Does Ayu know about her sales?

[orbitalaspect]

This has been hammering my mind for some time. I'm curious if anyone knows if Ayu knows about her sales from album to album, or if her management team does something similar to Britney Spears (her management team doesn't tell her the charting positions or sales of her records) to keep her from freaking out?

Has Ayu ever commented on her declining sales, apart from acknowledging that she's past her peak? Has anyone at avex ever commented on it?

[attractive nausea]

^ They really do that with Britney? Wow.

To be honest i'm not sure if it's possible, i mean not knowing how much your last cd sold, i don't think she's the kind of person hiding and saying "no, no, don't show me the numbers, i don't wanna know!!!"

It would be weird if she didn't know at all how much her cds are selling nowadays. I have trouble imagining that someday, when her albums sell less than 5k avex is gonna say to her "okay Ayu, no more Yoyogi, you won't fill it anymore" to which she's gonna reply, "what are you saying? aren't my album still selling 300k???"
She's aware of her sales going down i think, but i don't know whether she's sad about it and just don't care, i think she might be a little sad, who wouldn't?
I don't think she publicly commented about it though (somebody tell me if i'm wrong) but she probably had "the talk" with avex about it, i wonder if they ever thought if kicking her out because of her declining sales, if Max Matsuura wasn't one of her friends maybe they would have done it by now, well her sales aren't THAT bad so far, but we'll see how it is in a few years.

[chocopockymaster]

Her sales have certainly declined, but she still sells extremely well compared to other female solo acts. avex would be a fool to drop her.

Given how much of a hand Ayu has had in her career thus far and how much of a control freak she is (I mean that in the best way btw) I can't imagine her totally bypassing her sales numbers. The woman knows everything, lol. And since she's a shareholder in avex, she would have easy access to that information--year-end sales numbers, etc.

[mizuki-7]

Originally Posted by chocopockymaster

And since she's a shareholder in avex, she would have easy access to that information--year-end sales numbers, etc.

Where did you get this info ? ^^

But I agree Ayumi know everything people say about her ! She know better than anyone the state of her career

[chocopockymaster]

Originally Posted by mizuki-7

Where did you get this info ? ^^

It surfaced around 2004 iirc when all that will-max-be-ousted, won't-he-be-ousted business was going on.

[mizuki-7]

^
Oh great I will try to find infos about this

[SummonerXI]

Oricon doesn't count Digital Download sales, just her physical CD sales, so any numbers from them are hugely inaccurate.

Last year, according to Rekochoku, A Best was the 3rd Most Downloaded Album of the year, and overall, the 18th most downloaded artist of the year.

She is doing fine. Oricon just needs to get with the times.

[LONJJONG]

I wonder if she knows, LOL.

She's always surprised and shocked whenever she ranked in Music Station's best-selling artists chart. She's like, "OMG I've sold over 50 million CDs?"; unless she faked her reaction.

[attractive nausea]

^ Yeah i think she was just faking the surprise because otherwise she would have appeared as too full of herself and it would have given her a bad diva image haha like "yeah bitch i know i'm the best"

[chocopockymaster]

^ Kind of like when she pretended not to know how to ride a bike during a HEY!x3 episode or an ayuready? episode or something when she'd already been seen riding one

[ExodusUK]

Oh my god..LOL! Seriously?

[SummonerXI]

Originally Posted by LONJJONG

I wonder if she knows, LOL.

She's always surprised and shocked whenever she ranked in Music Station's best-selling artists chart. She's like, "OMG I've sold over 50 million CDs?"; unless she faked her reaction.

I think, even if she does know her sales before hand, she's still excited and in disbelief over what she's accomplished.

Originally Posted by chocopockymaster

^ Kind of like when she pretended not to know how to ride a bike during a HEY!x3 episode or an ayuready? episode or something when she'd already been seen riding one

Well, you know Japan. Awkward = Cute. And Cute sells, right? lol

[Deep snow]

I think she does. I remember seeing a picture of a huge liquor bottle with a huge sticker on it saying congratulations that A BEST 2 has sold over 1 million copies combined. It was for a party or something (she parties all the time anyway).

[ExodusUK]

There was an interview recently where she said she's disheartened about sales and stuff but doesn't let her bother her...she certainly is aware..she even said so herself that when M sold a million copies that everyone in Avex praised her and encouraged her to compose more songs.

[Toniayu123]

I think she is aware of her sales but probably doesn't care about it anymore. I think low sales are in part due to bad/lack in promotion. In this industry almost everything is about promotion, and the way avex (or a third party, I don't know) handled it definitely is not the right one. I'm not talking about massive promotion in all media (which would help) but rather strategic one, and most importantly, Ayu image in Japan. I don't really know because I don't live there but it seems Ayu doesn't have a good one, while Namie (and sorry to bring the same discussion here again) does.
edit: and I consider Ayu's sales nowadays pretty good and stable, just not as HUGE as they used to be in the past. On the other hand, I love Ayu's image despite all the hate toward it.

[truehappiness]

Ayu probably stopped caring at some point while she was 'on top', to be honest. Somewhere around 2001-2003. I mean hadn't she already been foreseeing her 'end' during Duty?

And honestly, Ayu isn't like most acts we know of. She's very much a Madonna-type, and you can bet Madonna knows everything about whatever goes on involving her brand and so on.

[visionfactory]

She said "AT FIRST I didn't know anything about sales, either what was selling good or selling bad" therefore at 2004 she already had some basic notion of which was selling good and bad and her current position in the industry

[truehappiness]

She probably meant back when ASFXX was out... then the album was a smash hit.

[mizuki-7]

In an interview in 2001 (I don't remember the name of the magazine) she spoke with the interviewer on the success of Duty and she said how many copies this album sold and how she was disappointed by these sales because she expected more
2.9 millions copies was amazing I wonder what she expected back then ?

[microphone]

I guess this might be an interesting question to tweet to Ayu. What kind of response are you expecting from her? I imagine she understands in this industry that stars peak and (rapidly) fall. She declined gracefully though, managing to sell over a million to hundreds of thousands per album after her peak.

Britney Spears might willingly avoid reading about her sales under suggestion by her management, however, I'm sure she's been made aware either by herself or someone else. You can't expect any famous pop singer to be completely ignorant of their sales. I'm positive it is brought to their attention by the label, the guys who are running a business and are very concerned with sales.