Engineered Fandom
Or a more appropriate title would be, "The idol world through the eyes of someone whose spent far too much time analysing congestion data and has been consciously converting everything she sees into line graphs". But I figured that would've been too long. On the other hand, this post is filled with line graphs so you've been warned.
Even though I don't believe that an artist or a groups popularity can be 100% measured through their sales figures, I'm still gullible when it comes to numbers like most people. Numbers are powerful things because we'll believe close to anything when there's statistics to back it up. So I thought it would be fun to look at the first week sales figures of JE and 48 groups.
SMAP's figures were pretty amazing but I decided to stick with what I know and chose 3 volleyball debuts and 2 abnormalities.
The debut single for volleyball groups has decreased from Arashi to HSJ to Sexy Zone. So either Japan is starting to get sick of the sport after hosting the event for 35 years or illegal downloading has taken it's toll on the industry. All three groups have popular juniors and the latter two with some fresh faces and personally I don't understand the drop. As far as idol songs go, none of their early singles were particularly good or bad and definitely not better or worse than the other groups. Will this decreasing trend mean an end to volleyball debuts? We all know Johnny is eyeing a much larger fish with 2020 so Sexy Zone may be the last (personally I hope it is, there's too much heartbreak every 4 years when FIVB comes around).
The first abnormality is Kisumai. Just when most fans have counted them out, their debut gets announced, then gets postponed twice, then the major 3/4 split happens and fans go ape shit but their somehow doing alright. Interesting to see where they go from here.
The second abnormality, the one I really want to talk about is Kanjani8. Kansai's beacon of hope. 9 years on, 24 singles later, I think they've done all they can do. They've had an amazing 2 years after Ryo returned and released like crazy but I don't see that blue line ever breaking 500,000. Even if it does, I don't think it's something that will be maintained. Why does this matter? BAD. 7WEST. Hamada w/ Veteran. Kin Kan. Naniwa Oji. Kansai Jrs. The reason why Question? disbanded was because there was no chance of another band debuting. Not with TOKIO's low sales and taking 7 years before reaching their first number 1 single. Why try and sale a bad concept? Idol bands don't work. Is there room in the market for another male idol group from Osaka? Can they possibly sale better than their sempais? If the answer is yes and yes, then I'm up to my neck in confidence that there will be a debut announcement towards the end of this year for a kansai debut for 2014. It's not something that I desperately hope for or need but if they're to EVER debut another kansai group, the time is now to ride Kanjani8's recent success and being 10 years since the last debut. I just can't imagine who from the current lineup will make the cut. I don't like the idea of a huge group with large age gaps for clearing up the bottleneck of order kanju's. Just have to wait (hopefully not for too long) and see.
I did this graph on a whim. NYC's first single is actually YwBIS and their second single is NYC boys. I love BiShadow, they were the reason why I started following the juniors and I would've been happy if they were able to debut as a group or together with other juniors. Didn't happen though right? We'll that hasn't stopped fans from wondering if they would've sold better than Sexy Zone. Even though there's very little to go off here, and not that it should matter, but I don't think they would've. I adore Kochi. He has so many great qualities that may give him an easier ride in life as an adult, but his hardly idol material. Hokuto's had a surge in popularity since Bakaleya by playing the iconic intelligent cool beauty, but I have to say Shori makes a more attractive front man (not just in terms of physical appearance). When paired with Jesse who is a good performer, dancer and singer, I find it hard to see Hokuto having any strengths. I've always thought Shori had a nice voice and he proved that his singing can improve with his latest solo on SC. I loved everything about that performance and even though it wasn't perfect, you can really see him starting to hold his own and stand out as a performer. I still don't know what plans management has for Marius and Sou but they were very smart additions to the group.
Nogizaka46 has pretty much plateaued. Well not really, but I don't see them ever being a threat to any of the 48 groups. If they hadn't been pitted as AKB48's official rivals and the same group of girls were just another 48 group, they'd probably be selling higher than they are now.
Completely opposite to JE's volleyball debuts, with each new 48 group their debut single have always sold better than the group before them. Unlike JE groups, each 48 group do benefit from each others success. If we consider the present timeline, I don't think anyone thinks the sister groups can ever hold a candle to AKB's success. But if you look at their progress per release, in 4 or 5 years time SKE, NMB and even HKT may be direct rivals to AKB in weekly sales. I'm really holding out to see if that day will ever come.
