[GENERAL] The AKB48 Thread

If you guys think about this, it is actually a good thing.

Now management don't need to push the sister group gimmick thing to boost the 1mill sales.

Hence they can actually put more time to start producing quality music and MV thus resulting in picking AKB only senbatsu.

Voila

 

and somebody here said that Oricon doesn't hate the 48G? lol this just proves that they do. F*ck Oricon, They couldn't handle the fact that the 48G (and even Sakamichi Groups) were doing so well, so they added ANOTHER stupid rule. Hopefully Oricon goes bankrupt one day and we get something that ACTUALLY counts all of the sales (or close to it of course).

 

I also think it's bullshit since theoretically it should be an impartial entity and a 800 person survey doesn't amount to anything. But I also agree that this should open management's eyes. If Sakamichi groups' sales don't take a blow after this, but AKB's do, it will prove that AKB's classic formula isn't effective anymore towards the general public. That happening, it's up to management if they want to prioritize the money or the group; if they want to do more handshakes, exhaust more the girls, push more the same girls... or if they want to return to the homegrowing of the group, somehow "lowering" themselves, but refocusing on the very pillars such as the theater. It's up to the general public, and it doesn't expect much of AKB anymore.

 

Since someone asked me to weigh in, here it is:

For one thing, these rules don't affect AKB and never affected them anyway. They are about CD sold at performance venues or at small events as an "entrance fee" or as an instant transaction for handshakes and fanservice stuff. Lots of underground idols do it, as do those major groups who are horribly behind the times and still haven't opened a pre-sale website for such stuff (Hello!Project, for example).
The keyword here is 販促イベント. AKB never used these events to promote their sales.

It also says that they actually RAISED the number limit from "event-going buyers x 2" to "event-going buyers x 3", which shows that Oricon is becoming a bit more lenient to those underground idols.

The reason for such change is that they calculated that the average number of copies per person sold at such venue events is 2.95, while the singles sold on regular storefronts and e-commerce sites is 1.97 per capita. They also noticed there has been an increase of such events (signaling their actual popularity), so they decided to raise the limit to make the small-time groups selling CDs at these events more competitive against the mainstream, while at the same time curtailing events such as "Buy 100 copies of this to go on a date" because of their excessiveness.

 

I guess H!P will suffer from this too as they're sales were slowly declining over with the new rule already added. I think AKB+sister groups will be fine tbh. They'll most likely continue to outsell a majority of idols/artists anyways. I doubt anyone can surpass AKB in this time period of the idol-business. Something will come around, but they're already at the top (plus Nogi+Keya are just doing too well to ignore as well and they have ties to AKB so in the end I feel it won't matter much).

I do agree with what most of you have already said tho. Like who cares how much people buy...a CD sold is a CD sold. Like the market is set up like that for most places anyways. Just the idol business understands the music isn't really the main factor compared to the idol themselves. They know what they're selling and it works.

 

Well thought when they said 販促イベント which is Sales Promotion Event right? Thought they were including the grey area AKB "pre-order" style of event from theater editions.

But now you offer that they probably mean the "entrance fee" type of event which you described now makes hella more sense to me when they were mentioning about "Buy 100 of this then you can go on a date" cuz AKB don't do that.

Cuz I saw the increase limit from 2 to 3 units too and thought it was weird because it would be still too harsh to count the sales of heavy spenders and like everyone has said "unfair" and too harsh.

And the 2.95 and 1.97 number I was still figuring out what they were talking about XD. I posted the article about it because it seemed to me the Japanese people understood it like what I was thinking about too.

Thanks for the clarity.

Edit: Oh wait, what about this line from the article? What do you make of it? Am I reading what I think it means?

販促イベントは、CD発売前3か月以内に開催されたもの、及び1日に複数回開催されたもの全てを含む、と説明した。

Taken from the article, last block
http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/13618109/

 

LOL I don't get the logic that this new Oricon rule will make management go for AKB-only single... why? Let's say, AKB sales fall from 1 million to 800,000, do you guys really think the first thing management will think is "hey, let's get even lower sales! let's put a bunch of unknown girls in senbatsu!". like ok, the first thing they'll do in 2018 is remove Jurina, Sakura, Mirurun and every other sister group from AKB, of course, best solution... Let's aim for 200,000 sales!

No but really. AKB-only is not happening... Management test it already when they gave a chance with a AKB-only Request Hour, but didn't Jurina's solo center win? That says a lot. AKB-only fans have always been a loud minority... speak more than they spend money... I used to wish for AKB-only back when AKB had lots of members with tons of potential like Kawaei etc. but right now I don't see anything in AKB new gens that would make them good enough to carry AKB's name by themselves. it would be a waste of the brand name that was build for years to go down just for the sake of pleasing a minority of fans who get upset over titles (because yes the groups that the members belong to are just titles) when the majority of the public and fandom doesn't care if a girl is AKB or 48G.

