[Charts & Rankings] The Official Oricon Thread ~sixxxxxx~

[orbitalaspect]

Originally Posted by TriStar

Exactly. Quite a few times, Ayu's releases had this sudden increase in sales too, just to keep her record of number 1 singles/albums. This wasn't fair either.



In general, groups are more persistent than solo singers. Think of Arashi, EXILE, SMAP, Southern All Stars, Mr.Children, B'z ... there is no solo artist who is successful in the business for so long. In the Western world, it's the same. There are a lot of old groups still touring and releasing a number one album here and then, but no solo artists - maybe Madonna, but thats it.

It seems like it is more typical for solo singers to have a huge peak, and continuously go down afterwards. It's very hard to find a solo singer who manages to stay consistent. Even Namie, who had a second peak, is going down again with every new release.

Mirrorcle World didn't have a sudden jump in sales that brought it to #1 over a month after release. That's what I'm referring to. It's not uncommon for a big buy rush to occur on the last day or two of the first week.

Also, I'm very curious about why boy bands and j-rock groups are so ridiculously successful compared to solo artists? Are groups generally more interesting in Japan?

[TriStar]

I think that groups don't suffer from the image of an individual group member that much. For example, some people hate Ayu because she is a diva, have (and had) Western boyfriends, a curious marriage ... on the other side, no one would hate a group because one inidvidual member had a curious marriage etc.

It's hard to ruin the image of a group, but easy to ruin the image of a solo artist. If you just don't like one person of a group, you can still focus on the other members. If you just don't like a person who is a solo artist, ... you won't buy the music any longer.

In terms of groups, the music is in the public eye. In terms of solo artists, the music and the person is in the public eye.

[Trinu]

Originally Posted by orbitalaspect

Mirrorcle World didn't have a sudden jump in sales that brought it to #1 over a month after release. That's what I'm referring to. It's not uncommon for a big buy rush to occur on the last day or two of the first week.

Well, some albums do have those jumps + charting power.

It reminds me of Ayaka's First Message, which sold like 350k in its first week and went on to sell 1.2 million copies on the long run.

We keep seeing A BEST jumping in the charts (even though it's iTunes) every now and then. Why is this different?
It sucks because it's not Ayu doing the jump this time, but they do happen.

Plus, the market is way different than it was 9-10 years ago. Back then every week was a whole different battlefield. Now it's not uncommon for singles and albums to linger around at the top because it's just a matter of a couple hundred copies.