How did people outside of Asia find out about Ayumi
 

I searched for a thread like this (well, sort of) and did'nt find anything.

I am just curious to know how people outside of Asia found out about Ayumi.

I heard of her from downloading the DDR song "Butterfly" a few years ago because my friend told me that's an Ayu song and all over the internet it says Ayumi Hamasaki is the singer of that song even though it's Dj Mystik (I think) anyway I kept on thinking it was Ayumi's song for a while and I liked that song so much that I started downloading her other songs and finding out about her. So long story short, I downloaded all her song's, fell in love and now she is one of my favourite artists.

BTW: Her voice does sound kind of the same as the singer in DDR's Butterfly, to me anyway.

Um. My tv. I was flipping through the channels, landed on Cartoon Network, and Inuyasha was going off. Turned out it was Ayu's Dearest ending theme. Although at the time I was all like, "ew" (oh yeah, it was 2003). Way later I kind of warmed up to it and looked up her stuff. I downloaded fairyland because it had just come out and fell in love. <3

well im asian living in America so i no alot about whats going on in Asia right now.
but the story is i found a AMV playing evolution and had to find the rest of her songs.i found the PV Fly High and HAD to get the rest :yes :D

I actually can't remember ._.

I found out about her searching for Every heart...then I found Kuu..then its all downhill from there haah ^^.. I love the internet

(In case you didn't know, there really are similar threads-tons of them- in the Chatroom).

Most people, I guess, were introduced to Ayu by friends.

I actually heard Independent on a J-pop internet music station, and it just went on from there. It took me months for me to like Ayu though.

I don't think that it sounds anything like her. Plus, Ayumi's English pronunciation is not that good.

I originally heard Japanese music through anime themes and found that Ayu was quite popular among J-Pop fans, so I listened to INSPIRE and immediately fell in love with it. After that, I purchased MY STORY on the internet and eventually every other one of her albums as well.

Well, yes the pronunciations is completely different but the tone and the high pitch/squealy voice sonuds the same to me like when you campare it to her older song's such as "you"

Back then, when "quizzes" started to become really popular, I did a quiz from hamazaki.net (Angela's site is closed now though...). Her quiz banners featured Ayu. Both me and my sister were interesting in knowing more about her because we thought she was sooooo beautiful. We started downloading songs from her. And I became a fan. (Not my sister though)

>>> http://mai.deep-ice.com/quiz.html

My friend sent me Ayu Trance 3. I loved the songs, but not Ayumi herself. As days passed, I grew to love her.

Back in 2002 or something, I got ahold of teddy bear via a friend and was hooked.

I wasn't able to get much in terms of Ayu music until 2003, when & revitalized my love <3

I was showing around a Japanese exchange student in '01 or '02 and we swapped CDs. She gave me A Best and Mai Kuraki's first. It got me started on JPop :)

I met this guy in a chatroom in May of 2005, and he said to join his Ayumi forum, and I joined, and I've been a fan ever since!

piracy!

By doing a project about music in English for class =)
I knew J-Pop by ending & opening of animations, and by looking around on the net, I discovered this "queen" of J-Pop, Ayumi Hamasaki!
my first song was Still alone... It was in 2004 ^o^

Through Japanese Exchange Program.
When my Japanese student arrived, he gave me Ayu's single, 'Voyage' as a gift (such a meaningful present). Basically after that, I got hooked onto Ayu.

i went to china during one of my summer vacations and saw "free & easy" on tv. on the way back to the states, i bought the single in narita airport, and ever since then i've been hooked :D .

back in 2003...I saw an episode of Inuyasha...the ending song then was "fukai mori" and I wanted it...so I searched for it...

I came across the site J-fan...and I was looking at their artists. They have a list, and one way it can be sorted is by popularity...and at the time, Ayu had the highest number of votes...so I was like....okay let's see what's so great about her...I listened to a little clip of Fly High...and...was...seriously hooked...I HAD to have the song...then I just started downloading random stuff for while, until I decided that I had to have EVERYTHING by her...and there was SO much...omg...took me a while to finally get all the songs...I was downloading like 24/7...

then I found out about all her remixes...oh god...I still don't have them all...

Almost as everyone, watching Inuyasha I heard Dearest, but sung in Spanish, time passed and one day my japanese teacher brought a vhs with a concert taped from Japanese tv, then I saw the CM that uses Will as a background, my friend told me who she was, and I remembered my exboyfriend telling me about her but never payed attention so I started searching and now I'm a fan.

