Startin'/Born to be... 2nd week sales
 

rank: 5
sales: 30,176

recap
week 1: 116,034
week 2: 30,176
TOTAL: 146,210

wow that's a terrible drop... at least its still in the top 5. but still very huge decrease in sales.

so next week at that rate it'll sell like 5,000 copies.

:no

I think it's really sad that the sales dropped so low.
Such a good single and such low sales >_<

comon Startin! ^^

That's really bad lol...

Come on Ayu, make a killer song already.

Wow, that's pretty low... but it's still #5, that's not so bad.

what? Bold & Delicious sold a million copies.. i hope this new single can be the same as well! 5th is not bad either..

^huh? B&D sold nowhere near a million. o_0

At least it's still in the top five.

Wow, that sucks. Her popularity is declining BIG TIME and I think nobody can deny that anymore :(. Oh well, I hope she continues producing quality songs (IMO, Startin' sucked big time)...

Eek o_O That's a bad drop...

I guess not many people want to buy CD's nowdays.. :no

it's strange.. the song is good & french, PV are wonderfull...
What's appening?
I wonder if all the singles are bad saled this week

B&D sold only 130.00 copies xDDD

O_O Such a huge drop. At least it's still top 5. Hope next week it'll stay in top 5.

Not Ayu-Cds at least. ;)

Well, at least it sold more than Bold&Delicious. XD :P :dead2

True, and it's something to be happy about.

Although Ayu's new single sales not well, her performance has improved a lot, especially her singing skill. We should appreciate it also.Don't just focus on her sales.

I always think ayu's sale ain't that bad, and I've already pointed out that the last few no. 1 singles' first week sales were lower than that (except B'z of course). Popularity is one issue (she's not as popular as before but she's still popular somehow... you know what I mean). the problem about cd sales is another major issue. Nowadays people tends to buy mp3s. Many Japanese have iPod and probly they download this single from iTunes. Of course, Startin'/Born To Be... is considered a weaker single in ayu. Anywayz, , there're so many factors leading the low sales at this moment.. Dun feel sad or disappointed just because the sales dropped from 110K to 30K. Kumi's BEST~ss~ got the similar drop (from 983K on the first week to 2xxK this week.. I was really shocked.. I thought it would sell at least 300 to 400K this week...)

PS: I just use Kumi's album as an example to generalize the low sales. I'm not comparing them... pls don't start any fight because of that... I do bring B'z up as well... probly HYDE, hikki, Exile, ASIAN KUNG FU GENERATION, etc.. @@

I love the single so I'm especially sad it had such a big drop in sales.

as long as Ayu still continually produces #1-hits like no other, I don't care much... :)

so she beat B&D's sales in just two weeks. :)

it annoys me when people are saying OMG AYUS POPULARITY IS DROPPING YAY! just because a single is selling lower than usual.. the whole market is like that nowadays, every year its getting worse and worse..

Look at it this way then - at least it sold better than her last single. :)

the only reason y the lower sellers got the #1 spot was cos there was no competition. the wasnt any relatively big name artist that released a single between the time ENDLICHERI ENDLICHERI was released and hikki's week. during hikki's week too, sure, there were bigger names, but the lower sales is cos their popularity is suffering, not cos of piracy and wut not. as for EXILE getting the #1 spot the week before ayu, their album is gonna be released next week, so there wasnt any much hope for their single to sell extremely well from the beginning.

buying cds maybe one of the issues, but i really dont think its THAT big of an issue, especially in japanese society. but i agree, imo, this IS one of her weaker singles, so i wasn't expecting much from it anyways.

one of the main factos that kumi's album did so well on the 1st week was cos of the limited edition that had 2DVDs. it made up almost half of the total sales. the limited edition sold out on the 1st week, so it was also expected that it would drop quite a bit in the 2nd week since the incentive was gone. also, considering this factor, she did quite well, as hirai ken and ketsumeishi who also debuted with 900k+ sales, were only a bit higher than kumi's 2nd week.

it actually annoys me when ppl say "every year its getting worse and worse..." cos its NOT true. ppl tend to exagerrate things a lot. i think some ppl think that just cos other countries have declining sales that automatically means japan is having declining sales year after year. well, its NOT true. 2005 single sales have done better than 2004 single sales. 2005 album sales have done better than 2003 album sales. sure, we mite have a slow start into 2006, but im still optimistic that 2006 sales can match or do better than 2005's.

also, note that im not saying that the 2005 sales arent doing worse than 2001. thats obvious, i already know that sales in general have declined since the peak at the turn of the millennium. wut im saying is thats its not doing "worse every year."

