NEXT LEVEL album thoughts

[Lady_Eowyn]

Originally Posted by njanjayrp

Pure gold ^_^ Commercial success has at times little to do with the quality of the songs, of course it has up to some point, though I know many examples when crap sold (EXILE lol). Great songs ! = great sales. Of course it all depends on what you think the great music is. Since Ayu's albums always sold less & less I am positive the NL sales have nothing to do with the music.



First of all, the bold part is pure nonsense - someone was that desperate they had to try the EU in the end cuz it flopped in the States (now you don't go further and release singles for an album you don't have faith it will sell). Excuses aren't always the best arguments

Oh and I just love how people were all comparing Ayu's and Hikki's NINKI and now that NEXT LEVEL outsold TiTO the two became instantly incomparable. End the needless Hikki talk before a fight breaks out.

(miss)understood was the last Ayu album that was certified as a million seller (shiped copies) by RIAJ

Thank you sweetie



And the million album thing about (m)u, that's just the oricon's approximation. Oricon never gives the exact numbers. Avex and the Riaj reported a million copies for (m)u. I am informed so i guess that does qualifies me to be an ayu stan. Honestly, i don't give a s/h/i/t.

And i have no desire to waste my time giving huge explanations to my argument, so i'm gonna make it short:

.- Your comment really bothered me, Ayumixfan, that's why i replied that way.
.- I apologize if i offended you,
.- However, i didn't twist anything you said. i wrote my argument according with what you wrote. I think that basically everything you are saying are excuses to defend Utada's sales. I don't believe you are close enough to Utada to make the affirmations you are doing right now, so i think that what you are saying is pretty much especulation. I could make a longer argument to support what i'm saying but i don't want to flame up the Utada/Ayu discussion more than i already did.

TITO is far from selling that bad considering the actual music market in Japan, and so does Next Level... Trying to say that they are selling bad or that people are not liking their music based only on sales is somewhat dumb in my opinion... TITO is selling as good as american albums use to sell in Japan (it's still on top20, right?) and Exodus was top20 or top30 in the end of 2004...

Yeah right. I understand you want to be positive but the only truth is that the economy in Japan (it's actually a worldwide recession) is awful, from every perspective you want to see it, so saying the albums (even huge sellers like KAT-TUN) are not doing bad is a bit delusional. We can only hope the economy is gonna improve in the next months, so the sales on the musical charts will get better as well.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by Lady_Eowyn

Yeah right. I understand you want to be positive but the only truth is that the economy in Japan (it's actually a worldwide recession) is awful, from every perspective you want to see it, so saying the albums (even huge sellers like KAT-TUN) are not doing bad is a bit delusional. We can only hope the economy is gonna improve in the next months, so the sales on the musical charts will get better as well.

They are doing really bad considering how sales were in the past years, but are doing good considering how everyone is selling today, that's what I mean... 350k is far from being huge, but still on top 10, what would be impossible in May some years ago... So:

compared with past years: BAD
compared with how everyone is selling today: GOOD

It will not outsell GUILTY, but no many people will outsell GUILTY this year =) New times, new parameters

[ayumixfan]

Originally Posted by Lady_Eowyn

Thank you sweetie



And the million album thing about (m)u, that's just the oricon's approximation. Oricon never gives the exact numbers. Avex and the Riaj reported a million copies for (m)u. I am informed so i guess that does qualifies me to be an ayu stan. Honestly, i don't give a s/h/i/t.

And i have no desire to waste my time giving huge explanations to my argument, so i'm gonna make it short:

.- Your comment really bothered me, Ayumixfan, that's why i replied that way.
.- I apologize if i offended you,
.- However, i didn't twist anything you said. i wrote my argument according with what you wrote. I think that basically everything you are saying are excuses to defend Utada's sales. I don't believe you are close enough to Utada to make the affirmations you are doing right now, so i think that what you are saying is pretty much especulation. I could make a longer argument to support what i'm saying but i don't want to flame up the Utada/Ayu discussion more than i already did.