I found out about Ayumi from an Australian singers forum and in the Off Topic section Ayumi was mentioned so many times that i wanted to check Ayumi out.I went to youtube and the first video i watched was INSPIRE(My favrotie Ayumi song),and i have been a fan ever since.

for me it was really a matter of coincidence, one day i was looking for wallpapers and i saw one of Ayu i thought she was cute. Fast forward 3 years i am sick of american music, go look for asian music, recognize Ayu's name and here i am.

from a friend then from a CD store when my sister went to hong kong

A few years ago, when I first started downloading JPop, I looked for places to buy CDs and came across yesasia.com. Ayu was constantly on their top sellers list, and curious about her, I downloaded some of her songs from kazaa.

From playing a video game that featured Depend on you. Oh darn whats that game called...????

edit: Thousand arms, that's it!!! what a crap game.

It's all thanks to the Internet.

All.

searching for Nmaie found STEP you and AHS^^

Well, I had seen her name in lists of most-selling singers all the time and so, one day, I listened to a full length preview of SURREAL at Last.fm and it was love at first hearing.

I belive at most like 3 or 4 of the 11,000 members who are here would maybe have heard about Ay-uh-me if the Internet didn't exist.

Back in 2001, my friend got a late birthday present from her cousins in Japan. It turned out to be A BEST. My friend had me borrow it, and I was hooked.

i used to be really into remixes and club music, so in searching napster and other services for remixes i ran into some jpop remixes by western remixers like hex hector, thunderpuss, and etc...i found ayumi soon after and the rest is history. :yes

My Japanese penpal sent me ayus "UNITE!" single as a Christmas present. :heart This was end of November 2001. ^^

I found this site called Akatsuki that held alot of Jpop artists like, BoA, Chrystal Kay, melody. etc. (I think it was back in spring/summer of 2005, maybe earlier)
They had MY STORY tracks for download and I downloaded Moments, (I remember thinking how that lipstick, hair, dress, and posture looked kinda weird :P) I fell in love with that song. After that it was HAPPY ENDING, Hope or Pain, no more words, and some other odd ballads that got me hooked. I found Baernash's thread on AYUNITE! and it was just awhole bunch of downloading, and experimenting from there. :D I didn't really like her upbeat, songs because her voice would be too much for me, and the pop made my head want to explode (:OMG), but over time, I grew into her and loved/respected all aspects of her music. So the internet was how I learned about Ayu, and AHS has been so, so good to me that its dug its claws into my life to the point where I can't function without going on atleast 2xs a day. Yeah.

How true it is.

I am Asian, but I only knew about what was going on in my home country, Philippines.

My sister complained that I bought a Sweetbox & Koda Kumi CD's and told me I should have bought something from Ayumi Hamasaki. (Obviously, she had NO IDEA who Ayu was. She just typed Asian Music on the internet. LOL.)

So I did go check for this.. "Ayumi" lady's music. I came accross about 8 songs, the first one being "evolution" and I really liked her.

I burnt the songs and then a year or two later I became addicted to her, I was surfing SongJapan and found a download link for INSPIRE leading to this forum.

Yeeep. That's what I remember anyways XD

I post at a music forum, and we all make personal charts. Someone had Ayumi with "INSPIRE" in his chart, and it sparked my interest. Not so long after that, he sent me also "CAROLS" and I LOOOOVED that song, and that was the moment I became addicted to Ayumi Hamasaki

I used to adore Koda Kumi. I loved all her songs and things. I had heard people talking about ayu but from the pics I'd seen of her I thought that she was some girly pop singer. So I was on Soundclick one day and I was looking for fans versions of Ku songs when I stumbled arcoss a singer called Sou-hime. I listened to her Koda songs and they were cool and I noticed that she had done INSPIRE so I listened too it. I thought it was great so I went to look for ayu's version and I downloaded it. I feel in love! Within 24 hours I had downloaded every ayu album from A Song for XX to MY STORY ((miss)understood wasn't released yet). I wasn't sure which songs to download so I only dled a few until eventually I just said "Awh quack it" and downloaded them all XD

well, i just downloaded a song when I saw her hame in an article so yeah, heh.

It started out with liking anime for me and then that drifted over to liking Jpop and then that went over to liking Ayu!

from the game THOUSAND ARMS.. then got hooked since jan 2001 when i saw evolution on Channel [V]

It actually started with my dad and brother in the car. They played SEASONS (Acoustic Single Version), and at the time, I didn't know anything about her, so I thought it was SPEED. I was browsing our computer, and stumbled upon it when looking for CAN YOU CELEBRATE? by Amuro Namie, and really liked the soft harmonization she did. I listened to the Original Mix, and I got pretty muched hooked after that.

BUT

I lost interest after a while, and almost fell fully back into American music, until my friend let me borrow her RAINBOW album since she found Endless Sorrow on my CD, and said it sounds really different from her now (I guess that was true). After July 1st on the album, I got hooked again, this time not to be released.

