dont have to buy the best.

"well, she's ayumi hamasaki so we don't need any specific promo for her'. That's wrong."

I think if that were the case, AVEX would have figured that out a couple of years ago.

She still got huge amounts of promotion up until after A Best 2 and her promotion slowly started dying off after that and I would imagine that it was because despite the obvious huge amount of money avex put into promo and into really lavish PVs, her sales were not rising, they were not even remaining stable really. So from Avex's perspective, why throw tons of promo behind her if the sales aren't going to go up? Also, honestly the promo for A Summer Best was not that bad. That billboard position in Shibuya is one of the best and I would imagine is the most expensive place to have one. Plus there was a tv performance and magazines....It's not a lot of promo, but that's honestly more than what most of her releases have gotten in the last couple of years.

ayu used to be known for her remarkable marketing strategy in Japan
it was written in many articles
she used to be called as an avex product

but since 2010 her marketing team starts going down hill in promoting ayu

many Japanese people had been tired of her n starts leaving her..

n as i remember correctly
tv station doesn't blacklist her
i remember when ayu tweeted when she released FIVE she got many invitation from tv station but she end up not performing anywhere...

I agree with the promos. Her last well promoted album was RnRC. Love songs barely made it because of the 50th single anniversary project but without those that album could have been flopped. FIVE we got ToX tie in, some CMs, some billboards, that's all. And I don't want to elaborate about Party Queen. :dead2

I really don't care how she sells. The only thing that matters to me, is the quality of her music.

Which I guess depends on her funding by Avex. Which in turn comes back to sales.

Which means I should care about sales.

It's just one big loop!!!!

um i think promoting might not bring that much of the new audience and bigger sales for her in this case, cuz she's been in the industry for so long. Maybe just people who used to like her but forgotten about her after a while. Of course every bought copy counts but, i dunno if she could get new fans. *shrugs* Plus all people who already are fans most probably have all her albums and bests, if not for the continet of it then for the heck of collecting.

I never realized that. Good one. :laugh