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Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
She is hitting top 5 (or #1) both because she has a pretty big core fanbase who will buy enough copies of her stuff to put her on charts during a era physical sales are declining (she wouldn't be even top 10 with her sales 10 years ago) and because her marketing team always pics days with no actual competition... So, when she is released against people who will sell 20k copies of a single, she easily gets a good position.
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This is about as practical as it gets. Party Queen, for example, was placed against ABC because it didn't seem likely ABC would get a #1 and Avex wasn't interested in pushing marketing for PQ. Had she been up in a week against Koda or someone else, Ayumi would have been guaranteed a lower position on the charts because her sales are skydiving at this point.
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Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
And we can't forget Ayu actually hold a lot of events during Party Queen promotion... She didn't appear on national TV but showed a lot in public (and you needed to buy a copie in order to sit close to her), had a lot of radio/web/local tv interviews) and is having a 30+ dates tour for the album. Considering Oricon only counts 1/3 of the total event sales, Party Queen sold better than we know (Not saying it sold 100k more or something like that, but it probably already crossed the 150k mark). As most of us don't live in Japan, this kind of promotion and nothing to us is the same... What doesn't mean it means nothing to people who were actually affected by it.
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PQ's promotion efforts were definitely not up to par with prior releases. But, like you're implying, the sales drop cannot be attributed as much to a lack of promotion as it can to the fact that Ayumi really didn't have much on the release calendar for 2011. When an artist is out of the spotlight for awhile, their sales are definitely affected unless a massive amount of promotion is done or fans are really demanding a major comeback for the artist. The amount for PQ simply wasn't enough to curve low sales. And that happens. But it's more of an Avex problem and not an Ayumi problem.
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Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
There are a lot of ways of promoting an artist, they all work on a different way, and different moments ask for different promotions... Promoting herself now like she did 5, 10 years ago wouldn't bring the same results, it actually could kill her career faster... Being overexposed when people care about you is far different than being overexposed when people don't care about you... And guess what? Right now people don't care about Ayu enough to find it cool and nice seeing her face everywhere...
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Overexposed is overexposed. It harms whether you're popular or not. This is really why, for example, Justin Bieber isn't selling 20 million copies of every record. It's not that fans wouldn't buy it, it's that the people who would otherwise be interested in Bieber are tired of seeing him everywhere and grow to resent him and everything related to him. I agree that promotion on par with I am... and Duty would actually kill her career at this point, but promotion on par with MY STORY or (miss)understood would help revive it. This is still a question of Avex though, not something Ayumi can really change herself.
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Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
You have to promote your stuff on the pace it is demanded... Promotion don't magically makes your sales increase and it isn't a science... Promotion may or may not work and you only know if the millions you invested will show results after they show results. People over here are praising Namie's strategies, but her big blockbuster promotion only started once the public started caring about her again (Best Fiction, I guess)... Before that, everything was pretty modest and simple.
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Part of BEST FICTION's success is that Namie had not released an actual Best Compilation in almost 10 years. So, having gone through this huge shift in music style, fans ate it up because the album truly was a demanded comeback for Namie. Just look at 60s 70s 80s. The fact that Namie found a way to integrate her earlier pop leanings with her new R&B style is what fans wanted from her, and the public practically ate then regurgitated that single then ate it again.
Really good points.
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Originally Posted by Jennie Mae
How about this? If you don't like the tracklist or the fact that it's another Best Of and not a new single, just don't buy it. If you do like this concept, preorder it. I don't think AVEX would put this out if they didn't think people would buy it. And if the sales aren't great, they will change their method and probably start putting out singles again.
Even though I love this idea and I love her summer songs, I'm probably not going to buy it, simply because I'm saving money for school and I would rather not own all those a-nation performances and have money in my pocket. To each their own.
(Not meaning to start any kind of flame war about my post. If you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all.)
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I agree with the first point. But I think people have valid feelings about this being a bad idea. First, it's a whole lot of fat just to get the one good cut from the album—"You & Me." And while I'm definitely not buying this record, and think it's a bit risky to do, there is a point where we should all sit back and really analyze what's happening: There are way too many compilation releases coming from Ayumi in the last 5 years. And the problem isn't that they're solid efforts, but that, like A COMPLETE, they are being pushed with the intent of cashing in on older songs.
Personally, I'm glad any release is coming right now, but I want to see Ayumi get back on a regular release schedule. She's tapered things too much in the last several years, and I'm sure fans are tired of seeing her music go in 8 different directions at once. A SUMMER BEST is probably not the best thing to see, but let's hope "You & Me" is a sign that she isn't losing a sense of direction with her career. She still has a long career ahead of her if she makes every song count.