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

[SunshineSlayer]

Honestly, I don't even care about the charts anymore. Basically the Oricon chart validity has been destroyed by 2 things: not including digital sales and AKB48.

[Minttulatte]

Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer

Honestly, I don't even care about the charts anymore. Basically the Oricon chart validity has been destroyed by 2 things: not including digital sales and AKB48.

Oricon definitely should add digital sales to the physical sales because I have seen some physically badly selling singles on Oricon sell 100,000+ copies on digital charts. For example some of Kana Nishino's early singles weren't sold that well according to Oricon but on Digital Charts they hit 500,000 copies. It was a funny sight tbh. Another example that comes to mind is Koda Kumi's Ai wo tomenaide which sold 30,000 physical copies and 100,000+ digital copies in 2011. I wish those were combined on Oricon chart lol. :'D

As for AKB48, I agree with you. Imo their influence on J-Pop as a whole has been negative. New artists are mostly boring or something I get over with way too soon for my liking and creativity is also missing. It's really sad, and I noticed it really began when this group became popular with their ridiculous marketing gimmicks. -.-

[SunshineSlayer]

Originally Posted by drdolce

Oricon definitely should add digital sales to the physical sales because I have seen some physically badly selling singles on Oricon sell 100,000+ copies on digital charts. For example some of Kana Nishino's early singles weren't sold that well according to Oricon but on Digital Charts they hit 500,000 copies. It was a funny sight tbh. Another example that comes to mind is Koda Kumi's Ai wo tomenaide which sold 30,000 physical copies and 100,000+ digital copies in 2011. I wish those were combined on Oricon chart lol. :'D

As for AKB48, I agree with you. Imo their influence on J-Pop as a whole has been negative. New artists are mostly boring or something I get over with way too soon for my liking and creativity is also missing. It's really sad, and I noticed it really began when this group became popular with their ridiculous marketing gimmicks. -.-

Yeah, these are all good points. There are a lot of artists that sell far more digitally these days than physically. Namie Amuro sold over a million copies of Love Story digitally I believe?

My comment about AKB was less about the influence on jpop musically or image wise, and more about their sales tactics that result in an artificial sales inflation. Bundling CDs with music cards, hand shake tickets, and concert tickets etc. And I don't just mean to single out them, because several artists are guilty of it (that's how Exile Pride apparently sold over a million copies) but AKB imo has been the worst offender. Just compare their sales figures from Oricon to Soundscan, while indeed they are still one of the top sellers, they are no where near the million+ per single that Oricon reports, according to the sound scan numbers (which only counts sales from record stores). Which makes watching stuff like the recent Music Station where they ranked artists overall sales figures and AKB was right up there with Ayu, B'z, Mr. Children etc as one of the best selling artists of all time. Acts like Morning Musume weren't even in the top 25 and I would argue that in their heyday, they were just as prominent of a presence on the J-Pop scene as AKB is now, if not more so. It really makes you do a double take and go what the actual #&%? I can't remember the exact quote, but even the head of Oricon has come out and said something like "at least Arashi's sales are based on genuine popularity...." basically alluding that AKBs were not.

Johnny's isn't all innocent in this either though as I suspect pretty much the entire reason that Oricon doesn't count digital sales is because Johnny's does not release anything digitially.

And all in all, both situations have made the Oricon charts a laughing stock.

[KarenPang]

It's funny that back when AKB48 weren't very popular (and before they came up with lots of ridiculous marketing tactics) , people were moaning Johnnys' were over saturating the market & that was also around the time when ARASHI had a 2nd surge in popularity

Being a long time Johnnys' fan , I have never seen them restore to such extreme marketing tactics . Exceptions are when in 2009 for the 1st time , they had to issue a last minute poster giveaway for KAT-TUN's RESCUE as back then they were in danger of losing their #1 streak to Yusuke's debut single

I don't listen to AKB48 so I wouldn't know but their inflated sales figures I feel don't do justice . At least Johnnys' sales are more consistent & give a clearer indication on where they stand

I wouldn't be seeing Johnnys' resorting to the same marketing tactics that AKB48 employed simply because unlike AKB48 , Johnnys are idols that all the while don't have that close proximity touch to fans as they want to maintain that whole wholesome perfect flawless image for fans (which by the way it's fake to a certain extent)

[Minttulatte]

Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer

Yeah, these are all good points. There are a lot of artists that sell far more digitally these days than physically. Namie Amuro sold over a million copies of Love Story digitally I believe?

My comment about AKB was less about the influence on jpop musically or image wise, and more about their sales tactics that result in an artificial sales inflation. Bundling CDs with music cards, hand shake tickets, and concert tickets etc. And I don't just mean to single out them, because several artists are guilty of it (that's how Exile Pride apparently sold over a million copies) but AKB imo has been the worst offender. Just compare their sales figures from Oricon to Soundscan, while indeed they are still one of the top sellers, they are no where near the million+ per single that Oricon reports, according to the sound scan numbers (which only counts sales from record stores). Which makes watching stuff like the recent Music Station where they ranked artists overall sales figures and AKB was right up there with Ayu, B'z, Mr. Children etc as one of the best selling artists of all time. Acts like Morning Musume weren't even in the top 25 and I would argue that in their heyday, they were just as prominent of a presence on the J-Pop scene as AKB is now, if not more so. It really makes you do a double take and go what the actual #&%? I can't remember the exact quote, but even the head of Oricon has come out and said something like "at least Arashi's sales are based on genuine popularity...." basically alluding that AKBs were not.

