[tokyoxjapanxfan]

Glad to see Ayu on the list!

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Promotion in Japan has changed drastically in the past decade.

While it was common to have singers in ad campaigns for cosmetics, hair care, etc. in the past, it’s now largely done by models or talent. So facial recognition of singers is much harder to achieve. Plus, now there are barely any music tv shows. Magazines are also dropping in sales and disappearing, and are also utilizing models/talent more than anyone else. Before you were inundated with singers even if you weren’t particularly interested in them, so you ended up learning their faces anyway. Now unless you’re particularly curious, there’s less chance to know newer artists.

Personally I think this is why there’s been an increase in older celebrities becoming talent in recent years. It used to be considered like, pretty sad for celebs to become talent lol. But it’s probably far more lucrative than anything else now, since you could potentially become a regular and then get ad campaigns and kinda restart your career.