TROUBLE 1st week position/sales on Oricon - #3 ; 24,147

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/5849380272?pn=2

Not bad I expected worst especially since it's such a rushed release but at least TROUBLE sold decently

Underwhelming. I hoped she'd reach 30k. However that's gonna be impossible as she seems to have been selling 500 copies a day.

Hopefully a nation will give her a boost. It’s too early to tell, She’s got about 6,000 copies left. praying for the best.

How did the previous release fare in their second week?

M(A)DE IN JAPAN 2nd week sales was 4,729 copies . Its 1st week sales was 30,269

http://www.ahsforum.com/forum/showpo...&postcount=102

^ Thanks Karen. So I am guessing 2.5 k at best on the second week for TROUBLE, with a-nation perhaps 3 k.

Well, seeing the overall first week sales compared with the first day sales: Looks like my theory that only fans bought it because of the name Ayumi Hamasaki on it was not that wrong. In my opinion, We Are the Queens is the only remarkable song in this album. A song that is already 2 years old. I would go even further and say that most of the sales came from the concert dvds in this record, and barely anyone bought it for the songs.

^I'm pretty sure they didn't offered that much boxes for selling... Ayu's DVDs sales weren't breaking the 10k copies lately.

I don't know, these songs seem to fit right in with Japanese tastes. But I think nearly everything else about this release put it at a major disadvantage.

aeternal and The way I am are actually way more popular with the Japanese fans. Nothing wrong with supporting your favorite artist and whatever you pre-otder you usually purchase based on trust not knowing whether you’ll actually like it.

My guess is that the week of streaming ahead of release hurt sales, as well as the fact that it was advertised as a new "album" but only contains five tracks, of which only three are new recordings, and that there were no PVs. However, worth noting that her first week sales for TROUBLE are more than Koda's total sales for AND, which did have the full album treatment.

I love TROUBLE. I think it's the most Ayu thing we've seen from Ayu since NL/GUILTY, but looking at it from 30,000 feet, I think it would be more meaningful for her to deliver A BEST 3 with 5-7 new songs, re-recorded PVs/songs—like Namie's Finally—than focus on original material right now. Recreate some of those memorable Lumix or Panasonic or BOSS CMs, maybe do a sequel photobook to (miss)understood. Something creative and interesting and nostalgic for fans while still being fresh.

And on the plus side, if she finds she's just not that into the whole experience anymore, she can reasonably retire after a release like that and it won't feel as much like we're watching a star burn itself out bit by bit, year over year.

^well, she won't retire.

Good sales, especially since there's nothing special about this release (no music videos, only three new songs, etc). That really shows that even though Ayumi is not as popular as she used to be, her fan base is quite solid. :yes

I think it is not fair to judge the popularity of ayu music based on the physical album sales. Like me, I haven’t bought the physical albums in the recent years. I only buy music in iTunes.

I have lots of ayu stuff in these 20 years. My flat barely has space to store any more.

Yesterday I realised that even with this kind of sale numbers, Ayu still in the top 15 of the best solo artist (12rd with A ONE and and 13 with MIJ)

Of course that's normal to compare with her past or with Namie/Hikki etc... but if you look at the japanese market now, solo artist who does very well are not really common.
Ayu's results are not good but are "normal", don't make the situation seem worse than it is guys :D

Of course I'm disapointed for TROUBLE too and I still hope a futur success.

(For exemple when I see Ai Otsuka's sale I feel so sad and angry, her last albums are really good and she's touring a lot, but she keep going her career and project, and that's great)

2nd week day 1 - #38

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/5850898180?pn=4

^
man, I was hoping it would stay in the top 20 for at least two weeks.
Fingers crossed that a-nation will give it a nice little boost though!

It's natural for an artist to decline in sales and popularity. Not everyone is lucky like Namie, and even she didn't always maintain her peak afaik. Also, sales and popularity don't define how good the music is. Besides, trends and peoples' tastes change

^Namie had very low sales for that period standarts during the 1st half of the 00's and her sales were declining again. Had she not retired she would be at the same point Ayu is right now in a few years.

Also, people used to say the same shit about Namie they say about Ayu nowadays during her lowest.

There's nothing extraordinary happening, really.

Sometimes I feel that people have a fetish for artists to retire lol

The sales are fine, I'm happy with TROUBLE, but I want new music already >_<