Hopes, Fears and Predictions for 2014

I don't see a breaking up angle when Kojimako gets a solo while Miki and Nana share a song with MeruMio on Kouhaku since Kojimako is Team 4 center anyway and they belong to Tentoumo Chu. it's just Kouhaku. what's important is that management push them at the same time and not break they're team up. and if it's Yuko and Takamina as a supporting member for the center Acchan to Miki and Nana as a supporting member for Kojimako. then, breaking them up won't be really good for them. Acchan, Yuko and Takamina had been senbatsu members since they start they're AKB career. they're trio team up started on Aitakatta and then it evolved to Acchan and Yuko as rivals and Takamina as the AKB leader. they've been push almost at the same rate with the exception of Acchan since she is the center and also like I said before they are a regular senbatsu member together. and that's what made they're chemistry and bond much stronger. so, Team 4 trio aces should be like that also. push at the same time. be a senbatsu member together and not leave one another far behind.

 

One small correction @MayuMK30048. If you watch any Team 4 stage with the Three Musketeers, you would know Mikichan is Team 4 center, not Kojimako. But outside of the team, Kojimako is the most prominently pushed of the three. Not by a whole lot, but enough to know she is favored over the other two girls by management.

 

I don't know it's still debatable since on Team 4 song. Kojimako was the co-center on Seijun Philosphy with Miichan. Mikichan might be on stage but on real pushes Kojimako is the center. like how Takamina and Acchan on AKB early days.

 

Correct. I should have put outside the theater, instead of outside the Team.

 

You know what would be amazing? A U-20 only senbatsu

A: Watanabe Mayu, Kawaei Rina, Iriyama Anna, Kikuchi Ayaka, Sato Sumire
K: Nagao Mariya, Abe Maria, Maeda Ami
B: Shimazaki Haruka, Kato Rena, Fujie Reina
4: Kojima Mako
S: Matsui Jurina
N: Yamamoto Sayaka, Watanabe Miyuki
KIV: Oota Aika

 

On the wake of the announcement of no live stream for this year's RH 200-101, I'm predicting no live stream for the final day of RH 100-1 as well as sousenkyo.

Remember the good ole days when AKB48 was fun?

 

It makes no sense to not live stream the election. Once the results are out nobody ia going to bother sitting through the whole election after they know what will happen.

Same thing with Request Hour to a certain extent.

 

^ On the flip side, does it make sense to stream sousenkyo? They won't make money off of it so it would be a sunk cost. They could get money off of FujiTV for their broadcast, but it still won't reach a wide enough audience.

And fans will still want to see how things played out despite the results being spoiled. Same will happen for RH.

Sousenkyo though is definitely an event where most won't want to watch it again and again.

 

You meant the days without any stream at all, and people were cheering / screaming / celebrating just from twitter results? Sure, I do.

Really, just 2-3 years ago, streaming events was something in the line of "in your dreams". Now there are QQng over not having RH stream. Spoiled, aren't we?

 

No, I meant the good ole days when almost everything was streamed. Did I just burst your bubble?

It's funny you call us spoiled. Does that mean we shouldn't have been treated to any streams at all, ever? Management provided streams, and now we're expecting streams. Is that so bad?

If screaming at twitter feeds is your thing, that's cool. I rather take a summary later.

 

Pretty sure streams existed for only a fraction of AKB's career.... So yeah it is bad when you treat them as a "given" because they simple are not. At the end of the day RH is just a concert with a gimmick and management doesn't owe it to us to stream it live.

 

Well, according to the majority, AKB's golden era / previous peak was before "everything was streamed", so I thought you were refer to those days

And yes, to your stream-related question. Stream is a bonus. There is no obligation whatsoever for the management to give you an online stream, neither did they state they will be streaming it. Look around, be it AKB, JE, MomoClo, H!P or whichever group you can find, none of them guaranteed there will always be an online stream in an event. It's the icing, not the cake, so it will be better to treat streaming as "if there is one, yay management team, way to go. If there isn't? Oh well, it's the norm, too bad so sad, I will just refresh bombing twitters then".

Complaning about not getting a bonus is what I considered being spoiled (especially when that bonus potentially hurt the group). Like a child who got an X'mas present once, and expect a present every X'mas thereafter.

 

I think we don't need to cling onto the "old" ways.
i.e. selling DVD, broadcasting at theatre or selling the broadcasting rights to a TV station.

The online media is constantly evolving.
Heck, Youtube didn't even exist 10 years ago.

I think Youtube have a revenue sharing program with content creator.
So the more video you post, the more ad revenue generated is shared.

This is AKB48 that we are talking about,
it's a group that thrived on unconventional marketing/business model.
I would like to see the management embrace the online media as a solid way of earning money.

My suggestions/ hope?
1. Adapt the freemium model for the online streaming of big event?
480p free streaming for Request Hour, General Election and Janken, but you need to pay if you wish to watch in higher resolution (720p/ 1080p)

Actually I prefer them to stream these major event for free since these events act to introduce new fans into the fandom. I actually become a much more passionate AKB48 fans from a casual one by watching 2013 Request Hour streamed on Youtube. Charging money for these events will prevent the casual fans from joining the fandom. Charge all you want for other concerts but leave RH, General Election and Janken free.

2. Initiate a subscription model for all major concerts.
I think they already doing this with all the stages performance in partnership with DMM.
Why not take it a step further by streaming all the major concerts of 48 group and charge a subscription cost.
If that's not realistic, par per view is fine too.

