Ayu's CD stock in music stores
 

Hello! So last month I traveled to Japan I was really interesed to see what's going on with Ayu's CDs stock in stores. As I don't live in Japan I started to be worried about this issue because:

1) In 2006 Nick (The webmaster of enneaba) in one of the many reasons he gave about no longer updating the site is that he traveled to Japan but for him it was tragic to see how Ayu was no longer famous there and that her CDs were just accumulating dust at the very back of the music stores (He was also annoyed by other stuff so I took this comment like a grain of salt)
2) In 2013 CDjapan (Neowing) started having stock issues with Jpop CDs, it affected other not-so-popular artists that I listened to like Ami Suzuki and m.o.v.e. But Ayu's stock was intact until 2018 where some CDs started to being tagged as "Sold Out" :( The last I recall is HEAVEN (CD+DVD Edition) which I was planning to buy in 2019

So to understand the real situation I went to MANY music stores in Japan to check what was the real panorama :) and these are the results

Found in all music stores:
- A COMPLETE ~ALL SINGLES~ They put it prominently showing the front cover, only a few artists like Hikki have this privilege
- A BEST 2 -WHITE- There was only one store that didn't have it on stock, they only had A COMPLETE

Usually found in music stores:
- A BEST -15th Anniversary Edition-
- TROUBLE
- A SUMMER BEST
- M(A)DE IN JAPAN

Often found in music stores:
- sixxxxxx
- Colours
- A ONE

Sometimes found in music stores:
- A BEST 2 -BLACK-
- ayumi hamasaki 15th Anniversary Tour -A BEST Live- (CD album)
- FIVE

Rarely found (Found in only 1 store):
- RAINBOW
- Duty
- A Song for XX I recall this copy was at Tower Records Shibuya it might still be there
- M (CD single) I grabbed a copy! I was surprised they had 4 copies on the shelf of Tower Records Akihabara

Not to worry about none of Ayu's CDs had dust on it :) I'm suspect labels pay the place for artist to be at the very front of the store, these are new releases only so it's commonsense that if Ayu doesn't have a fresh new release she is in the corridors just like 99,9% of the other artists.

The bad news is that I didn't find a wide range of releases, like HEAVEN I will have to buy a used copy.

If you have other findings feel free to share here!

Considering her discography size, you'd probably have to get singles at the concert goods booths usually.

^I wrote an email to the CD shop that was present on Saitama concert and they kindly replied to me to bring the requested CDs to the 29/1 date :) that was so nice from them even if I coudln't buy the CDs

What about LOVEppears 20th anniv edition? Did you have a hard time finding it? I was thinking of grabbing it on December if I could find it!

I believe it was Tower Records Shibuya that they had both LOVEppears original ver. and LOVEppears 20th anni ver. But the limited package version seems to be sold out I never saw that in Japan.

Oh, I don't plan to get the limited version anyway, so that's okay :P Thanks!

wait WHAAAAT?? i thought original press LOVEppears have been out of press for years? :shakehead

I think they still press a lot of her discography. Can still get a lot of new copies from Amazon if you wanted but it's cheaper to just get used.