Ayu at 39 for concert attendees.
 

Here's why it's all concerts and few albums, apparently. This article was a big happy for me:

https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/articl...eisty-musi&p=3

In attendee numbers, Ayu ranks 39 in Japan! https://style.nikkei.com/article/DGX...n_cid=LMNST008

According to Nikkei, over 50 concerts Ayu played to 231,000 fans. I'm sure those aren't all unique visitors, but it's pretty clear that if she puts on a concert, people are going to see it! She's third among female soloists after Amuro Namie and Mizuki Nana.

And that's not to mention A Nation: https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/articl...nikkeisty-musi

A Nation was apparently the second-highest grossing festival of the year with 188,000 attendees over 4 days.

Imagine all the albums and goods she sells at those venues to all those people on top of ticket revenue. No wonder it's all concerts all the time. It's safe to say that her salary must still be pretty darn impressive. ^_^

Her voice may not be on the best state but the emotions she convey on stage is something that goes beyond that.
PS. Ayu is the third most succesful female act of the year tour-wise and some people say she's over and should retire.:trolleyes

The Nikkei overview is compiling all performance dates while counting together the full capacity of the venues played, not the actual capacity used and tickets sold.
They even mention in the first article that they just assume all the performances as sold out for the report.
So you should take it with a grain of salt.

^ With a grain of salt, true, but that applies to all artists on the list. The fact that female soloists are not doing so great is kind of sad... nothing new, though. Still, I'm proud she is high there :)

thank you for this clarification!

By the way MKAyu, I don't recognize Namie Amuro kanji on the list, can you tell me on which number she is? Or someone please?

^ She's #4 overall

Oh it was at the first page, thank you!

^ It took me a while to found it as well hahaha No problem :P

I'm kinda surprised with Kana Nishino being so close to ayu, and Namie aside they're all really similar. Seems like the fandom for female soloists in Japan is basically the same for them all... Not in a sad way, just peculiar, I guess

I think ayu usually sells out over 90-95% of the tickets. I have never seen a significant number of empty seats, plus you can never be sure whether some of those were actually sold, but people didn’t make it.

Also the self proclaimed “queen of live” doesn’t appear to be in top 50?

^ Unnecessary af?

Yeah, she's not, she did a fc tour in the beginning of the year and then a hall tour. ayu did concerts on bigger places. So it makes sense she's not there. But don't worry, she's added extra dates to her tour and did her first CDL last year, things are good. We appreciate you having so much to care about her career!

TEA :laugh

Yeah, whats up with acting like Ayu was selling like half of her tickets? 90-95% is A LOT considering how much she tours.

If you're refering to Corvina's post, she made an actual interesting point? She didn't aim that for ayu, btw, she didn't even mention ayu. It just points to every artist in the list, especially those that toured on domes (which sometimes have part of their seats not being sold cause from some places you can't see the concert stage, so Nikkei is adding up more seats for it). Plus "take it with a grain of salt" is not "that's fake news" lol

I don't get why this news needs to be divisive.
It's nice that many people are going to her shows but we knew that already didn't we?:P
Corvina's post simply added contexts and facts to the ranking.

Pretty much. Even if it’s the same people coming to the shows, you gotta be doing something right 😇

Thank you Corvina! My bad, I should have read that part more carefully. I saw "douin" and just got excited and posted after checking the numbers.

I wasnt the only one reading it that way :P

^ I also didn’t mention a single name in my post. But it was obvious what we were all aiming at...��

Lol, I was talking about the whole list and about nobody in paticular.

But now I just take a look at Ayu's number and count the capacity of all those 50 dates of her 3 tours last year together, out of curiosity:
16 for Just the Beginning in 2018
11 for Power of Music
23 for TROUBLE Tour.
I come to 190k, not 231k.
Honestly don't know where the other 40k are coming from?
And even those 190k are with full capacity and we know for sure that Ayu didn't use the full capacity for her Power of Music arena tour last year (like for the Osaka Jo Hall dates 8000 instead of the possible 16k per date).
Taking Ayu as example here as it's the easiest and that's what you all are the most interested in.

That's why I said take it with a grain of salt.
A list with the real stats would probably look a lot different for a lot of artists, for the better or the worse.
The list like it is is horribly inflated.
No bad intention, just pointing out.

Who's this self proclaimed queen of live?

^ https://rhythmzone.net/koda/discogra...php?id=1006214

I never really understood this kind of boasting. I personally find it appalling for a number of reasons. This also turned into an irritating hashtag commonly used by her fans.

This term was used around her 10th anniv for the first time iirc but it doesn't refer to selling lots of tickets but to her concerts being... Extra lol Lots of dancing, beautiful stages, lots of props... It's more in line with Kylie's title of showgirl than being a giant ticket seller.

And sorry if you read it that way but I wrote "you" in my post in the plural, I didn't even quote you specifically, Andrenekoi

And my last addition: no one said she sold half of her tickets. You guys came up with those numbers.

Namie: queen of hip pop , ayu: empress of Jpop, kumi just wanted her own name which in this case is queen of live. I wonder what utada would be?? Though I don’t think she cares lol.

