Quote:
Originally Posted by drdolce
Oricon definitely should add digital sales to the physical sales because I have seen some physically badly selling singles on Oricon sell 100,000+ copies on digital charts. For example some of Kana Nishino's early singles weren't sold that well according to Oricon but on Digital Charts they hit 500,000 copies. It was a funny sight tbh.  Another example that comes to mind is Koda Kumi's Ai wo tomenaide which sold 30,000 physical copies and 100,000+ digital copies in 2011. I wish those were combined on Oricon chart lol. :'D
As for AKB48, I agree with you. Imo their influence on J-Pop as a whole has been negative. New artists are mostly boring or something I get over with way too soon for my liking and creativity is also missing. It's really sad, and I noticed it really began when this group became popular with their ridiculous marketing gimmicks. -.- |
Yeah, these are all good points. There are a lot of artists that sell far more digitally these days than physically. Namie Amuro sold over a million copies of Love Story digitally I believe?
My comment about AKB was less about the influence on jpop musically or image wise, and more about their sales tactics that result in an artificial sales inflation. Bundling CDs with music cards, hand shake tickets, and concert tickets etc. And I don't just mean to single out them, because several artists are guilty of it (that's how Exile Pride apparently sold over a million copies) but AKB imo has been the worst offender. Just compare their sales figures from Oricon to Soundscan, while indeed they are still one of the top sellers, they are no where near the million+ per single that Oricon reports, according to the sound scan numbers (which only counts sales from record stores). Which makes watching stuff like the recent Music Station where they ranked artists overall sales figures and AKB was right up there with Ayu, B'z, Mr. Children etc as one of the best selling artists of all time. Acts like Morning Musume weren't even in the top 25 and I would argue that in their heyday, they were just as prominent of a presence on the J-Pop scene as AKB is now, if not more so. It really makes you do a double take and go what the actual #&%? I can't remember the exact quote, but even the head of Oricon has come out and said something like "at least Arashi's sales are based on genuine popularity...." basically alluding that AKBs were not.
Johnny's isn't all innocent in this either though as I suspect pretty much the entire reason that Oricon doesn't count digital sales is because Johnny's does not release anything digitially.
And all in all, both situations have made the Oricon charts a laughing stock.