Also let's be honest... if you don't count Team 8, barely any AKB new gens are HS monsters. in elections, so many of them lost ranks + lost votes. and even in social medias, barely any of them have an impressive following, in fact a lot of them have very low followers, including girls like Seichan and Megu that people want to see rewarded for whatever reason (no offense to their fans, but...). even in AKB old times, when it was AKB-only, a lot of nice girls didn't get spotlight and opportunities or senbatsu. that's just how it is, no reason for things to be different now and to have 80% of the AKB members get into senbatsu... I'm not against people who say that there should be less sister groups or something. but saying that all sister groups should be removed, uhm. no.

The things AKB fans should wish for is 1) for management to fix the teams so that they can finally get team works and team songs again. 2) to have possible double a-sides on singles, so more girls get to appear, both songs would get promoted. 3) for Team 8 to get their own singles, since the 47 girls will never be properly promoted in AKB. and they're full of potential similar to early AKB. They would do great on their own. That's all. Realistic wishes ;D

 

Basically it means that you can't hold these events too far away from the actual sales date.
There is also a subset of events where you can access by making a preorder on the spot, rather than buying the CD at the venue's counter, called very plainly 予約イベント. If you google the term you'll see lots of schedules for these events, and it's not even in the middle of nowhere but at big CD stores.
For these events, Oricon set the rules to 3 months before the sales date, the groups also need to set a definitive release date and a title if they want their sales to be charted at all, to make sure you aren't selling thin air.

 

Interesting, thanks for the info! As you can tell I am not too familiar on how many categories of events there are in the idol world. But if you are certain about this, does this mean most of the people in Japan also got the wrong idea too?

 

Lets throw another rock into this pond...

How about the environmental concerns with all those hundred of thousands of CD's dumped only because of some small peace of paper in them?

 

So we were just crying wolf for nothing? Meh.

I really wanted some drama.

 

We don't go through the painful labor of separating the case and the disc and the cover sheet out for each CD, for nothing, since they go into different recycling bundles.

 

Since we are on the topic of thousands of CD dumped, I wonder how do you guys get rid of the theater ed after HS ? Selling or just straight-out dumping them to the bin ?

 

some people they're giving it to other wotas when there's a convention or maybe a group meeting

 

When I was in Japan, yep, straight to the bin, not a single CD left. Giving out is too much effort.

 

I bought only about ~15, so it was pretty easy giving them away to friends (fan or not)

 

Well, in Indonesia, JKT48 was criticized for selling CDs that will never be played so the group replace theater CD with a thing called music card. It has photo of senbatsu member on the front side & a code on the backside which fans can use it to redeem MP3 on group's website.

I think it can be followed by BNK48 & MNL48 but I'm not sure if Japanese 48 will ever follow it.

BTW,

Spoiler: ...

Tomu was Yuko's apprentice. Yuko liked her for her hardwork & she thanked Yuko for the support she got during 2014 sousenkyo. So I consider Tomu is Yuko's biggest legacy in AKB48, beside Mion off course.

Sayaya was Paruru's apprentice. Paruru went to her hometown, a town known for its dairy industry (I forget the name of such town) in eastern Hokkaido just for examining her, a big fan that really wanted to join her favorite group. During 2013 draft kaigi, 5 teams wanted her including Team B. Paruru was in Team B at that moment and won the lottery to get Sayaya, even I also think that Sayaya was transferred to Team 4 was because Paruru secretly asked it so she could develop better in Paruru's original team. I consider Sayaya is Paruru's biggest legacy in AKB48.

The fact they aren't senbatsu of 50th single makes me wonder, what did AKS smoke?

 

By being a good philanthropist and distributing free CDs on the street corner, it has been tried before and it works.
https://ima.goo.ne.jp/column/article/4069.html

 

They are not sembatsu lvl. even Annin and Katorena... weak as sembatsu members, thea are at least popular. Sayaya and Tomu not, even she got a good place in ssk 2016, she isn't popular at all among ordinary(casual, non-fan) people! So Tomo - useless! Sayaya ... she had quite a few PR, but her result not good... not young, 4 years in AKB... I don't see any reason to put her in sembatsu. Actually I don't see any AKB members who have this high lvl... for sembatsu... may be except Mion but I realy don't like her... (Chibi with boobs and only... She may stand popular AV or gravure idol for lolicon fans... meh... I hope she graduate soon and disappear)