I don't know .. I think ayu songs are still really high quality compared to many other singles .. I think it's just that people aren't that excited about buying an "AYU CD" anymore .. her music is still really catchy and the lyrics are still beautiful ...

i think she just need another publicity stunt that will get the public interested in her again .. not just go by ayu cd and say something like "o .. there's the new ayu cd, it's good but i don't think i'll get it" kinda attitude.

Big drop, but at least she's still on the top 5 and this single has already passed "B&D" single!~

well no one said "YAY" about it. i'm sure they'll post here soon though to say that. lol.

Great, she's still in the top 5! ^^ I don't think it'll reach 200 000, but it's done well enough so far..

tha'ts so true, she just isn't 'new' and 'in' anymore, no matter how good the actual song is.

the sales tells us it's not about quality it's about popularity, the songs are so good! yet low sales

Not bad^^
These sales put a ceiling to from now on around the 350.000 copies a score that finally many artists would be delighted by realize.

The drop is actually quite surprising, but I think the sales are still pretty good, because of the state of the market at the moment. D: 100K+ are pretty good sales now for singles unfortunatly. ):

i don't know, i'm not a big fan of any of the songs in that single. the same goes for the pvs.
so i'm not impressed this single is not selling so well.

but i'm hoping her next single will be really good and she'll be back to the 300k mark.

I really think sales shouldn't indicate anything..

It's not like she'll get an award for sales anytime soon LOL [she stopped doing that a whilleee ago] She'll get awards for making the no.1s that she makes though :]

<3 her no.1s.. I wonder if Ayu will go to only sell about 450k in singles a year :\ /falls over

Well said! Seriously, IMO, this was not a great single at all.. come on AYU give us some comebacks! :D

well sales and #1s r linked together....

So?

total sales that look bad due to leechy other artists don't really matter to me :p

~_~

I guess it is a popularity contest, but she still has legions of loyal fans in Japan. She won't be going anywhere anythime soon. It doesn't matter about the sales, just as long as she gets her number ones. I think she's still pretty popular in Japan, just not as popular as before.

I think the drop was realized after they discovered how little material was on the single. The single's DVD didn't have much to buy it for. Unless she may be put on her recording "teens" or something, then more would have sold. These days, it's more for the visual content than the audio content.

But remember, she really won't be going anywhere soon. Avex is probably gonna build on her even more since she already surpassed the "Most Number One Singles" mark. They'll porbably extend it as long as they can.

will this single make it to 300K?

Well she Startin' wasn't mindblowing. It's her own fault. rofl

I'm glad that it beat B&D~

That's because they heard the songs finally.

^Ouch.

But anyway, these are definitely not Ayu numbers, but going by the market this year, it isn't too bad at all.

Still, it's quite a big drop. Very reminiscent of (m)u's sales.

You know what, i'm sad about the sales, coz S/B is really a great single, especially Startin'.

but the sales.......what can i say, ayu is not 'that' popular anymore, but she IS still popular....to keep the popularity, we should support her as much as we can!!!!!!

:\

Can you think of any solo act who is still as popular [or at least, somewhat] as they were at the peak of their popularity [especially after 7 years in the business]?

Why is everyone caring about her popularity? Just chill ^^

^ yes yes.. If she wasnt popular she wouldnt have gotten #1 in the first place with a single garnering mixed reviews from fans.

Top still and its been said many times why sales are dropping for female artistes especially...Not about fame or wadeva!....The single is very good...Im sure the japs love it too

Now sales really dont tell anything..

*1　－　151,760　*,151,760　サヤエンドウ／裸足のシンデレラボーイ　NEWS

Wow the #1 sales are crap...

However, the single is not that bad.......

Low sales? Don't care about it!

That's been the story this year so far. Even B'z's Shoudou was dismal to say the least.

And by the way, those numbers are already more than Startin's total sales. =X

actually Startin'/Born to be... is doing quite well IMO, the songs were somewhat good but the PVs attached to them slaughtered what little potential they had to be more appealing, so dissapointing PVs+medium quality songs (neither of those songs yelled HIT!, commercially speaking)+little promotion= low sales for Ayumi's standards... which ultimately translates into average sales for "common" artists.

true, but many singles are still selling, so their chartlife counts as well. sadly, i dont think S/BtS... will have any chartlife.

at least S/BTB surpassed B&D/P in term of sales :D
hope this single will have a long chart life =X