Agreed. Utada has the occasional MASSIVE hit like Flavor of Life or Beautiful World/Kiss&Cry, which sold 600k and 250k, but her singles rarely make it to #1 since 2004-2005. She's more likely to turn heads with a new album. And to be honest, I expect a new Utada record to sell upwards of 500k. I doubt she'll have sales like HS or UB, but 500k is plausible.

You mean physical? I definitely hope she can sell over 500K in physical.

Honestly imo that's not going to happen anymore.

I think 100k - 150k is more realistic. I can however see Hanataba selling close to a million in digital downloads.

Oh yeah, I forgot that the sales of single collection vol. 2 wasn't that great (in fact I was a bit shocked of how low the first week sales was). Hope she will do great in digital then.

I don't know if I'm too much optimistic but I assume if there is a female singer able to surprise me with big sales that's her !! It's true her seconde best album had decent but still disappointing sales but if the promotion is well handled we can expect great sales !

1 million digitally?
You're expecting too much.
With the current state of the digital music market, this is very unlikely.
Sakura Nagashi sold Platinum digitally in 2012 (250k).
And even though it was only released for iTunes, right now iTune is the biggest digital platform in Japan with about 50-60% of all digital sales.
So you shouldn't expect that much higher sales than for Sakura Nagashi, but actually that would already be a success.

i dont think she will sell more than 100k .... it will be a huge 'disappointment' to the whole world. she was gone for too long..

If she sold 100k, it would be great, not a disappointment. Look at other artists sales and go from there.

I hate to be a negative nancy, but some Utada fans just have this unrealistic idea that she'll sell millions. She'll sell well compared to other artists, but the days of million selling albums (unless you're in a girl/boy group) are long past.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just the state of music these days.

I think 100K is a bit too pessimistic. I have feeling that her upcoming album can at least sell over 150 - 200K in total. She is hikki after all, one of the queens in music industry. If her album total sales are really around 100K, that means she becomes one of those typical bland artists in general public's eyes. And I think she will retired if she sees herself becoming that.

After seeing what Ai Otsuka's hiatus did to her...I'm very skeptical about Utada's selling records out the ass. Of course, Utada is a record-setting, music history making icon so there's obviously more hope for her. But still, she's not above the current state of things in music. She will be effected too; SINGLE COLLECTION VOL. 2's sales (which were 6 years ago!) show this.

Nonetheless, 100K would be amazing, anything more would be a dream come true and would prove the power of "Godtada," as she's called around here. But I don't think she's exempt form anything ayu, Kumi, or anyone else is subjected to. Namie even had her crazy second peak and the decline in sales is also evident for her.

With hikki it could honestly go either way. So only time will tell. (Pun intended, lol.)

^Agree. Lets just wait and see LOL

Be that as it may, even she stated she was nervous with coming back. She'll probably sell decently, but claiming 500k isn't going to happen realistically speaking considering her best album sold less than 500k.

Ai Otsuka and Utada are apples and oranges. Ai's biggest selling album was 800k, Utada's is 7.7 million. They're in different leagues and make different music. So, I don't think Ai's hiatus and comeback (which were not promoted like Utada's) is any useful to judge Utada's comeback, as long as Universal continues promoting Utada.

With the statistics for NEWS ZERO and Totonee-chan breaking records for annual news viewers and morning drama viewers in the last 15 years, I think Utada's comeback is not going to be overlooked. She's had probably tens of thousands of tweets with the comeback hashtag, so she's definitely got attention on social media. She's doing this smart. She just needs to keep going forward.

I said 500k because Utada is still Japan's daughter. A lot of people were saying million selling was impossible when she did HEART STATION in 2008, mainly because Koda and Ayumi couldn't top 500k. But Utada not only pulled 1 million in sales, she sold more than 100k over ULTRA BLUE's sales.

Utada has staying power and influence, so expect a new album to be a big deal, especially if she invests promotion and creativity in it the same way she did with UB and HS.

Edit: I should note that I've checked her website at all hours of the day and she's always got at least a few dozen tweets coming from fans with the hashtag, fresh and new. So, I think the hashtag campaign and the tie-ins, and general interaction with media has helped. Ai Otsuka's comeback wasn't this organized or promoted.

It's really hard to compare hikki with ai-chan and namie. Like what orbitalaspect said, they are in different league. Even before ai-chan went on hiatus, her popularity was already sinking so fast. Also, looking at hikki's 2nd best album might give us an impression that she won't sell really good this time. But then again, when she released Sakura Negashi, she could drag in over 100K downloaded in less than 24 hours, and even monthly no. 1 in recochoku. Ai-chan could NEVER do that before or after hiatus. So I really don't think Ai-chan's sales after hiatus would be a good model/indicator of how hikki will do.

As for namie, I must say her style has gone to a totally weird direction that many Japanese casual listeners do not find appealing. She basically released more English songs than Japanese songs after uncontrolled, and I must say that _genic still sold pretty well when most of her songs in the album are English. So can't say her sales can indicate how hikki will sell as well, because namie is brave enough to ditch the comfort zone and create her own taste of music.

Probly ayu and kuu are more relevant, but I don't follow kuu anymore, and I only listen to ayu's few songs for the past few years, so I can't really use their recent data to judge hikki's future sales... :P

Utada also had very good tie-ins to help boost her sales compared to others, so there's that.

They point I'm trying to make is when her second best album dropped people on here were staying she would easily sell a million copies because she was Utada, and that didn't happen.

Just wait and see, that's all anybody can do, but let's be realistic about it. We all want her to sell well.

I forgot to say in my previous posts, but I do totally agree with you that selling a million copies is hard, even for hikki. My most unrealistic hope is that she can sell over 500K on oricon, which is still hard if she's not relevant in Japan anymore.

Even 500k is really hard for anybody. Only idols and (boy)bands reach that at the moment.
We don't know when the album is coming. I do agree that they're promoting her comeback really nice. People are curious and it works. But that doesn't mean it will translate to sales.

i agree with you. i think i wasn't that clear in my earlier post. im sorry but i don't think she will sell even near 100k. as you have said, time goes on and so does the official sale number decrease. Even sales number for kana or amuro decrease if you check up their latest full length album. nowadays, its just unpredictable but i wish that utada can sell a satisfying number of copies!

100k-300k is possible, but 500k is really hard :D