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Ayu is already well established in the Japanese music industry. Every Japanese music buyer already knows of Ayu, and has already made up their mind as to whether or not they'll invest any interest in her. I speculate that Ayu's sales are almost completely long-time fans. While I'm sure she picks up a number of fans with every release, and a few fans lose interest with every release, she is sort of on a slow decline.
She's declining to the status of a normal successful artist, and becoming less of a hyper-phenomenon successful artist. That kind of success is only supposed to last a few years, anyways.
Koda Kumi on the other hand just exploded into superstardom this year with her Best album. This past summer, I had some friends from Japan stay at my house, and they had NO idea who Koda Kumi was when I played her songs for them. Now, they're all back in Japan and telling me how they see her image everywhere and hear her songs everywhere.
Now is the time for Avex to pick up Koda Kumi fans. She has several releases already, but now the main spotlight is on her for the first time. Now is the time that people are interested, so they can pick up a lot of sales by marketing her heavily.
Ayu is sort of a "Madonna" figure now. Or at least slowly becoming that. While her sales aren't the best ever, she still lives a glamorous lifestyle and her releases get attention.
Koda Kumi, on the other hand, is the new "Britney Spears" that Amuro and Hamasaki both were at one point. Amuro faded into her current R&B place rather quickly, but she won't be the legend Ayu will become. Who knows what will become of Koda.. maybe she will get pregnant and disappear for a while, or maybe her future releases will be huge sellers!
The thing about Koda's music, though, is that it's not very personal. She doesn't write most of her songs, and artists who don't contribute very much oftentimes disappear more quickly than those who do.
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