The only reason I would have bought the Be My Last single would have been for an instrumental track.
Seeing as it doesn't have that , why bother? The song will probably end up on an album of hers later on. I know a lot of people feel the same.

(if, for some reason, the track doesn't end up on an album, I'm sure a lot of people will go out and buy it. :P)

yeah i am pretty suprised too taht Utada's single is has sold below 80k but for a single which only has one track is not worth it at all and i think that is the reason for hikki's poor sales and the introduction of itunes in japan will hurt the sales of the cd even more.

Yes, and isn't the song for a movie? I know that Drama songs released as singles sometimes never make it onto the artists' album. Couldn't it be the same for movie themes too?

I think it's a combination of the 1 track single + iTunes Japan (iTunes wasn't available when "Dareka..." came out last year). Like I said before, if one were given the option between paying 660 yen for a CD single with one song or paying 200 yen for that same one song on iTunes, I'd bet they'd go with iTunes... I'm assuming most of the 80K CD sales this past week came from the CD+DVD combo, seeing as that at least gave some incentive for people to purchase the physical thing...

I really wish there was a place where we could get iTunes/digital download figures... Someone mentioned "Be My Last" selling 250K, which would explain a lot...

I bought the "Be My Last" CD because I can't buy from iTunes Japan :(
If I could, I'd also buy Beni Arashiro's new single that's only on iTunes!!

Yeah, I never saw those music videos actually getting played anywhere though. :(

same here...never saw easy breezy anywhere at all...i thought it was even hard to find on the net.

You can't determine who sales more than another by only one single...

yay! sry, but I really wanted ayu's single to do better. HEAVEN was a better song. IS a better song. XD

i'm glad ayu is doing better...and i think we can all agree that her single held a lot more value...not to be mean.

i have never seen any promotion for Hikki's English album, all i know is that she is releasing it with def jam (right?)

Wow, what a strange thing, seeing Utada not selling so well o.o But I've seen people saying she lost her place as the J-Pop Queen, it's too early to say that, don't you guy think?

having just 1 track is surely gonna hurt the sales. i wonder why they do that

yeah, curious.. maybe that had some sort of strategy that we dont know.. :confused No one is THAT stupid to release 1 track singles and expect it to sell a million, unless that song is SAKURA DROPS and it was featured as the theme song for the next Final fantasy!!!

1 track only and it sold 80 000-90 000 o.O hmmm.. is that considered good or bad? Maybe we gotta see in few more weeks time, how it goes.

^CD singles sell the same amount even if there are instrumentals.. You cant say BML sold well because its a miserable first week number, AI BEAT IT.. If she added extra remixes, then it would have sold more.. Toshiba-EMI was just overconfident, just like AVEX was with Daybreak..

Ditto. 'Be My Last' is the most legally downloaded song in Japan ever and most of the people bought it from iTunes, because it's cheaper. I mean, the Be My Last single was just released so Hikki and Toshiba-EMI could get so money, don't think they were expecting too much from a one track single that you can buy cheaper on the internet. The single was kind of succeful, I mean, 250,000 downloads and japanese people are not even USED to download songs legally because iTunes were released for, like, two weeks..