Ayu & Avex

[Delirium-Zer0]

Any company in their right mind is going to do what they can to get as much money as possible. That money goes to the artists, the people running the company, studio time, graphic designers, lawyers, accountants, rent on office space, TONS of unseen people making the business work. Whatever you have to do as a company to make sure everyone gets paid, do it.

I'd MUCH rather they release best-of after best-of than force artists to do shows all day every day and record 2-3 albums a year, that's for sure. The more money they can make without Ayu doing any actual work, the better for everyone involved.

As for the speed of new material being released... I see you're from the UK, how long have you been following Asian pop? It startled me quite a bit to see how fast-paced music careers are there compared to the west. Here, it's an album every 3-4 years and that's about average. And we're USED to that, is the difference. But in Japan, if you don't have an album each year, if you don't have a single or SOME new song a few times a year, that's strange and unexpected and fans wonder where you've been. the brilliant green took a hiatus for 3 years from 2002-2005 and people were REALLY excited when they came back. The pace is just different there.

Asian labels certainly aren't slave drivers. The approach is very different. In the west, an artist will write or even record up to 35 songs for one album, leaving 20+ songs completely unheard by the audience. That's REALLY unusual in Japan. When Ayu writes 35 songs, we hear most of them. It's just spread out over 3 years so we get a more constant feed of new material. In either case, it's three years worth of work in the West or in Japan, but in Japan, they all get released, and they get released gradually.

In the west, rock music and even pop music is considered more of an "art," where in Asia it's considered more "work." Their job is to entertain their audience and get paid for it. Here it's considered rather disrespectful to look at it that way. So in the west, the producers & writers hand-pick which songs are the highest quality, the most worth it for the audience to hear. In the east, every song gets finished to perfection, completed, and released. It's roughly the same amount of work on both sides of the world, but labels in Japan are, in my opinion, smarter for releasing more records, especially since their market share is much smaller. Japan spends more money per-capita on music each year than ANY other country. America gets its financial advantage by marketing to the whole world, though, so artists in the west for the most part don't need to release as many records to make the same amount of money. Japanese artists have a very hard time marketing outside of Asia, so they just make more material.

Part of their selling technique is, unfortunately, packaging the DVDs of Ayu's videos with her albums (as they do with most artists). People wouldn't pay extra for the CD+DVD version if the DVD product was available in its entirety on YouTube. What they put on YT is enough to sample a song or video to see if you'd be willing to pay for it (they put a big chunk of the videos on there, it's irritating that it's not the whole thing but it makes sense). I'd rather own a high-quality DVD of those videos than depend on YouTube for watching them, though, so if I have to pick one or the other, I'm fine with how they're doing things.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

Any company in their right mind is going to do what they can to get as much money as possible. That money goes to the artists, the people running the company, studio time, graphic designers, lawyers, accountants, rent on office space, TONS of unseen people making the business work. Whatever you have to do as a company to make sure everyone gets paid, do it.

I'd MUCH rather they release best-of after best-of than force artists to do shows all day every day and record 2-3 albums a year, that's for sure. The more money they can make without Ayu doing any actual work, the better for everyone involved.

As for the speed of new material being released... I see you're from the UK, how long have you been following Asian pop? It startled me quite a bit to see how fast-paced music careers are there compared to the west. Here, it's an album every 3-4 years and that's about average. And we're USED to that, is the difference. But in Japan, if you don't have an album each year, if you don't have a single or SOME new song a few times a year, that's strange and unexpected and fans wonder where you've been. the brilliant green took a hiatus for 3 years from 2002-2005 and people were REALLY excited when they came back. The pace is just different there.

Asian labels certainly aren't slave drivers. The approach is very different. In the west, an artist will write or even record up to 35 songs for one album, leaving 20+ songs completely unheard by the audience. That's REALLY unusual in Japan. When Ayu writes 35 songs, we hear most of them. It's just spread out over 3 years so we get a more constant feed of new material. In either case, it's three years worth of work in the West or in Japan, but in Japan, they all get released, and they get released gradually.

In the west, rock music and even pop music is considered more of an "art," where in Asia it's considered more "work." Their job is to entertain their audience and get paid for it. Here it's considered rather disrespectful to look at it that way. So in the west, the producers & writers hand-pick which songs are the highest quality, the most worth it for the audience to hear. In the east, every song gets finished to perfection, completed, and released. It's roughly the same amount of work on both sides of the world, but labels in Japan are, in my opinion, smarter for releasing more records, especially since their market share is much smaller. Japan spends more money per-capita on music each year than ANY other country. America gets its financial advantage by marketing to the whole world, though, so artists in the west for the most part don't need to release as many records to make the same amount of money. Japanese artists have a very hard time marketing outside of Asia, so they just make more material.

