[GENERAL] The AKB48 Thread

In all seriousness, you did not sound reasonable at all. Thailand was successfully used as a springboard to K-pop. If something managed to be hit in Thailand, it could possibly transcend to most parts of SEA and that could be something to work on. Also, I don't think you have any clue how popular Thai homo drama is internationally (within Asia at very least).

Don't you know, seeing how AKB has turned into, oversea surely has been more of DH's concern? Japanese music labels won't care about oversea market unless the domestic business has been cool.

This is heavily ludicrous.

MUSIC has never been the sole thing idol sells, possibly not even the primary aspect. Thus, English is crucial. Do you think why all big K-pop agencies make their idols learn English if it is non-issue?

"J-pop fans"? How many are they? Have not it ever come across your mind that J-pop wants to reach out to more audience, to make it less niche? How to do so? Just doing the same old things? Not at all trying to attract more casual non-weeb audiences?

But, if English is not a key to BTS' success, why the group keeps releasing more English songs? (You know BTS' members said they would never release English song?) Also, do you think why K-pop idols keep releasing Japanese version of their Korean songs?

It is illogical to believe JKT held no influence on the interest toward AKB in INA.

 

Are we talking about a japaneese idols group or an acting company ? And since Thaï drama isn't the point.
AKB48 has little to do in countries where they allready established sister groups.

Why the mother group would try to eat it's children's plate ? That's non-sense.

As for the current situation, the management is fully centered on itself, applying it's restructuration plan.
I highly doubt looking out of Japan can improve anything. International fans don't provide enough.

 

Why are people booing you? This post is correct.

Spotify is a pretty decent way to gauge international popularity because, as some other people confirmed, LINE music is more commonly used over there. JKT fans listen to unreleased Indonesian versions of songs in Japanese.

The English speakers mentioned by @souchan48 are no longer active. The comment above says "I don't know which members of today's AKB48 speak English". Currently, as far as I know, there's only 18th Gen Arai Sae who can be considered a fluent English speaker. Someone please let me know if there's anyone else whose English is good enough to have a little chat, besides phrases like "I love you" etc.

It's also true that anime OST and viral tiktok songs are popular Japanese songs to international listeners. Idol by YOASOBI has been huge lately, and Kawaikute Gomen and Tabun are also popular.

The latter two factors could also definitely help with local popularity. @Mana has said it before, when the Twintail song went viral on twitter, AKB didn't act on it. They did try a little bit to make a Tiktok hit by creating a special hand-only choreography (was it for HisaLip or Moto Kare desu?), but it didn't fully hit the mark.

 

This discussion comes around every now and then.

The Jpop industry is very happy being as insular as it is. It's literally the second biggest market in the world. Why would they care if they're known overseas? They... don't.

The core of idol groups' fanbases are local fans (wotas) who open their wallets for seconds of interaction. Us international fans haven’t mattered since the days of the Google partnership.

 

That's very true however it might be worth keeping an eye on what Sakurazaka46 could be doing in the coming months. Their performance on Saturday (a 30-min mini-live) at the Japan Expo in Paris is being discussed in this thread so I won't say too much detail about it here but maybe their management wanted to test an overseas market? The group had a very positive reaction at the event (in spite of some audience queuing snafus) and perhaps they're planning to return to Europe (France at least) for further performances?

EDIT: I've just remembered about AKB48's appearance at a similar matsuri event in Barcelona in 2019. Nothing followed on from that but of course the pandemic happened a few months later.

 

Groups participating in this kind of events means absolutely nothing (except that they get a nice cheque from the organisers).


if the video does not show watch the video here

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Exactly. There is a reason why Korean markets themself to Japanese.
Japan is one of the largest music industry AND it brings actual money to these record companies. Not just streaming, but literally flocking to concerts, BUYING their goods, etc.


Bts making effort speaking english is NOT to generate direct revenue. How? Bts publishing English songs are actually part of branding. They, by themselves, don't make enough money thru those English effort. But it will cement their image. And people will think and take a look at it because "that is the group that people keep talking about". What we can learn from BTS is NOT that they speak English, but that GOOD MARKETING and PR STUNT is necessary.

Ps: akb did try have international performance during its hey day. They tried everything, even singing oogoe diamond in foreign languages. Having that google+ live where they speak international languages. At the SAME YEAR, oppa gangnam style became very popular. Ironically sty didnt try to speak English LOL.

Ps2: i brought up those past english speaking members to show that in the past, none of those english speaking members become a hit INTERNATIONALLY. @bonjourmarlene

People seem to fail to see that his original hypothesis is that "jkt48 brings more listeners to spotify because many of its members speak english". That is the underlying premise. That is why i brought up those names, who spoke english fluently btw. Did it ever get any result? Hirari was pushed in google+ bfw.