I was an anime fan and had listened to the Inuyasha songs, but I didn't really pay attention to Ayu until I downloaded evolution from an anime/J-Pop rotation site - then I had to find out more about the artist responsible for such awesomeness.

I learned of her music from Inuyasha. It was the dreadful spanish version with the bad vocals. In spite of that, I liked the melody. Then, while watching the english version i recongnized the melody and heard Ayu singing it. I thought her voice sounded so sad and beautiful...

In the summer of 2002 I had just gotten my own desktop and was desperate to find Japanese music not tied to an anime or seiyuu (Inuyasha had not aired on American TV yet). Ayu was a random download on some old P2P program that's not around anymore.

Around the time of Rainbow and A Ballads, I really couldn't stand her. The & single (I downloaded "ourselves" from a music rotation) brought me back and she's been my favourite singer since.

i know ayu from thousand arms games at 1998...from there i love her so much
i dont think butterfly singers voice sound similar to ayu voice

I got introduced to the Japanese culture through Anime. I started watching Pokemon and from there, after a few years...BAM! Here I am now. I fan of many aspects of the Japanese culture.

same reason for me! (surprisingly). that is, my friend made an AMV playing evolution and i downloaded it. Up until recently I hadn't downloaded much of her stuff until I watched some of here PVs

my bro showed me Evolution Gold Scan mix in some street fighter an video we liked it, so i limewired her stuff enjoyed it and got my bro to buy me my first cd =D MY STORy + DVD 1st press :D

WinMx

was at another forum (not ayumi, was an anime forum). They make a fan vid of that anime and ayumi's song was inside. fell in love with this first tune!

I was given the opportunity to download an Ayu album and took a listen and didnt give it much thought as i didnt really like it.

But thought the music was intresting so researched her and saw what an icon she was, and i just had to listen to more material. And got hooked

Well... I'm interested in Japan first. A friend send me "Forever love" from X-Japan. And.. I liked it. So, I wanted to know more about Japanese Music and watched in the Internet. And.. there I found her.

Anime. Stupid, stupid anime. Hahaha. I was looking through my friends' anime CDs, then looked at her jpop cds, and saw a song called, "M." I then squealed, "M FOR MEG!" (Megan is my name.) From then on she was my favourite.

I heard about her from other people. I was really into morning musume, and after hearing everyone talking about her, I hated her!

Well i did an exchange program in Japan and bought an aiko CD just to give different culture's music a try and whatever. I liked aiko, so i looked up a few other artists when i got to America. I bought (m)u online without having heard any of Ayu's music and was instantly in love lol.

well I found abozt her from Inuyasha loved the spanish version they did for dearest and looked for it to download, and that is how I got into Ayu, downloading the japanese version of the song, fell in love with it right away and decided to look her up, first PV I found of her was Real Me and that is when I got really into Ayu

I was on youtube a year ago looking up Avril Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" MV the results came back w that vid & w Ayu's AT'05 "Happy Ending" performance out of curiosity I clicked on it started 2 watch it & was like, meh. I was gonna close the window when I saw Ayu come up & started 2 sing, as I heard the song I started 2 like it even though I did not know wat she was saying. By the end of the performance I loved the song & Ayu. I saved that vid in my favs & everyday I would watch the performance & more & more I liked Ayu, till 1 day I was like this girl is beautiful, she has a great voice & I love this song, so I decied 2 search her on the internet learn more about her & her music saw some pics & was like WOW!!! she is beautiful, heard more of her music & then on saw my 1st Ayu PV I dont 'member if it was "Moments" or "Ladies Night" so yeah thats how it happened, "Happy Ending" became my fav. song Ayu introduced me to Japanese music. I guess I was instantly an Ayu fan & L8er became a hardcore fan :-) I would have never thought that I would like J-Pop music & that Ayumi would become 1 of my fav singers along w Avril & Llinkin Park.


oh yeah it was so kool when I found out that Ayu was the Queen of J-Pop, GO AYU!!!!!!!!!!

probably internet, friends?

Advertisement?

lots of possibilities.

I heard that my fav band Linkin Park were gonna duet with a Japanese singer on a website (this was like 5 years ago when I was getting hooked onto Playstation games - anime) and I checked out the singer - Ayumi Hamasaki - I downloaded a visee CM with Naturally and I became a Ayu fan!! ^^

A long process for me. It started with anime, which got me hooked on Anime Ops and Eds, which then led to me researching some of the different singers. Eventually I downloaded a Ayu song on a whim, and fell in love! ^_^

Me too it was InuYasha, the third ending theme to that anime is Dearest, and after that I just looked into more Ayu songs... that's pretty much it, really! ^^

It was a long time ago, I can't remember very well... I heard Masami Okui, and she introduce me to all the J-Pop. Back in 1996