Part of their selling technique is, unfortunately, packaging the DVDs of Ayu's videos with her albums (as they do with most artists). People wouldn't pay extra for the CD+DVD version if the DVD product was available in its entirety on YouTube. What they put on YT is enough to sample a song or video to see if you'd be willing to pay for it (they put a big chunk of the videos on there, it's irritating that it's not the whole thing but it makes sense). I'd rather own a high-quality DVD of those videos than depend on YouTube for watching them, though, so if I have to pick one or the other, I'm fine with how they're doing things.

Now, THIS is an answer!^^

Also, Ayu sales these days aren't low (only) because of her recent marketing strategies... We can't forget Ayu peaked in 2001, more than 10 years ago and that her career is entering on the 15th year. There's no pop artist in the world able to go on for this long (considering success in Jpop tend to last between 3 and 5 years) without facing a big drop in sales sometime. New faces come, people grow out of fandom, people turn into adults and their priorities change (teenagers move music markets), and once you reach your top, the only way to go is down.

Even when a pop artist keeps relevant for a long time, Kylie Minogue for example as you are from the UK, they will face a period of low sales sometime during their careers, and there's nothing that can be really done about it...

[Bigtop]

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

Any company in their right mind is going to do what they can to get as much money as possible. That money goes to the artists, the people running the company, studio time, graphic designers, lawyers, accountants, rent on office space, TONS of unseen people making the business work. Whatever you have to do as a company to make sure everyone gets paid, do it.

I'd MUCH rather they release best-of after best-of than force artists to do shows all day every day and record 2-3 albums a year, that's for sure. The more money they can make without Ayu doing any actual work, the better for everyone involved.

As for the speed of new material being released... I see you're from the UK, how long have you been following Asian pop? It startled me quite a bit to see how fast-paced music careers are there compared to the west. Here, it's an album every 3-4 years and that's about average. And we're USED to that, is the difference. But in Japan, if you don't have an album each year, if you don't have a single or SOME new song a few times a year, that's strange and unexpected and fans wonder where you've been. the brilliant green took a hiatus for 3 years from 2002-2005 and people were REALLY excited when they came back. The pace is just different there.

Asian labels certainly aren't slave drivers. The approach is very different. In the west, an artist will write or even record up to 35 songs for one album, leaving 20+ songs completely unheard by the audience. That's REALLY unusual in Japan. When Ayu writes 35 songs, we hear most of them. It's just spread out over 3 years so we get a more constant feed of new material. In either case, it's three years worth of work in the West or in Japan, but in Japan, they all get released, and they get released gradually.

In the west, rock music and even pop music is considered more of an "art," where in Asia it's considered more "work." Their job is to entertain their audience and get paid for it. Here it's considered rather disrespectful to look at it that way. So in the west, the producers & writers hand-pick which songs are the highest quality, the most worth it for the audience to hear. In the east, every song gets finished to perfection, completed, and released. It's roughly the same amount of work on both sides of the world, but labels in Japan are, in my opinion, smarter for releasing more records, especially since their market share is much smaller. Japan spends more money per-capita on music each year than ANY other country. America gets its financial advantage by marketing to the whole world, though, so artists in the west for the most part don't need to release as many records to make the same amount of money. Japanese artists have a very hard time marketing outside of Asia, so they just make more material.

Part of their selling technique is, unfortunately, packaging the DVDs of Ayu's videos with her albums (as they do with most artists). People wouldn't pay extra for the CD+DVD version if the DVD product was available in its entirety on YouTube. What they put on YT is enough to sample a song or video to see if you'd be willing to pay for it (they put a big chunk of the videos on there, it's irritating that it's not the whole thing but it makes sense). I'd rather own a high-quality DVD of those videos than depend on YouTube for watching them, though, so if I have to pick one or the other, I'm fine with how they're doing things.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Now, THIS is an answer!^^

Also, Ayu sales these days aren't low (only) because of her recent marketing strategies... We can't forget Ayu peaked in 2001, more than 10 years ago and that her career is entering on the 15th year. There's no pop artist in the world able to go on for this long (considering success in Jpop tend to last between 3 and 5 years) without facing a big drop in sales sometime. New faces come, people grow out of fandom, people turn into adults and their priorities change (teenagers move music markets), and once you reach your top, the only way to go is down.

Even when a pop artist keeps relevant for a long time, Kylie Minogue for example as you are from the UK, they will face a period of low sales sometime during their careers, and there's nothing that can be really done about it...

