I suggest re-reading those posts because looking back, nothing of the sort was really said.

The curious thing about the Japanese music industry is that albums sell far more than singles for solo acts but singles sell equal or more than albums for group acts. So when it comes to solo acts I would tend to look more at the album sales to judge their popularity.

As a very rough estimate, I think ayu's singles sell around 1/3 of her album sales so the numbers for FTL is higher than expected for me. But then again the cover was gorgeous (only for CD+DVD version).

Namie has been president of that club since like 2002. She's never been a strong single seller so this isn't something new. Not talking about her TK era obviously. There was also a lot of insinuating that TSUKI would sell worse/the same as big boys cry. Idol groups like Morning Musume only sell well cause they do a shit load of events and live concerts. Basically to attend the mini live concert you have to buy a copy of the single. There's also other perks like handshake events. That's why MM sells like 144k first week...but only 158k overall. AKB and their sister groups use those tactics too but unlike MM they're actually legitimately popular with the general public. Ayu and Namie could do that too and sell like 100k first week but they would probably get criticized for it.

Anyway didn't y'all learn your lesson in 2009 when WILD/Dr. came out? You can't only look at single sales. People here were trashing her saying that her popularity was already over etc. and how it was a huge flop compared to 60s70s80s. Then Past>FUTURE came out...then Checkmate!...then Uncontrolled...oops? :shrug We could bring DVD sales into this too.

if people were so accepting then namie wouldn't be mentioned in every single oricon thread. i know sometimes namie fans start the discussion and taunt ayu fans but they shouldn't be solely blamed. then we have the same tired excuses as to why namie and ayu's careers are the way they are today. there shouldn't be constant comparisons as a means to try and validate ayu's success.

With ayu there's nothing to validate as she is no longer one of the tops and again, her status in Japanese culture exists if anyone wants it or not. But I'm sure that the namie stans who provoke the ayu ones like you mentioned are doing it just for the purpose of validating that namie is the best selling solo female right now, which everyone know already. To add to that, they can't hear, true or not, stuff like her popularity is decreasing, like some ayu fans weren't back in the days.

You're right, but don't forget that ayu used to excel in single sales for a long time. She and AKB48 are the only females who sold over 20 million singles copies, so far.

Itano Tomomi's new single "little" is selling less than Feel The Love so far. For Ayu to be outselling the 2nd biggest solo star from AKB48 at this point in her career is absolutely astounding.

If anything Feel The Love proves that Ayu still has the biggest hardcore fan base of all the females in Japan. Sure it's sad her appeal with the general public has dwindled but to still have the most amount of hardcore fans is very nice. :)

Yeah, ayu's appeal to the general public pretty much died unfortunately, but I suppose she really is not interested in holding it, and is more interested in keeping her fanbase.

(If tomomi is 2nd so who's 1st? =P)

Tomochin is following Ayu's path with this single.
zero promotion = bad sales

As for who's first or second or whatever in AKB... well, have a look at last year's solo singles (first week - final sales):

Itano Tomomi - 44,630 - 55,121
Maeda Atsuko - 60,687 - 78,834
Kasai Tomomi - 18,550 - 23,31
Takahashi Minami - 85,493 - 103,066
Watanabe Mayu - 67,329 - 81,752
Kashiwagi Yuki - 65,736 - 76,220
Iwasa Misaki - 18,929 - 29,825
Kuramochi Asuka - 31,424 - 35,285

Y'all should help me write my research paper, lol.

People really need to get over the Ayu vs Namie thing. If I were them I'd feel completely ashamed about how each fans often treat each other. The two obviously respect each other (Namie being seen at Ayu's concerts multiple times/ Ayu mentioning Namie in an interview etc) there's really no need to turn everything into a competition. Seriously, both of them have had outstanding success in their careers and while I'm not a fan of Namie's music, they both deserve huge props.

lol +1

im dying hahahaha!!!

by the way. out of topic...
not only her japanese fans that decreasing...
the active member here in AHS is start decreasing too...

Active members at J-Pop forums in general are decreasing, to be honest.

^What could be the reason ?? Mmm, K-Pop ?

Aren't AHS and jpopcentral the only active/popular jpop forums? Are there any others with a lot of users (or at all?) lol.

But let's try to stay on topic.

Maybe Ftl/M-g-r can chart for another week and reach 37,500.

Probably because there's less to discuss: frequent releases, world tours, tv lives etc.

For a single with no promotion and 'unsafe' songs and considering the sales of Love Again album, this single is really doing well. Was hoping for 40k though :P

I know it's off topic, but are AHS and jpopcentral the ONLY jpop forums that are really active? I swear that there's more...

I think less people are getting to like Jpop as the years go by... And people who tended to like is giving it up due to the lack of innovation, the distance that the western audience is located in terms of enjoying the whole thing like tv lives, promotion, concerts, people to talk about it in real life... (I don't talk about ayu with anyone :() and the language barrier is also a reason...

This is very true. I think Japanese artistes need to do promotion more, because seriously this lack of promotion (including promo online all over the place) and very little opportunities for oversea fans, etc. is one of the reasons why K-pop is taking control over the audiences. Of course that there are various reasons of why people prefer K-pop more, not to say that it always appears cool looking to the public too... while J-pop is completely a different thing.

Truth to be told Japan never wanted to be anything outside its territory, they always tended to be the most isolated country in terms of protecting their things and serving only their ideals and their people. I'm graduated in International Relations so I read a lot that Japan never wanted be a leader power even in Asia.

Japanese music industry make music for the Japanese people, they don't have any interest in selling their stuff overseas. So unlikely South Korea which is trying to gain more status in the western hemisphere, Japan won't ever try to do that, it just doesn't suit them and they don't care if J-Music is losing western fans, it's like they didn't even care we exist in the first place.

I see that a lot of indie J-Rock bands and small Pop singers tend to explore more their abroad experiences touring in Europe, USA and sometimes in Brazil (the country with the largest number of Japanese outside Japan), but it's because they're not attached to big record labels and they don't sell well even in Japan, so they don't have to maintain a certain behavior or anything, they don't have nothing to lose. But that is pretty much different when we talk about huge idols, like ayu, EXILE, AKB48.