AKB48 is now apparently Japan’s best selling female group ever, after Sayonara Crawl’s release took them to nearly 22 million singles sold.
According to Oricon, with a total of 21.85 million singles sold AKB48 is now Japan’s best selling female “artist” ever, beating Ayumi Hamasaki’s record of 21.46 million.
AKB48’s latest single “Sayonara Crawl” also reportedly shipped 1.76 million copies in its first week, another record-breaking performance – beating their previous record of 1.62 million last year with “Manatsu no Sounds Good!”.
Sayonara Crawl in all its glory:
Whilst AKB otaku, the group’s owners and their mysterious backers are all doubtless celebrating this achievement, online there seems not to be much enthusiasm for Japan’s music industry having been reduced to an idol marketing machine, and plenty of controversy over the role their infamous handshaking event tickets and voting system have played in securing such a record:
“Japan has gone mad…”
“It’s a religion.”
“The success of their ticket marketing is amazing really.”
“Of that 1.76 million, 1.7 million probably ended up in the trash.”
“If they were lucky about 50,000 of those discs were actually listened to.”
“This is discs shipped, not necessarily the same thing as discs sold. I thought someone shipped 2 million copies last year actually though…”
“These are handshaking event tickets with bonus CDs, not music singles.”
“Don’t know whether to applaud them for keeping the economy going or condemn them for filling our landfills in the process.”
“They are surely accelerating the destruction of the music industry though…”
“All those singles sold and not a single actual hit song.”
“As long as it isn’t the government buying them. It is legal, just ordinary people buying them after all.”
“AKB must be the only group to keep churning out million selling hit singles nobody has actually ever heard of. If you consider an average of 15 copies sold per fan that would be, in effect, real sales of only 70,000 – that sounds more believable.”
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It's not a surprise really, YKZ48 otakus spend fortunes on their CDs for a simple handshake.
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/05/27/idol-otaku-spends-110000-on-5500-akb48-cds/
I thought it was for a semen handshake, not a simple handshake...
you mean that loli group from hello project that had a semen handshake, not AKB. :)
22 million copies sold...
i wont be surprised if all the disk is shipped to 22 houses
OMG i am SOOOO happy there now best selling group in japan and i could care less if its about hand shaking events the sales numbers speak for themselfs so keep on hatin it only makes us real akb fans more stronger. they have sold more cds then any one of us could ever hope to. we dont fave there talent off course but stll ppl hating them for having success. thats pretty sad you hate yourselfs so much you take it out on talented ppl like akb. this is the best news ever on sankaku!
QUEEN! ELIZABETH!
I'm impressed by Ayu's feat of being able to beat all the other idols groups asides from AKB. GJ!
>Best selling group ever.
>Buyers don't actually care about about the music, they just want to handshake the girls.
Ah, blind consumerism at its finest.
>with mayonnaise
Its good for you
>with my penis
capitalism ho!
They should just sell handshaking tickets at the same prices of the CDs. Better for the environment and would yield them the same cash flow.
Still haven't listened to a single AKB song, don't even know where I should start... not even interested investing time meh
You read this here first psssh:
Best selling female group (Japan): AKB48
Best selling female group (USA): Justin Bieber
So they cracked Ayumi's records, wow. Then again, it's group vs single artist, which you can't compare. On the other hand, Ayumi has been active since the 90s I believe... AKB surfaced when? Maybe 2009? Also, seeing a post of 1 guy buying a couple hundred AKB CDs shows that the title of "best selling artist" aren't worth shit
Since they bamboozle their fans into buying 1,000s of copies of their CDs each, it doesn't take much of a fan base to look wildly popular.
“These are handshaking event tickets with bonus CDs, not music singles.”
If AKB decides to just sell tickets at a slightly higher price, many consumers would go for it because disposing the CDs is a hassle.
Sad indeed.
Its a shame that other records from REAL musicians are now forgotten. What about Mr Children? AKB beat Mr Children recors... that phrase alone its a bad signal on Japan music industry.
But... If the government its really supporting AKB then this will go on, ORICON will protect the group at all cost, even if that means the degradation of Japanese Music Industry.
And yes, the number of real fans are very low. Other asian artist with lowest salles actually have much more real fans than AKB.
Japan... What happened to you?!!!!
somehow the song sounds really familiar
This is because most of their songs sound almost exactly the same. I hear them a lot here in commercials and on TV and sometimes I cant even distinguish them.
Sometimes I wonder if the fans can because we all know its not the music they're popular for.
So what does that make in sales, like 200 yen per girl?
More like 400~500 million per girl. Of course their management pockets most of it. Young spoiled girls wouldn't know they're being exploited.
someone missed the joke... duhhhhhhh
their songs are not that bad, its the fans and system who ruin everything.
.. 22 millions sold, actually less than 100k religious fans who buy a few thousand copies.
time's changing.Imagine in the future,you could choose which singers/actors/performers you wanted to vote off and end their careers instantly(if there's such a thing,i could simply voted off the Kardashians)!
Actually this is just singles. Although I can't stand Hamasaki, she still holds the record if albums are considered.
People forget that this is the single that contains the voting codes for the Senbatsu Sousenkyo (which by far is more important than handshaking events to casual fans as well).
Apparently, as I've heard from an SKE fan, there is some shit going down with SKE, their fans are mad at management so they decided to vote as many SKE members into the top64 as they can.... which means they're buying this CDs like crazy.
Saying this, the first results, with Sashihara Rino as #1 for now, are weird as hell.
When were they not selling?
What weren't they selling?
How many of their fans weren't buying?
Questions that should REALLY be looked into.
they were not that selling circa 2006-2008. sales picked up by 2009 3rd quarter when RIVER was launched
The question is do these fans actually listen to their music?
Its a possibility they know all the lyrics to AKB48 songs?
of course we listen to them. 31 singles plus more than 400+ stage songs
Yeah. I listen to their music. Not every song, as they delve into multiple genres and I'm not interested in all of them.
It would be hard to know all the lyrics as, if sister groups and sub groups are counted, they have over 800 songs.
I honestly wonder what the numbers would be like if it werent for the creepy sales tactics they use/those mentally challenged guys that buy a literal truckload of the same cd.
It's still profit...
FUCK AKB FUCK AKB OTAKU FUCK OTUKU AND FUCK U ALL TOO
yet here you are
Where are Eco terrorists? Shouldn't they hunt otaku who buy millions of cds and dump it for handshake events?
Everyone talks shit about akb48 but still listens to it...
I dont know about the group itself, but i loved the anime !
YKZ48 backed up by the yakuza
Oh yeah...
I'm forgeted...
You right!!!
As P.T. Barnum said back in the old days..."there is a sucker born every minute"
The sixth quote in the article is incorrect ... the 1.76 million copies is the number sold and not just the number shipped to retailers (which was actually something like 2.3 million)
The fourth quote is probably correct though ... the majority will probably just be thrown away ...
Yakuza are firing fireworks everyday now!
Wait, they weren't already Japan's best-selling everything? Then why do people care about them so damn much?
Can they actually sing without heavy duty sound mixing and editing?
A fool and his money are easily parted.
More proof that society is in a downward spiral.
here is the thing. I highly doubt most of the sales were probably for the actual music. The copies only sold because of how cute one of the girl's is. I won't go as far as to say their music is bad anymore, because what is good and bad music is subjective. However, when the main motivation of buying a cd is for the cute girl and not for their music itself is I think insulting the to artist and makes the popularity of artist a joke.
No worries when Japan will sink soon it won't be mad anymore!
japan sinks and rises once a day... it is meaningless to talk about mad in this case.
yes. its the penis.
The largest CD sales since AOL.