I agree on these terms. I think I get the point here...

[Delirium-Zer0]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Now, THIS is an answer!^^

Also, Ayu sales these days aren't low (only) because of her recent marketing strategies... We can't forget Ayu peaked in 2001, more than 10 years ago and that her career is entering on the 15th year. There's no pop artist in the world able to go on for this long (considering success in Jpop tend to last between 3 and 5 years) without facing a big drop in sales sometime. New faces come, people grow out of fandom, people turn into adults and their priorities change (teenagers move music markets), and once you reach your top, the only way to go is down.

Even when a pop artist keeps relevant for a long time, Kylie Minogue for example as you are from the UK, they will face a period of low sales sometime during their careers, and there's nothing that can be really done about it...

I do think that Party Queen in particular was a marketing failure (the drop in sales between PQ and FIVE, or between PQ and Love songs, is FAR more pronounced than previous drops). I think Ayu had one idea for what the album was supposed to be, and the people around her had another.

Ayu put together what is quite possibly her most personal album since A Song for XX, bringing back old composers that the fans would know and like, and the album was very, very dark. This album really had the potential to bring Ayu back from the clutches of repetitive, commercial-friendly mediocrity. This album COULD have been touted as a return to form, a return to the optimistic melancholy and intimacy that really set ayu apart from the competition through "I am...".

But I think this album scared avex's marketing people. I think the album isn't in tune with today's music-buying crowd, and staying "safe" has kept Ayu's sales at a reasonable level since about "Secret." But nothing about this album was "Safe," aside from the few songs they did promote & play on MTV. But even those just barely got any attention.

The album was too risky to promote, and since it was Ayu ("the album will be profitable regardless so what's the point in spending extra money on marketing"), they didn't bother. If they really went out of their way to accurately represent the album, they'd have been out that marketing money, and it may very well have done even worse if they promoted songs that were, in my opinion, more representative of the album's overall tone and message. Songs like "Letter," for example.

I think since Ayu is a pop artist, and this album is more of a piece of art than a piece of merchandise, avex weren't really sure what to do with the album as far as selling it to anyone outside her established fanbase.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

I do think that Party Queen in particular was a marketing failure (the drop in sales between PQ and FIVE, or between PQ and Love songs, is FAR more pronounced than previous drops). I think Ayu had one idea for what the album was supposed to be, and the people around her had another.

Ayu put together what is quite possibly her most personal album since A Song for XX, bringing back old composers that the fans would know and like, and the album was very, very dark. This album really had the potential to bring Ayu back from the clutches of repetitive, commercial-friendly mediocrity. This album COULD have been touted as a return to form, a return to the optimistic melancholy and intimacy that really set ayu apart from the competition through "I am...".

But I think this album scared avex's marketing people. I think the album isn't in tune with today's music-buying crowd, and staying "safe" has kept Ayu's sales at a reasonable level since about "Secret." But nothing about this album was "Safe," aside from the few songs they did promote & play on MTV. But even those just barely got any attention.

The album was too risky to promote, and since it was Ayu ("the album will be profitable regardless so what's the point in spending extra money on marketing"), they didn't bother. If they really went out of their way to accurately represent the album, they'd have been out that marketing money, and it may very well have done even worse if they promoted songs that were, in my opinion, more representative of the album's overall tone and message. Songs like "Letter," for example.

I think since Ayu is a pop artist, and this album is more of a piece of art than a piece of merchandise, avex weren't really sure what to do with the album as far as selling it to anyone outside her established fanbase.

I agree about the album most likelly being her most personal since A Song for XX, and it's not fitting the pop image 100%, and I also think the way it was promoted hurted it Oricon sales, as Oricon doesn't count 100% of event sales and this was the way the album was promoted the most.

During Love songs, Ayu broke her last big record. There's no big record last for her to break, either because she already broke it or because it's impossible for her to do so... In a way, Love songs is her last moviment as the Queen of Jpop from the 00s. When FIVE was out, while discussing it with isthisLOL we came with the theory that maybe the easy-listening album was announcing that Ayu was taking a different road on the future (as, on our opinion, the album lyrics listened in order can be a open letter telling someone, the fans we presumed, it was time to take a different approach to her career). After that she comes with a very alien album to her whole discography, I believe she never polarized her fanbase this much before.

And them, she promotes it though smaller reginal tv channels, internet interviews and live events, making herself as closer physically from her fans as she can... I don't know... I don't think Avex was lazy or scared to promote her because the album was way too risky... IMO it felt like she was re-introducing herself to her fanbase, something like "This is the new
Ayu, she puts what she likes and feels above what her fans expect, she is personal but is not filled with teenager angst, she has nothing to prove at this point of hr career". Starting on the Fukushima incident and her releases inspired by that, I feel like she is trying to be more human and less diva lately, even to her fanbase, and IMO her recent marketing choices are just reflecting the need to create a strong and durable base to this change.