Did Ayumi called herself "Empress of jpop"? I don't know the story behind that nickname.

I don't think ayu herself came up with this; she doesn't strike me as someone who would proclaim such a grandiose "title". I might be wrong though haha.

Namie: Queen of Hip Hop. Koda: Queen of live
Ayu: And I am the Party Queen! YOLO

It comes from her article in TIME magazine in 2002 I think (not sure if it was used before) but it wasn't self proclaimed lol also you can find her listed in the "Honorific nicknames in popular music" as the Empress of Pop (Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honori..._popular_music)

https://i.imgur.com/RavAdXo.jpg

Tetris queen :laugh

it also refers to the fact that she can sing and dance LIVE, something ayumi stopped doing years ago (the "singing" since she's never actually dance). But different strokes for different folks I guess! :yes

^sorry but when did Ayu stopped singing live according to you?

And of course an ex-Ayu fan now hater appeared and started talking nonsense. So pathetic but expected from that kind of users.

We wish Ayu actually stopped singing live considering her vocals sometimes LOL :P

If anything she is lipsyncing way less nowadays than she did on the first half of her career.

@Gustavopc Well, people did receive that as a read. I don't think there's a need to bash Koda over it, though, even because she has not used the "Queen of Live" titles for years now.

And Ayu never called herself "Empress of Jpop", but she called herself queen both indirectelly, by putting crowns on her A logo, or directly in hapenning here and My Way.

Ha ha ha. Dancing was never her selling point. Her catalogue of strong songs and amazing stage presence are. You could say that at some point of her career she excelled at many things, so much that others have given her titles.

^more like the people around her excelled at many things that's why she was who she was. And now that they are gone she has to go to extremes like stealing her fans' designs and calling it "giving back to the fans" or working with new comers and people who she stumble with when in reality and most likely people don't want to work with her.

So you can make fun all you want about the so call "the queen of live" and let her prove anytime anywhere why se was given that title (or gave it to herself) and you can enjoy the talents of the empress of pop... whenever she wants to prove it... today? maybe tomorrow?... in the past 7 years?... dunno. :D:D

None of what you said makes any sense :rolleyes

Japan and China and all of Asia publications have all referred to Ayumi as "Empress of JPOP" and "Queen of JPOP" during her peak. She was untouchable during her peak.

I think she's the only qualified female singer that can take on that role in Japan. Even now.

She was lip syncing back then too?

That's true. I think that's how they announced her when they were showing music videos of Japan's biggest artists in my local cinema during Japanese culture festival in early 2000s. That's when I discovered Ayu and Utada :-)

She never lip synched a whole concert, but always lip synched some tracks here and there.

And really.. Ayu x Koda is soooo mid 2000's...

^True but I also think sometimes it was a DVD thing, I'm not 100% sure but I remember someone saying the Stadium Tour 2002 was completely live at the venue but then in the DVD the first half is lip synched. Maybe the coolest footage didn't have the best audio or something and they decided to mix different dates :think not sure if that was the case or if happened in other concerts/DVDs tho.

I don't take DVD in consideration because it was always pretty edited. But there are even a TV live she lip synced cuz she was sick if I remember it right

Really? I remember her singing live on TV even when she was crazy ill.
The concerts are a different story :-)

I first heard Koda when she covered "Cutie Honey" (song that I really liked) and although she was dancing and singing live performing this song on TV, I was very disappointed she could never hit the high notes in the chorus.

I'm not all that into her tv lives, so I don't remember if it was a lip sync or if it was REALLY bad and I'm mistaking it for an early cdl where she lip synced. But even if that happened on TV, it was literally once.

The first song I heard was real Emotion and I was really looking forward to the a-nation 2005 performance - I remember it was pretty bad, but then every next performance of that song was worse until she started doing a rock version and put it in a medly and butchered it for good.

It was Seasons at CDTV.

what's wrong with this Seasons?

I haven’t been interested in Koda for years (no shade), so I’m not an apologist, but these kinds of malapropisms are messy and irresponsible. It’s things like that that cause Stan wars. Isn’t Ayu VS Kuu a little 2007? Individual=/=an entire corporation.

LOL. Anyway, I've always seen Namie as the Queen of Hip-Pop, Koda as the Queen of Pop, and Ayumi as the Empress of Pop.

With Namie's comeback, I think she earned every right to call herself the Queen of Hip-Pop. She managed something no other major pop idol has ever done: She became the biggest selling female artist early and late in her career.

With Ayu, she's always had an insane amount of finesse to her image, music, lyrics, PVs, etc. For her, it was always about the "experience" or the "story".

With Koda, she's just always done equally well both the singing and dancing. My only wish is that we saw more stuff like "Alive" and "Koishikute" throughout Koda's heyday. I still tear up when I listen to "Alive", since it's the most unexpected amazingly done song I'd ever think to associate with Koda.

Overall though, they all three, alongside artists like MIKA NAKASHIMA, BoA, Otsuka Ai, Suzuki Ami, all win for being the defining elements of the era in Japanese Pop music that saw more sales, more creativity, more immersion into music as an art than any other time in history. I'm eternally grateful I got to live and be old enough to be aware and share in it with others.