Johnny's isn't all innocent in this either though as I suspect pretty much the entire reason that Oricon doesn't count digital sales is because Johnny's does not release anything digitially.

And all in all, both situations have made the Oricon charts a laughing stock.

Yeah, Namie did sell like crazy with Love Story. That's why they released another version of it eventually since it was so popular.

Kana Nishino's early singles' digital sales are also a great example. She sold pretty bad at first according to Oricon but digitally she often sold double platinum with a song from a single that only reached Top 30 on Oricon. It really made me wonder why in hell doesn't Oricon just combine sales together? It just doesn't make sense, lol.

As for AKB, I read a article once saying that their sales are 50% lower than what people think. I remember reading that one of their million seller singles actually sold somewhere around 300,000-500,000 copies instead of those 1,7 million sales they get way too easily. That same article also said that many people buys at least 20 copies of each single just to make sure that they'll get the ticket to those events AKB has. If one of the copies has the ticket, rest of those copies are thrown away or taken to the resellers/retailers etc... so that made me think that this damn group isn't really as popular as they seem. I totally agree with that head of Oricon guy. Arashi's popularity may have annoyed me back in the day but at least they never used such extreme gimmicks like AKB has.

And Johnny's should definitely start releasing stuff digitally if that helps Oricon to stop being such a lover of the past times and start combining both physical and digital sales together. Then everyone would see the actual sales of our fav artists.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by drdolce

That same article also said that many people buys at least 20 copies of each single just to make sure that they'll get the ticket to those events AKB has. If one of the copies has the ticket, rest of those copies are thrown away or taken to the resellers/retailers etc... so that made me think that this damn group isn't really as popular as they seem.

There are some polls with the japanese public indicating the biggest idol group for some years now has being Momoiro Clover Z... I also remember reading somewhere that the selling strategies that seek for older men and otakus made a good part of the general public unconfortable about following AKB48

[Minttulatte]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

There are some polls with the japanese public indicating the biggest idol group for some years now has being Momoiro Clover Z... I also remember reading somewhere that the selling strategies that seek for older men and otakus made a good part of the general public unconfortable about following AKB48

I have read about these things as well. Some of those things really makes me want to pretend AKB48 doesn't even exist because some of those things were pretty disturbing. ._.

Also, I think I have seen Momoiro Clover Z name somewhere. It sounds very familiar. I just don't remember where I saw it. O.o

[SunshineSlayer]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

There are some polls with the japanese public indicating the biggest idol group for some years now has being Momoiro Clover Z... I also remember reading somewhere that the selling strategies that seek for older men and otakus made a good part of the general public unconfortable about following AKB48

From my own experience being over there, I can say I feel like this is pretty much true. That's not to say that AKB doesn't have a general following as well, especially for certain songs - in particular Koisuru Fortune Cookie, but its nowhere near what the sales would have you believe.

I feel like in a lot of ways their popularity was bought. Being over in Japan at the time it happened, it wasn't like it was a gradual rise. It felt like literally overnight, they were just everywhere on everything. And not to bring up such a bad side of Japanese people, but in general they tend to be followers....so it felt to me like people just jumped on the bandwagon because Oricon, Music Station, whatever whatever was suddenly telling them this is the popular thing now. Yasushi Akimoto (akbs producer) is imo pretty cutthroat, for the last several years it has seemed like Morning Musume had been banned from making tv appearances despite that sales wise they were actually doing pretty good again. It wasn't until this year finally that they started to appear on the same shows as AKB48. But even then, this year on the Music Day special where every artist performed at least 2 songs on stage, MM only got to do one. an old one. With a guy in a character suit onstage in the middle of their performance. Or the recent Music Station where they counted down the artist overall sales, I feel like Morning Musume was only "allowed" to make an appearance because it would be considered an embarrassment that they weren't in the top 25 and AKB was in the top 10. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it though. lol

btw. He has been appointed the duties of producing the opening ceremonies for the 2020 Olympics.....FML. There is a petition going around opposing it. Hopefully it won't happen.

[KarenPang]

@ drdolce - Momoiro Clover Z were tasked to sing MOON PRIDE last year which their rendition (cover) was used to promote the newly rebooted Sailor Moon anime

===

And yeah as for people who're buying truckloads of AKB48's material (not 1 or 2 if you genuinely supposedly like the single and/or album) , I did read a while back ago that there're some who can buy literally by the thousands just to secure handshake/voting election tickets that comes inside the CD and that's a lot of $ especially for those who're mere office workers o_O

Unlike AKB48 , Johnny & Associates has been around since 1962 and it has never been their style to force feed fans & massive dump a lot of over the top marketing tactics when comes to selling of their music

Also demographic wise , Johnnys fans tend to be teens/tweens (depending on who you support) & frankly they always easily go broke with other non indirect marketing tactics such as releasing tons of shop photos everytime a certain Johnny group release something new lol

Although now the senior groups like TOKIO , Tackey & Tsubasa can't sell that well as compared to their younger counterparts , there's nothing wrong with it . If they start to use over the top marketing tactics , then that might backfire & they might come across as desperate to get sales back but they've been around for so long & as such they don't see the need to do that in any single bit

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer

Honestly, I don't even care about the charts anymore. Basically the Oricon chart validity has been destroyed by 2 things: not including digital sales and AKB48.

This so much... If Oricon doesn't count international sales and venue sales because they try to accuratelly portray the media impact of music acts, they shouldn't consider AKB48 gimmicks to sell several copies of a single or album to the same person... It's something that also inflates the group impact on the media.