Your Ayu origin story

[_dandy_]

I've posted "my" story years ago but happy to repeat it here.

I've always been interested in streaming video, long before streaming services were a thing. I was always on the lookout for random sites streaming (typically) news, as I always thought it was interesting to hear about world events being told from completely different perspectives. And hearing about things that - here in Canada - local news outlets wouldn't bother reporting at all.

So one day I found some random site - I couldn't remember the name even if I tried, it's long been shut down...it had dozens of pages each with dozens of links for videos originating from all over the world and covering things like news, sports, TV series, movies...quite the treasure trove, although it was a rather nasty site that didn't shy away from showing endless popups. One link caught my attention - it had a title that read something like "watch live Japanese superstars". My immediate thought was, that could be interesting - I have no idea who the equivalent to a household name like Madonna might be in Japan, and was curious to find out whether I might have heard of any of these "superstars". So I started watching - and going back to it day after day. It didn't take long for me to realize that (a) obviously none of it was live (b) it was all music videos, not concerts as I thought the title might have been inferring and (c) after I started paying attention, I realized the named artist was always the same - although she looked quite different in every video, so had I just casually glanced at the videos rather than looking for the name, it would've taken a long time for me to realize this was all the same person - someone by the name of "Ayumi Hamasaki". Never heard of her.

Once I saw the name, I started googling...found her discography...downloaded a lot of MP3s...and was so impressed that over time, not only had I purchased *all* of her full-length albums, but also all EPs and some remix albums...then moved onto *all* of her yearly concert tours and live countdowns. So that little bit of streaming resulted in me buying essentially her entire catalog.