[Tasked]

TOP 10 of ALL-TIMES in JAPAN (+ years active, so you can compare them fairly)
01. B'z; 71,878,000 - 20 years
02. Mr. Children; 46,207,000 - 18 years
03. SOUTHERN ALL STARS; 43,937,000 - 27 years
04. Ayumi Hamasaki; 41,074,000 - 7 years
05. DREAMS COME TRUE; 40,065,000 - 20 years
06. Yumi Matsutoya; 37,594,000 - 30-something years
07. GLAY; 35,798,000 - 12 years
08. ZARD; 35,451,000 - 14 years
09. Hikaru Utada; 32,158,000 - 7 years
10. CHAGE & ASKA; 31,192,000 - 27 years

REASONS

Because they both belong in the A-group of singers (Ayu, Utada, Mika, Namie, Boa (koda)) that are most popular today.

Because the most respected japanese female superstars are Yuming, Ayu and Utada. They 'control' the Japanese music scene. Yuming was the star of her era, but Utada and Ayu debuted at the same time.

Because they ARE very different. Utada is a musician. She creates and produces music of great quality, manages to sell lots of copies and she gets lots of respect. But she is no superstar like Ayu. Ayu also sells alot and stuff, but she has that whole diva-thing going on. The "queen of Jpop" who changes her style every second and releases anything from pop to trance and rap. Ayu is not a musician like Utada and Utada is not a star like Ayu.

NO RIVALS!

Those are the main reasons why it's interesting for people to debate about them. But they showed that they are very friendly to each other. Utada once said really good things about Ayu in a radio show, and when the two of them were in the same music station in 2005, they had a lot of fun together. In this episode, they also said they like each other's songs.

WHO IS MORE SUCCESFUL?

This could go on and on. Let me just say a few things about it. A few years ago, Utada sold more than Ayu per CD. But this was also because of the fact that Utada makes her fans wait alot for her releases while Ayu release a new CD every month. It's impossible to say who was more succesful. Ayu was way more exposed in Japan. She was on every corner of the street. but Utada wasn't so exposed, didn't change her image much, and STILL managed to get amazing sales-numbers. Now that's a reason to respect her!
But what is the status now? Well Utada went to the US with her releases, and Ayu took her trance to Europe. Ayu stayed also in Japan but Utada just left Japan for a while. Now, Utada is back. But this time it won't work that well. Her singles are weaker than they should be from a succesful artist as Utada and her latest single "PASSION" didn't even reach the Number 1 position. Ayu never left Japan and even though her sales are lower than usual too, she gets #1 every single time because most of her releases sell alot more than Utada's latest releases.
But did Ayu really lose success? Not really. Around 2000 she released singles that sold *700k and didn't even got #1. Now she gets #1 with a single that sold a small *120k. The economy has changed, so did her sales. But Ayu seems to get #1-hits easier than before.

Ayu's sales dropped. Ayu's exposure dropped. Ayu's popularity dropped. But her success is really stable.
Utada's sales dropped alot. Because of this, her success is not stable anymore, and only time will tell if she'll get back to her success.

Before 2004 you could say either one of them is more succesful. It depends on what you look at. Now, it's different.

IN THE MEDIA

During the A BEST vs DISTANCE period, the battle between the two was the hottest thing in Japan. Everywhere you went to there was one of the artists trying to make you buy a copy. There were many many posters, many promotional sales-stands and in magazines they were all talking about it. I'm not sure if Utada did it too, but during the release of A BEST, Ayu was on the cover of more than 40 magazines. Because the battle was so much talked about by fans, the papers tried to increase their sales with the battle also by reviewing the albums and publishing articles about who is more succesful and who is gonna win. There even was a special article on yesasia.com entitled "Battle of the JPOP Princesses" (Click here & Click here -articles itself were removed). In addition, yesasia.com also created a short competition to see which of the two albums would sell more. Also, the fact that Ayu's most upclose interview ever (the NTV interview of 2004) talks alot of the battle, proves that it was a hot item in the Japanese media.



* Note that all these salesnumers are in only from the CDs sold in Japan (not counting web-sales either)
Ok I wrote like a whole article about it =)