3. Better streaming partner
This is just my personal wish.
All the streaming partners they find last year are totally sub par compare to Youtube.
Perhaps Youtube is unmatch in streaming quality?
Anyway, the streaming of Akimoto Sayaka and Tomochin graduation concert by Nico Nico is really messy.
And Hikari TV doesn't even have the resource to full fill all the streaming request of Draft Event. I sign in half an hour before the event and was denied the stream due to the server overloaded.

 

I think some of you guys have a misunderstanding of what we're talking about with no live streams.

Here's a common business practice: offer a free sample (free live stream) in the hopes that the customer will like the product and purchase it later (paid live stream).

Management offered free live streaming in the past, but is now doing away with streams completely. Have you ever been offered a free sample of something only to be told that the product is not for sale? Does that sound like a smart business move? We're not really complaining about free live streams. The "free" part is a bonus. But management is losing out on revenue by not having streams at all (be it paid or advertisements). A paid live stream is not a bonus, and neither is a stream bombarded with advertisements since ads are how they're making money.

On a side note:

Spoiler

You know how many of us foreign fans feel we're probably insignificant to management? I wonder if that's true considering all the overseas performances and official AKB48 cafes and shops. Sure the performances can be a cultural thing like as a representative of Japan. But the official cafes and shops are in place for a reason. And why offer in English how foreigners can attend a show on the front page of the official website? I wonder what the collective ratio of foreign to domestic fans are?

 

When they livestreamed the RH2013 starting from Sousenkyo 2012 at that time AKB48 had just partnership with Google. and Google and Youtube is associated with each other. so, i guess that's the reason on why they decided to have a free livestream of RH to introduce this new partnership and the google+ account of the 48G but now, it's different. this thing with AKB48 partnership with google is just a casual thing now.
but still I want to have an AKB48 concert and event ppv subscription. so, even if I'm not in japan. I could watch everything live than waiting everything to be released months later when all the songs, announcement and everything else has been spoiled already.

 

Um they are streaming.... in theaters. They've been going that path for a while so obviously that seems more profitable for them. We can come up with business theories all we want, but management isn't completely stupid, they have the actual financial figures in hand and make their decisions according to that.

 

But they DO offer samples. These come in form of various (tiny) 2'-5' cuts from the concerts, you can easily find those on TV, shops, AKB Youtube channel, etc (there are also theater streams, TV broadcast and such, but not applied to RQH so let's just ignore them for now). What you are asking for - the online stream - is a free and almost complete product, which is another matter. It's like fans claiming Blizzard is stupid for not changing WoW from P2P and F2P, and how doing so will give them million more players and profit from these million players buying the bonus. Fans tend to forget that those companies (AKB / Blizzard / etc.) probably have people trained and experienced in business more than us, while not being as biased.
Tl;dr: they are not losing out, at least that what people who are likely more knowledgeable and experienced than us think. While I won't say they are guaranteed to be correct, they are very likely to be so.
Edit: and as people said, there are paid stream aka theaters stream, so "having no stream at all" isn't true.

For your side note in spoiler, why do you even need to wonder about it? It's not a secret that AKB (or most if not all of the big groups in Japan) do not think of foreign fans as significant. IIRC, according to RIAJ report before at start of 2013, ~90% of Japan's music industry revenue came from domestic. For AKB whose handshake tickets play a big part in their sales, it will be an even higher percentage. So yeah, export is probably plays ~5% or less. We aren't nothing in management's eye, but we aren't something important enough to make them to cater to us either, > yet < anyway. Just make peace with that fact, or buy million CDs so they pay more attention to us.

 

2'-5' cuts are not samples. That's called newsreporting. The point here is that the streams are live. Why are you giving examples of snippets after the fact? You showing me a picture of a cheeseburger doesn't make me think "Oh, that tastes delicious!" I need to consume the product. And as for the streams being a complete product, there are businesses that offer a complete product or service free in the hopes you purchase the product in full later. And let's not get technical regarding "no stream at all". That doesn't help us foreign fans whose only option is the unreasonable flight to Japan just to go to a movie theatre. You're getting bogged down by semantics and technicalities.

 

^ What? Why do you need a live stream as a sample? We are talking about people who buy the box sets that being released 5-6 months from now, aren't we? At that time, it doesn't really matter if your sample is from the day of the concert itself, or the next day, or the next month even. Even if you ignore TV reports (which is also a way of advertising the "product" of AKB btw), you still have your sample at the shop the day it is released, or the cuts on AKB official channel (yes, they are considered sample). I hope you've realized by now that what you are asking for is NOT sample but a free live stream (it can be a sample, but it is not the only form of sample), so don't keep using your "common business practice" to call the decision a bad move. There are tons of successful media product that have no live stream or full sample, so guess they all lack common business sense and they'd have racked million more dollars if they streamed their stuffs, damn stupid marketing teams

By the way, since you are using food as your example, most of the big restaurant don't allow you to have a free full course meal as "sample" either, unless you are one of the famous food bloggers. Now find me a non-repetitive (has little re-use value after you've used it once) big business that give you complete product and hope you buy the same product later. Door-to-door sale doesn't count. Then think of the ones that don't. Compare in your mind which is the majority.

As for the "no stream at all" - it's because you said so. People wouldn't bother addressing it if you said "no stream at all for foreign fans". Oh well, check my 2nd paragraph in previous post if you haven't read. Foreign fans play a small part in their business equation at the moment.

Oh well, let's just stop here since it's completely off-topic. Go over the RQH thread or make a new one discussing about...err... AKB business model if you want.