Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - Whay are some of Ayu's remixes so rare?

I think the remixes off her analogs are rare for several reasons.

1) The analog just hasn't been purchased by anyone with the means to rip. Alot of ayu fans might seek & buy these analogs, but only for collecting purposes. Not alot of us have turntables, not to mention all the equipment, cables & software required to rip the files to mp3 format on our computers.

2) They also need to be purchased and ripped by someone with english-language skills. You'll see analog releases occasionally on p2p programs but it's harder than you'd think for it to break the language barrier into the western world, where file sharing on websites & forums is much more common.

3) The analogs themselves ARE very rare. I'm not sure how low the production numbers are, but i've seen them go out of print at online stores very quickly. Once people have them they usually keep them, so you don't see many of the really rare ones on even yahoo! auctions japan (I've never seen the Dearest analog, and I've only seen the Daybreak analog once. They were released the same day.)

4) As for other rare remixes, most fans just don't care about long versions of remixes they've already heard radio edits or non-stop megamix tracks of. For most fans that's enough. There are others (like myself) who want nothing to do with nonstop megamixes except as "samplers" for the "real thing". To me, for example, none of the remixes on ayu-mi-x 5 have been released yet. I've only heard clips of them. (Okay, HANABI "amano iwato aita yo mix" is a 7 minute sample, but it's still not the real thing for me yet.) So, for the most part, only a few ayu fans are even INTERESTED in buying analogs with extended versions on them.

Basically, you have to have a fan who WANTS the long remixes, is willing to REALLY work to find & buy them, HAS the means to rip them, AND speaks english and visits places like AHS, AHO, Ayunite, Tokyo Nights, or the AHS DC++ hub, and a WHOLE lot of people who aren't greedy about finding the files and are therefore willing to share.

Not easy to meet all of these criteria.