[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by Baernash

Japan is the only country I know where people buying stuff (just because it's trendy), not using it and than (during "spring cleaning") throwing it away. You walking the street and you passing by sealed items, new toys, clothes with tags etc. dropped next to litters. I live in UK since few years and sorry but you can't compare consumist here to what's going on in Japan.

Don't call other people's culture rotten. Actually, don't even do that with your own, this is disrepectuful as fuck.

Japanese pop-culture was always cheesy and they always loved what's cute and young. People loved Ayu for maturity when she started her career as teenager, so they expected she'll continue this direction - they don't need her to act like she's 14 years old. If they want to listening silly songs with immature vocals they have a lot to choose from. Whatever you're calling Namie's recent releases this style works for her but things like "Feel the Love" not working for Ayu.

And again, her only recent album with a more carefree sound was Colours, and again, her lyrics are still dealing with far more mature themes than the stuff you usually find on the Japan's top ten. It was a experiement, it was 2 years ago and it doesn't define the standart of her releases. About people liking Ayu because of her maturity, I don't know how far that's true when we talk about casual listeners, who are the ones that can actually make someone sells millions of copies of anything, considering the biggest part of her mainstream hits consist of innofensive summer pop tracks and pedestrian romantic winterish ballads. She was even seemed as some kind of dumb cute girl for a good part of her career.

Do you know why digital downloads are not popular? Because instead of buying online is cheaper to rent CD, rip it to hard drive and return it (yes, it's legal). And people who buy several copies of '48-bands or H!P sigles selling them as fast as full album is released or sometimes even faster (you can see how many used copies is available on auctions and in 2nd hand shops day after their release).

Most of the big acts among the teenagers actually have pretty strong digital sales, people like Kana Nishino, whose digital sales from singles are far larger than the physical ones. This doesn't happen with anyone that got big after the digital era, or whose sales are aimed to anyone who started buying music before the digital era. Still, neither the start of the digital era or the rented CDs are affecting Ayu as much as lack of interest from the public.

Sorry but in 00' teenagers didn't have to buy 3-4 copies of the same single/album, because there was just 1 version.

They always did buy 3, 4 copies of the same release, and not only in Japan. I'm not talking about artists who release the same stuff with different covers, I'm talking about people actually buying several copies of the exact same release in order to prove their artist is the biggest when chart numbers are out.