1. AKB48 Teacher Teacher
2. AKB48 Sentimental Train
3. Nogizaka46 Synchronicity
4. Nogizaka46 Jikochu de Ikō!
5. AKB48 No Way Man
6. AKB48 Jabaja
7. Nogizaka46 Kaerimichi wa Tōmawari Shitaku Naru
8. Keyakizaka46 Glass wo Ware!
9. Keyakizaka46 Ambivalent
10. King & Prince Cinderella Girl
This is not healthy, when the whole music scene is dominated by a few groups, not to mention that these groups are similar. I prefer more varieties.
ReplyDeleteHi, Larry.
DeleteI will be honest and say that I've also been a bit concerned that the same alphabet groups have basically taken over the yearly Oricon charts for the past few years. It's fine if the people really do enjoy AKB48, Nogizaka46 and the rest but I've been reading about a lot of "ballot stuffing" in terms of sales.
Then again, Oricon hasn't and shouldn't be the end-all and be-all for determining how good singers and bands are, although it's of course a gauge in how financially successful an artist has been. I think because of the recent Oricon charts, people have been looking harder at other acts in other genres regardless of them.
Just to continue my response, on J-Wiki it seems that the singles list for the year has been split into CD and then download sales. The download list is quite a bit more variegated, and again, if I'm not mistaken, I think that could reflect the number of fans who buy multiple copies of CDs to get some sort of ballot to vote for their favourite AKB member...and then throw away the CD! You can take a look at this article:
Deletehttps://soranews24.com/2018/06/01/idol-group-akb48-sells-2-5-million-copies-of-new-cd-bags-full-of-them-end-up-in-trash-days-later/
Yeah, my Japanese teacher mentioned it before. These sales were skewed because of fans buying multiple copies because they’re incentivized.
DeleteThanks for digging into the numbers. I’ve heard that Japanese still get their music thru traditional media, unlike US where streaming (renting) seems to be the media of choice.