[12/4] ORICON "Secret" 1st Week Sales [See P.7 post 130]

[Coelacanth]

You guys have to remember, music artists are getting supported in various ways nowadays, and this isn't only happening in Japan. According to the RIAJ Yearbook 2006, the value of digital music delivery in Japan totaled 34.3 billion yen in 2005, compared to only 15 billion yen the year before that. 96.4% of the digital music delivery last year was with mobile digital contents, while only 3.5% was Internet downloads. I mean, there could be millions in value worth of Ayu's content on people's phones.

And to be fair, Japan's music sales since 2001 have roughly been around the same area, and the country is still second in the global music market. Bottom line, there's competition. There's new marketing techniques, a widening of the way music is delivered, and a shift in the type of music that is marketable.

You guys should know that females can barely even sell over a million anymore. The only million selling females last year were Mika Nakashima, BoA, and Koda Kumi (which only did well because they were BEST-OF compilations). The rest of the million-sellers were older acts (Southern All Stars, B'z, Mr.Children) who really have nobody to compete with, boybands/Johnny's (Shuji and Akira), the influx of what can be described as rap/rock/reggae fusion bands such as ORANGE RANGE, Def Tech (2004, but okay), and Ketsumeishi, plus Ken Hirai and EXILE. Contrary to popular belief, females do not rule the Japanese music market.

Since most of us here do not live in Japan, we have, what is probably a misconception of what Japan as a whole thinks about Ayu's music. However, she's still a dominant figure in the Japanese recording industry as a whole as well as the concert tour industry, and everyone here should know better.