Mika Nakashima BEST album announced!

[luminaire]

Originally Posted by greggerz189

that's because they've all released three albums. Traditionally, in Japan, an artist's best album follows their third album.

Easy assumption to make, but that's too simple, and very easily refuted. B'z has been around for many, many years - I think they just released their 14th album this year. Kumi's follows after 4 albums (and in all honesty, I think her best album wouldn't have come about if not for the fact that she just made it big), and Hirai Ken's is to commemorate his 10 years in the industry.

Also, the brilliant green has released 4 albums so far, and no best album yet.

I think the three year trend is because people start getting bored of artistes by the third or fourth year since they started listening to the artist, whereby in most cases the artist would have released 3 albums already, hence the best album serves to sum up the 3 years' worth of music (and that's a lot given the crazy rates at which the Japanese release music) and reinterest old fans, as well as to draw new ones. And it's definitely a far easier way to make money. At least, that's my take on the whole thing.