[ayu_fan929]

Originally Posted by truehappiness

Bad promotion = bad sales. If you placed your single head to head with some 'omgwowpopularima****' person's album who'd sell more? Obviously the album.

Are you trying to say because "BEST ~second session" was released on the same day as "Startin'/Born To Be..." thus decreased the single's sales? Bceause of you are then that has nothing to Startin'/Born To Be... having bad sales at all. Firstly, it's not like Japanese people can only buy 1 CD and they have to choose between an album or a single. If they like the songs on the CD, they buy it, if they don't like the songs, they don't. The latter could be said for Startin'/Born To Be... It's very evident that not a lot of people liked the songs on the single in the first place. And also, please don't tell me they don't have money to buy both of the CD's because these release were announced weeks in advance. You would think people would start saving up money.
Case in Point:
Otsuka Ai's "Planetarium"
vs.
Koda Kumi's "BEST ~first things~"
Both of these CDs were released on Sept. 21st. How did both of these CD's do? "Planetarium" became Ai's second best selling single, selling over 310,000; while "BEST ~first things~" sold 1.7million. If you're logic was applied that another artist's album will affect the sales of your single, then wouldn't Otsuka Ai have sold a lot less?

Secondly, promotion wise, yes, if there's little promotion of the single, the single will not tend to do well. However, I think there's only so far you can go with this arguement. Promotion isn't everything, the songs count as well. In my opinion, even if Startin'/Born To Be... got the promotion that you wanted, the sales would probably still be more or less the same as the songs on it weren't good in the first place.

Thirdly, do these two artists even have the same fanbase?

Originally Posted by truehappiness

I mean, look at BoA's DO THE MOTION sales [one of her most well marketed singles with a lot of songs and etc] and some of her more recent sales.. >>

170,000 vs. 55,000 / 60k / 70k

This goes back to my point in having promotion counting only to an extent. This is within the extent because DO THE MOTION was released right after her BEST album and also right before her tour. However, for the other 3 OUTGROW singles, they all got decent promotion. The reason the first 2 didn't do well because the song wasn't even good. "Everlasting" got 70k is pretty good for BoA, you may think it's low but keep in mind it was released a month before the album.

Originally Posted by truehappiness

Both tieup-songs sold WAY above their normal range, in the 400k+ range. Just look at their sales now!

Yuna Ito: [2005.09.07] ENDLESS STORY - #2; 460,000 copies sold
[2006.03.01] Faith / Pureyes - #6; 53,000 copies sold
[2006.05.03] Precious - #3; 39,000 copies sold (still charting)

Mika Nakashima: 23,606 CRY NO MORE / Mika Nakashima

To be fair to Yuna Ito, "Precious" has already passed the sales of "Faith/Pureyes" in 2 weeks. The single sold more in the second week than in it's first. And, "Precious" will sell more than 100,000.
As for Mika, I believe the 23,606 is her 1st week number, and she never did that well for her single. Plus, I've read people's comments on how the song wasn't good/Blues didn't suit her anyways.

Originally Posted by truehappiness

And can we say Koda's stuff was really good before Avex marketed her to the point of boobageness? No, cause in the way you say it.. 'they weren't good enough' >> Only during/after the 12singles thing which was an uber marketing-scheme did Koda actually.. 'succeed.'

When you say "Koda's stuff" do you mean her songs? Cos I know many Kumi fans think her pre-"BEST ~first things~" material was a lot better than her material after her first BEST album, and this is why "BEST ~first things" is still selling, and will continue to sell as more people listen to Kumi.

Originally Posted by truehappiness

Blah. And why the hell wouldn't this single sell 100k+? It's like 4 new songs, with a DVD with PVs.. wtf? Her only competition is MoMusu and TOKIO anyway. >>

Having her competition being TOKIO/MoMusu doesn't mean she will sell well.

Originally Posted by truehappiness

And about the whole stereotyping her.. uh. Yeah. It's not like we're all assuming. >> I've watched all of those PVs and they don't really say much when she's got PVs like SHAKE IT, feel, Lies.. and more. x.x Her and being all naked in the shower with some random Latinojapanese guy.. o-o..

/cough

I don't think it's stereotyping. :3

You can name those PVs all you want, but I can come back at you with "Birthday Eve", "WIND", and "Koi no Tsubomi". And, I don't see anything wrong with the "feel" PV or even with the "Lies" PV whatsoever.
Those caps I think are from the "secret ~first class~" concert right?

Originally Posted by Lumix

Lower sales are IMO caused by the three reasons:
3) mp3s. There can be a lot of people who really like Ayu but it's not worth for them to buy her album. Money. It's easy even for a 60 yrs old lady to download Ayu's MP3s.

To back up point that I stated earlier, it's not mp3 players, but it is cellphones. Cellphone downloads make up 96% of all digital downloads, whereas computer downloads make up the 4%. article: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/colu...ion.php?id=142