First Love cover is MAGICAL! When I first figured out who she was in 1999, and when I saw the cover, my thought was:
so conceited... no wonder she could sell 7 million copies... It was her "conceited" look that brought me into JPop world lol
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
^ Goodbye Happiness still sold over 2 million copies in digital sales, as did most of the older tracks from the compilation. Hikki is a pretty unique musician on the sense that almost all of her singles during her whole career are pretty much huge hits, but I really doubt she has 2 million hardcore fans... I would count the SC2 sales as her core fanbase (as it came with a new EP) and her usual digital sales as her casual listeners.
Even if SC1 had huge sales sales, it also sold way less than any of her previous albums, and this fact itself goes against the usual for the jpop market, where the compilation tend to be the last relevant relese and the overall best selling album. Japanese loves compilations, but this doesn't mean they will buy again a lot of stuff they already have just because it is a compilation. Even more Hikki that is marketed towards adults for longer than Ayu or Namie for example, and adults are less likely to buy something just because there's an idol name on it.  |
When SC1 released, the music industry was already shrinking, so actually its sales was extremely good in 2004 (if not, it couldn't be yearly no. 1 rite?
). Of course, we can't deny that it didn't sell as good as her previous albums.
I didn't know Goodbye Happiness had 2 million digital downloads, because it never went to no. 1 daily in recochoku. And when I looked at generasia, it only said it was certified gold (100,000 downloads) in the end. So I dunno. I would love to find the source for that
.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
BTW, let's be honest, if covers affected sales, Hikki wouldn't have survived so long |
True
... Well probly except DR and UB, those covers are actually quite good. Honestly if wasn't her popularity, Distance would have bombed instead. I was so disappointed by that cover. It was pretty ugly compared to A BEST (well at that time, almost every single JPop fans were watching the battle rite? Including myself
). I could accept First Love cover because it was a way to show her face to the whole world. Distance was her second album and all she did was wearing a fur coat (?) and making that weird pose. It didn't have any concept at all.