[Namie Amuro] ◍ 「TSUKI」 the 81st thread ◍

[Bigtop]

Morning Musume? How could they be popular than Namie even though they've been both in the business for quite some time?

[SKYia]

Originally Posted by Bigtop

Morning Musume? How could they be popular than Namie even though they've been both in the business for quite some time?

Take one look at all the 40ish guys on any girl group concert and you'll know how. They don't have any interest in 35 year old woman (just a shot, don't remember how old Namie is). I don't like or watch any AKB or MM concerts but I saw the audience during SNSD concerts in Japan, they were pretty scary, and maybe it's too much of a generalization but I've been to Akihabara many times, saw all those idol-puppy-eyed old guys who spend each yen in idol cafes, I totally can understand the sales. Sorry for this comparison, but Ayu / Kuu / Namie's audience is actually pretty mixed in case of age, gender with few cosplayers, while Kinki Kids and other JE groups have mostly girls / women, and AKB / MM have old guys (probably lonely with lots of money). I'm generalizing of course but there's quite a lot of truth to it.

Originally Posted by orangeakira

I'll never understand sales numbers. 18,000 is considered good? I guess it is if you compare it to the population of Japan. Someone needs to explain this stuff to me.

Let's be honest, with today's access to media (internet the most) I'm kind of wondering that people still buy music at all. I have a huge collection of CD from the 90's and early 2000~, I used to buy CD of artist that had only 2-3 great songs, right now I only spend money of singers I truly appreciate and even though Namie is in my top10, maybe even top5 performers and has albums I usually love as whole with every song, I don't have any of her CD in my collection. My point is that people probably listen to her a lot but spend money only on one or two of their favourite performers hence the lower and lower sales, just my guess.

[pimenta]

Originally Posted by SKYia

Let's be honest, with today's access to media (internet the most) I'm kind of wondering that people still buy music at all. I have a huge collection of CD from the 90's and early 2000~, I used to buy CD of artist that had only 2-3 great songs, right now I only spend money of singers I truly appreciate and even though Namie is in my top10, maybe even top5 performers and has albums I usually love as whole with every song, I don't have any of her CD in my collection. My point is that people probably listen to her a lot but spend money only on one or two of their favourite performers hence the lower and lower sales, just my guess.

This is centainly my case as well (though for me Namie is one of the artists I do buy the albums, but not the singles).

Now a days it's just so easy to go and download for free that it's no wonder sales are decreasing. People don't need to buy to be able to listen anymore, so they buy just what they really like, and even like that many just prefer to buy digitally than having CDs now a days...

[visionfactory]

Originally Posted by Bigtop

Morning Musume? How could they be popular than Namie even though they've been both in the business for quite some time?

I can tell you why Morning Musume is now popular because I've been a hardcore fan since 2005.

In one word = Events

The group always did a few events for their releases but they started to do it massively (The AKB way) since last year. The group splits in duos and trios to do handshakes events separately all over Japan intensely for a pair of weeks after the release of the CD. To attend these kinds of events you have to use the lottery tickets inside their CDs. They have some crazy fans who use to buy up to 300 CDs to get more tickets. Artists like Ayu and Namie never do these kind of events because they are more unreachable than idols. Apart from this they also started to release 6 editions of each CD and now they only release Double and Triple A-Side singles.

With this strategy Morning Musume single sales increased from 30-70k to 80-150k

They also applied the same strategy for their sister groups:

ºC-ute single sales increased from 20-30k to 50-80k
Berryz Koubou single sales increased from 15-25k to 30-40k

How I know this is the way they increase their sales? They don't apply this strategy to their albums, their albums sales just increased in 4k.