Now, let's address the elephant in the room. Does jkt48 members speak good english? Ehm... i have been working in indonesia for the past 3 years. Trust me, they dont. They are a slightly better speaker than japanese.

also they are more like a niche, but they do have enthusiast followers who i can see putting the songs on repeat on spotify. But again it is not because "they speak english" . It is because indonesians are among the largest internet users in the world (they spend 4-5x on the internet more than my home country).

 

The only visit in the west a 48/46 group did that was followed by something was AKB48's travel to Japan Expo Paris back in summer 2009 (Ogoe Diamond in English, Sakura no Hanabiratachi choruses in french), followed by the MIDEM in Cannes in autumn. These 2 were the origin of oversea sister groups creation.
Since then Nogizaka visited the exhibition in 2014, they had 1 concert (around 1h), lots of interraction with fans in a huge booth . Just nothing came after.
And now Sakurazaka46, wait and see if anything happens.

We can thank Kamieda Emika for the Barcelona trip.

 

Literally in every platform, more popular Japanese music are artists or songs related to animes. Maybe it'll always be like this

 

I don’t know why this conversation started, but without bothering to find out why I’ll chime in. (Because thats what we do here) Watarirouka Hashiritai did the closing song for anime Fairy Tail brought me to the fandom.

In 2018 team 8 performed at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. It was 115 American degrees in the city and the performance was at a smaller venue near the colossal Staples Center. The billing was poor, the sound was bad, and some fans tried to get a chant going but aside from the members getting to visit LA im sure it was a big waste of time from managements POV

These six members performed



MC was handled almost exclusively by tanigawa in decent English

 

I quoted this post in NMB48 thread because it should be posted there

 

Below is off topic

Spoiler

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This concert was completly different from the one you would usually attend during Japan Expo
Back in 2010, it was the 1st ever Morning Musume concert in France, you had to buy another ticket to attend it, and it was a real 2h30 concert, held separatly from the exhibition.
There was a more than decent crowd for an oversea concert, something like 2k ~ 2,5k.
The girls delivered an amazing performance, they gave everythings.
The event was more than worth the extra ticket.

2 years after, I had the opportunity to attend a fan meeting organised by J-Melo, with Takahashi Ai and Niigaki Risa. 2 exceptional persons IMO. They still shared lots of memories from these days.
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Back to AKB48 1st Europe concert, something like 3 years after, no one in the staff had any rememberance (or didn't want to have any) from their visit in Paris. The other continents expansion which was slightly opened then, had completly closed.

 

Yoasobi care about their popularity abroad. They have 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify. But yeah, Yoasobi isn't an idol group tho they have a song titled "Idol" that became the first Japanese song to reach #1 of Billboard Global Chart (Excluding US). No wonder why today international audiences associate Jpop with Yoasobi more than any idol group

OK. Maybe AKB48 doesn't need international fame. But even in Japan, now they aren't as popular as they used to, but there's a way to take their glory days back, that is using Tiktok to promote their songs. If this works well, they'll get popular again

Yeah, because I don't think Attack on Titan or Jujutsu Kaisen would hire AKB48 to sing their theme song

 

I discovered a few years ago that performers at Hyper Japan in London (similar to Japan Expo in Paris but rather smaller in size) definitely don't get paid nor are their travel expenses met. Maybe it's different though at Japan Expo?

 

From What I know, the exhibition pays for the travel, hotel etc ... and the artists are paid during the exhibition (hence the signings, photo calls etc are free)

 

Thanks, I expected that to be the case with this event and probably explains why Hyper Japan never has any big names (although Wasamin did perform there back in 2016). (I won't be going to Hyper Japan this weekend, I'll save my money to put towards a longer trip to Paris and Japan Expo next year.)

 

Ado and several other virtual jpop groups went famous BEFORE they had an anime tie ins. So does solo artists like Yonezu Kenshi.

But this is a MUUUCH better argument than ur previous "jkt brings more audience because it speaks English". So props for u for that.

And as stated by u urself, akb needs to be more popular locally FIRST before globally. Idk but ur argument supports trinu's stance more than u think it is. Yoasobi became popular locally at japan, and being popular internationally was a bonus for them which they pursue, but not their main priority.

The era of female idol groups in Japan itself is dead. Yeah that includes 46groups. It is now the rise of soloists, male idol groups (sixtones, etc) , and kpop groups in Japan. The failure of akb group is not that it fails globally. The failure starts when even japan seems to be tired of them

 

I remember reading that people have said this before about the Japanese idol scene. However, not long later a group was formed whose existence led to the opening of this forum.

 

Well yeah these things come in waves. Hence the use of the word “era”

 

If your plumber needs to bring out the pickaxes you know something's gone seriously wrong.

If they do wear those costumes, I hope they do it without the two extra costumes underneath, and take them in a bit so they aren't quite so pan-pan.