German Singles
 

i quite forgot about those, but today I rediscovered them and I began to wonder why they've been released and how went the sales..

Does somebody know anything about it?

Connected reached #18 on the German dance charts and #89 on the German Singles Chart and was listed as one of the hit songs of 2003 in Czech Rep.


That's all I know.

I'd like to know too. Why did she randomly decide to release a few songs as singles in germany?

I doubt it was ayu who decided this...

Well, as I am usually listening more to ayu remixes than original mixes, I count those german remix releases to my all time favourites.

I can't really tell how many hours I listened to the Connected and M remix singles. Like hundreds of hours, probably.

In my opinion the Connected remix single is the most epic Ayu remix of all time! I wish they'd do an Ayu Trance 4!!!

I did like some of the Depend on you mixes as well.

I pray like every day for an ayu trance 4...lol

Well like if you look at who remixed the tracks on Cyber trance its all western DJs like Above & Beyond/Dirt Devils is British and they've done remixes for big western artists like B.Spears and Madonna. Ferry Corsten and Armin Van Buuren are both dutch and DuMonde is german.

So someone probably got the bright idea that since these were western remixes and Ayu had a big international following they'd see how she'd fair in the west.

That's just my theory tho.

some of those mixes were featured on other compilation albums of remixes too.

OH, not bad the 18th place in ranking..Connected is maybe my favourite song I'm glad to know it had success

My first theory would be that its because the remixers were German. But according to hsienko, thats not so. So my second theory is that its just because germany is a big country for dance/trance/EDM, and I guess they figured that because of that, they'd sell well. Also, (as what happens with dance music), there are (almost) always extended & radio edits of the songs/remixes. So I guess it was where they released the extended versions?

[edit] (even though this all typed at one time)
I found out that the remixers who remixed the songs on Ayu's german singles are all signed to Drizzly music, a German record label. So logically, they'd be released in Germany. My guess is that they either retained some of the rights to the remixes, or they obtained the rights from avex, and so Drizzly decided to release those singles. (more money, right?). but then that'd mean they could only release it in Germany, as Drizzly is a German label.

Germany is like a music capital. It also has very strong ties with Japan.

Taking Jrock bands as an example, a lot of bands, when starting to move to Europem and to want to release in Europe, they usually go to German labels. A popular one; CLJ Records, who has 9GOATS BLACK OUT, alice nine, Ayabie, Moran, Plastic Tree, the GazettE, Versailles and plenty more.

Actually more and more Japanese artists sign up with German music labels every year. Four years ago, CLJ Records had maybe five bands five years ago, they now have 20 or 20+.

Germany was always big on music, loads of popular, even 'controversial' bands of years and years ago made it big in Germany, and in actual fact, most of the time, Germany was one of the first countries to open their arms to the music and thus, it only makes sense now, and especially years ago, for foreign music to be spread through such a country who had labels ready to sign foreign artists.

so we can assume it isn't a fact strictly related to ayu but a sort of common thing there

^ Yes exactly; Germany was just one of those countries ready to open their arms to something so foreign.

Ayu wasn't doing too badly on the German charts at that time, especially for an outsider, but my guess is that she pulled back on releasing in Europe on her own accord and simply didn't want to rush into moving to Europe just yet, when she felt like she still wanted to prove herself to be an incredible artist in Japan.

^But ayu is jpop, not jrock. Besides. You mentioned that some artists started there. By the time ayu released her first german "drizzly" single there, she was already up to her Memorial address album, and was already hugely popular in Japan. I have a feeling that she was just trying to reach out to other countries. Her first drizzly single was connected released in 2003, a few months after she released her Rainbow album. The same time she decided to start touring in Asian countries outside of Japan, and start incorporating English into her music so she could broaden her fan base. I have a feeling that at that time she was like "why not go even further and release some european singles?"

long time ago someone told me DJ Bass and Dohzi-T were working as DJ's in Berlin / München clubs so maybe thanks to his help those singles were released in Germany ^^