There's no point in comparing Koda Kumi and Ayu. They're two completely different artists with two completely different styles of music.
I'm going to quote something I posted earlier:
Quote:
Why do people think this is the end of the world? "OMG! No one in Japan likes her anymore! She's not popular anymore! Waaah!"
First of all, she's still very popular in Japan. No, she's not as popular as she used to be years ago, but yes, she's still one of the highest selling artists. She's been around for a long time, and to still be selling as well as she has been is pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.
Second, people keep complaining about her sales. So, her sales aren't as high as they used to be. Times have changed in Japan. More people are buying music online through iTunes etc. Yes, sales have decreased, including Ayu's, but it's not just for her sales... It's everyone's. Even Utada Hikaru isn't selling as much as she used to. Does this mean she's not popular anymore? No. It just means people are finding other means of getting the music they want.
And since we're talking about sales, I'd like to point out that Ayu has been doing extremely well. Her singles have done very very well. 300,000 consistent sales is great. B&D didn't sell 300,000 sales, but it did pretty good. 100,000 isn't bad! There are a lot of popular singers who don't reach 100,000 single sales every time they release a single, including BoA for example. Her last two singles had about 55,000 each if I'm not mistaken.
Koda Kumi may be gaining popularity, but her sales are nothing compared to Ayu's. (miss)understood sold more than Secret in its second week. If I'm not mistaken, Koda Kumi's only number one album was her Best album, and that was also her only album to sell over 1,000,000 copies. So before anyone freaks out anymore about that matter, I hope you'll realize Ayu is still a huge icon in Japan. She's still very popular and she still has high sales.
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Sales, sales, sales is all everyone ever cares about. What about the quality of the music? Isn't that more important than how much she sells?
I don't think Ayu should retire. She's
only 27. Even if a single or album doesn't do well in the charts or whatever at least she
continues to provide music
for her fans to enjoy. Personally, I'd be very upset to see my favorite singer retire so early.
Ayu's been around for a long time so of course people are interested in new faces. This isn't surprising. But the fact that even though she's been around a long time, she continues to hold her own against all the new faces. It just shows that she's still going strong.
Koda Kumi is a great singer. She has some good songs. Although, I'm not really keen on her marketing strategy (you know, the whole 'sex sells' bit) but she has talent to back her up. She's been gaining a lot of popularity lately, which is great, but I don't think she will be the next 'Queen of Jpop' or whatever. She's only had like 2 singles to hit number one. Her 12 single release is doing well, and she's getting a lot of attention from it. But just because of that doesn't mean she's all of a sudden going to become the undisputed Queen of Jpop and rule the world. If BoA or Ai Otsuka released 12 singles every week, they'd get a lot of attention, too.