Yeah right. I understand you want to be positive but the only truth is that the economy in Japan (it's actually a worldwide recession) is awful, from every perspective you want to see it, so saying the albums (even huge sellers like KAT-TUN) are not doing bad is a bit delusional. We can only hope the economy is gonna improve in the next months, so the sales on the musical charts will get better as well.

I don't know how I can make this more clear for you : ) Avex sales and RIAJ count shipments as in what stores will buy and try to sell to the people. The albums might still be in stores and not bought which is probably the case because the album is very old. Thats why oricon is trusted as the sales because it is counted from people's purchases. if you want to say she shipped a million or sold a million to stores fine, but the population did not buy a million copies : )

And for the utada thing, I'm not making it up. She stated it in her interview. Since i know you're not too big on hikki you probably don't watch her interviews. I'm sorry if you don't believe me and you are probably not willing to watch her interviews, but thats what she actually said and I just posted according to it. I personally thought it was pretty obvious exodus was experimental releasing electropop which wasnt very popular in the US at the time, but hey this is just my opinion here. On top of this I love how you say "You don't know utada enough to say this about her" but you don't know ayu enough to say she's really making music to be an artist and doesn't care about sales. For all we know, she could be releasing electropop trying to ride Perfume's wave of resurrecting the genre, so she was hoping to gain sales from this. She might be releasing rock because Mr Children releases rock and still sells! We don't know any of this. At least Utada stated the things I wrote in a bunch of interviews.

Third of all, I never said her music is bad because her sales is bad. I said I expected lower sales compared to her other albums because i think her music was bad. Thats why I'm not surprised. It would nice of you to read my posts if you are going to reply to them : ). But hey if you want to reply without reading then thats fine with me : D Honestly the sales for Next Level arent that bad. People just think so horrendously of it and get too defensive about it :S And like I stated earlier, if I based my music on sales I think I'd be listening to artists like EXILE and JE over ai otsuka and aiko. You mis-intepreted my words, which I understand so its ok : ) I just think you should drop the idea that your post is the same as what I wrote because it really isn't. I know I said I expected these sales because i thought the album was bad, but hey that doesn't mean I said the sales suck, but they are a drop from her previous release. And plus I said I expected these sales, when secret came out I didn't expect it to sell that much, I expected more. Its just my expectations of sales from my opinion of the music. Its not the other way around : ) ~! I didn't expect Love Leter to sell as well as Love Piece but I still think it a good album. Like I said its just my personal standards for an album. It was jsut a coincedence Next Level hit my guessed amount of sales. Even if it sold millions, that won't make me think the album is now good.

And I agree with Andre. Why are we comparing her sales from YEARS ago like I am and Rainbow :S when the market was different. :S The parameters should at least be set to closer times. Like even if you compare her sales now to (Miss)undersstood times, it would be counted as a decent sale. Aiko's Kanojo only sold 400k and it was a success! Sure her sales have dropped, but I think she's still doing well. Personally I think she could be doing better, but she's still doing well! Thats why i always state decent over good. Maybe people just expect more out of her because she ususally does astonishingly well or are comparing her to artists like mr. Children who are still able to sell over a million. But hey different things happen to different artists right? XD OH well its all opinions anyways : ) ~! Thats just my two cents.

P.S. Lady_Eowyn, I don't have anything against you, but i do think you defend ayu too much. I think I stated this earlier. I'm allowed to have my own expectations for the album. I might think an album is good, but I can still expect bad sales from it like Love Letter, and I might expect an album I don't like to sell good like Best First things from kuu. I think you jsut made implications about that line from what I thought about the album, which was obviously not good. I just set my standards for this album lower than Secret because I think her popularity is on a decline and I personally don't like the album, so I expected the sales not to be as high :S It doesn't mean I based quality of music on sales. Like I said, I never said Next Level is a bad album, I said I didn't like the album. What I didnt like about your post is that you had to bring up another artist and start this whole comparison thing, and then say thats its my standards. Thats just silly. You don't know what I'm thinking : ) ~!