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Originally Posted by Kanariyatachi
I don't hate them nor do I feel particularly butthurt about Ayu's records, but I just feel like they're more of a new, separate category of entertainment, rather than actual musicians. And applying musicians' rules to them doesn't really seem to work.
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For me, I don't think whether they are actual musicians or not really matter. If that's the barometer then people like Namie et cetera likely wouldn't be on the list. Or for US artists, pretty much about half of them wouldn't be able to count their sales. For me what discounts them is the tactics to artificially inflate their sales numbers. Concert tickets, handshake tickets, millions of versions to buy of the same single etc. etc.
Now, I was living in Tokyo during the boom and they did have some level of general popularity, but outside of their otaku fanbase, it was primarily limited to elementary school aged children. I didn't see them quite have the pervasive fanbase that you find with say, Arashi (every age group in the country across both genders, essentially); but yet AKB is selling over a million every single and Arashi is not. Hmmm wonder why? It couldn't possibly be the insane sales tactics. (sarcasm)
I guess we will see in 15 to 20 years if they still have songs that are mainstream relevant. I could see maybe Heavy Rotation and Koisure Fortune Cookie....but that's about it.
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Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
I don't think they had much of a cultural impact either. Manufaturated acts rarely do.
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Actually, I would argue in Japan manufactured acts have a significant history of having a large cultural impact: Smap, Arashi, Morning Musume anyone? I just don't know if I think AKB is one of them.
That really kind of illustrates the point though. Can anyone with a straight face say that AKB had a larger impact than SMAP even though the sales might want you to think so? Hell no.
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Originally Posted by tokyoxjapanxfan
Morning Musume sold well in an era when many, many acts were selling well. Idols were only one aspect of Japanese music. The charts from the 90s until maybe 2006/7 were filled with various types of music, as well as solo, bands, duos, and idol groups.
Since 2008/9, the highest selling artists each year were Arashi and AKB. And AKB's sister groups as well as JE made up the majority of the remaining top 10.
For people who enjoy a plethora of genres and artists, this is a frustrating situation.
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This. I used to love watching all the music specials/end of year shows etc. Now they are a complete bore because it's just the same over and over and over again with very little variety at all.