[orbitalaspect]

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

Any company in their right mind is going to do what they can to get as much money as possible. That money goes to the artists, the people running the company, studio time, graphic designers, lawyers, accountants, rent on office space, TONS of unseen people making the business work. Whatever you have to do as a company to make sure everyone gets paid, do it.

I'd MUCH rather they release best-of after best-of than force artists to do shows all day every day and record 2-3 albums a year, that's for sure. The more money they can make without Ayu doing any actual work, the better for everyone involved.

Labels don't have much control over their artists' touring schedule. In all actuality, the artist makes a very tiny fraction of the money generated from an album sale.

Say Ayumi Hamasaki sells 100,000 copies of a new album at $34.00 USD each. That's a total profit of 3.4 million USD. Now, we have to break down where that money goes:

$3,400,000 (Total Market Revenue for 100,000 in sales of an album)
- $510,000 (Subtract Retail Markup of 20% per album)
-----------
$2,890,000 (Actualized Revenue Record Label Earns)
- $578,000 (Subtract Ayumi's Royalties Per Album - 20% of Label's Revenues)
+ $250,000 (Add Back Ayumi's Advance from Label)
-----------
- $328,000 (Ayumi's Actualized Royalties After Advances)
-----------
$2,312,000 (AVEX's Actual Revenues)

$328,000 (Ayumi's Income from 100,000 Sales of a New Album)
- $65,600 (Subtract Manager's 20% Cut)
- $49,200 (Subtract Agent's 15% Cut)
---------
$213,200 (Ayumi's Actualized Income from 100,000 in Sales.)


At the end of the day, Ayumi makes extremely little from the recording and sale of a new album. However, in order to maintain her contract, she has to be generating profit for Avex, and this is partially why album releases from her and Koda are more common than from artists like Namie right now.

My calculations are extremely lenient though.

Now, compare this to touring where the label is only granted a limited gift of tickets and measly 10% of touring profits:

$3,460,000 (20,000 People Attend Concerts at an average price of $173)
- $500,000 (Subtract Touring Costs)
- $250,000 (Subtract All Musicians' and Dancers' Salaries)
- $346,000 (Subtract Label's ~10% Royalties)
-----------
$2,364,000 (Ayumi's Income from the tour)
- $472,800 (Subtract Touring Agent's 20% Cut)
-----------
$1,891,200 (Ayumi's Actualized Income from 20,000 people attending a tour.)

Generally, artists release material through a label to promote tours, not really the other way around. If people like the songs, they end up selling more tickets and this is how the artists will make their money.

BTW, I may be WAAAY off on some of these figures, but it's just meant to show how much of a difference there is to Ayumi's pocket from an album release and a tour. So, the gist of this is: Avex does a lot of things that aren't profitable for Ayumi because they are clearly profitable for the label.

[ccsharumun]

Originally Posted by orbitalaspect

Labels don't have much control over their artists' touring schedule. In all actuality, the artist makes a very tiny fraction of the money generated from an album sale.

Originally Posted by orbitalaspect

Generally, artists release material through a label to promote tours, not really the other way around. If people like the songs, they end up selling more tickets and this is how the artists will make their money.

^This breakdown was spot-on (to my knowledge) in terms of how it generally works.

I would like to mention that while the Japan and US recording industries have many differences of approach, the way profits work appears very much the same. Even in the United States, most artists make their money from concerts, while labels make it from album sales. So, it really pays to be a performer (which we know Ayu is very good at, and people recognize that up to now, as her concerts still attract many, many people regardless of album sales).

I am also not certain how it works in Japan, but if it is anything like the United States, then the fact that Ayu writes all of her own lyrics means that she actually makes even more money on average than the artists who do not. Songwriter royalties make up a quite a chunk (I believe 10%) of the money each time an album or song is purchased. (And also every time one of her songs is covered by another artist and put up for sale). For instance, after Whitney Houston died, iTunes sales for her signature "I Will Always Love You" skyrocketed. But actually quite a bit of money went to Dolly Parton, who wrote the lyrics.*

So anyway my point is that Ayu's involvement with the creative process (especially lyrics) likely also means that while her profits from album sales may be small compared to that of Avex, her portion is likely more than the average artist who does not write (or compose as Ayumi did for a time as CREA).

*Not a part of the US music industry, but I have spoken to people involved and this is how it was explained to me.