I know very little about NMB besides their 2 aces so I can't really comment but SKE has always been very slow and steady. With 17 of their members ranking in sosenkyo this year (and so many raking every year) so don't get why they haven't reached 600,000 yet. Were the fans all saving their money from not buying or buying less of the previous singles inorder to power vote in the elections? I personally think that's a dumb idea but whatever. No excuses this time (unless you're all still broke after the elections) Utsukushii Inazuma deserves breaking that 600,000 line. NMB fans got their group over the 400,000 line at last and I have faith we can push our girls forward more.
HKT has the potential of an nuclear weapon. They can honestly go so far. They're definitely the group to watch out for in the next 2 years.
Stats aside. I'm so glad for last nights Ongaku no hi. I don't know why, but I find most of Sexy Zone's group performances on SC boring. It's not until I see them performing on music station or other music shows that I get a little excited as a fan.
Last night has a lovely marriage of performances by JE and 48 acts. We saw the return of the Sexy Rose that after 2 years has now multiplied into a Sexy Bouquet.
Fuma being the one with the big enough balls to throw his bouquet away within the first 5 secs of the song.
Nakajima as always, giving other guys flowers kissing up to his sempai's being charming on stage.
So cute <3 makes up for the psychotic looking screencap of Fuma earlier.
I can kind of understand Mari and Sou's exclusion from Bad Boys and them getting side lined in Real Sexy since after watching the pv and listening to the lyrics carefully I realised it was for Real Scope which only the older 3 appear in now. Then again, I don't get why Mari and Sou don't appear anymore but guess that's a whole other can of worms. Hope the obvious split will be gone next single.
There's so much sexiness (will put Sexy Zone's apparent sexy to shame) in this choreography. If only the single covers matched this style more, SKE should have no problem getting over that 600,000 mark.
Akarin. From a lunatic high of what ever she usually inhales x 10 to be that energetic in Koisuru Fortune Cookie to smooth and sexy. Amazing.
Dexter season 8 premieres tonight!! The beginning of the end. I don't think I'll have any shows left to look forward to after it end.
Even though I don't believe that an artist or a groups popularity can be 100% measured through their sales figures, I'm still gullible when it comes to numbers like most people. Numbers are powerful things because we'll believe close to anything when there's statistics to back it up. So I thought it would be fun to look at the first week sales figures of JE and 48 groups.
SMAP's figures were pretty amazing but I decided to stick with what I know and chose 3 volleyball debuts and 2 abnormalities.
The debut single for volleyball groups has decreased from Arashi to HSJ to Sexy Zone. So either Japan is starting to get sick of the sport after hosting the event for 35 years or illegal downloading has taken it's toll on the industry. All three groups have popular juniors and the latter two with some fresh faces and personally I don't understand the drop. As far as idol songs go, none of their early singles were particularly good or bad and definitely not better or worse than the other groups. Will this decreasing trend mean an end to volleyball debuts? We all know Johnny is eyeing a much larger fish with 2020 so Sexy Zone may be the last (personally I hope it is, there's too much heartbreak every 4 years when FIVB comes around).
The first abnormality is Kisumai. Just when most fans have counted them out, their debut gets announced, then gets postponed twice, then the major 3/4 split happens and fans go ape shit but their somehow doing alright. Interesting to see where they go from here.
The second abnormality, the one I really want to talk about is Kanjani8. Kansai's beacon of hope. 9 years on, 24 singles later, I think they've done all they can do. They've had an amazing 2 years after Ryo returned and released like crazy but I don't see that blue line ever breaking 500,000. Even if it does, I don't think it's something that will be maintained. Why does this matter? BAD. 7WEST. Hamada w/ Veteran. Kin Kan. Naniwa Oji. Kansai Jrs. The reason why Question? disbanded was because there was no chance of another band debuting. Not with TOKIO's low sales and taking 7 years before reaching their first number 1 single. Why try and sale a bad concept? Idol bands don't work. Is there room in the market for another male idol group from Osaka? Can they possibly sale better than their sempais? If the answer is yes and yes, then I'm up to my neck in confidence that there will be a debut announcement towards the end of this year for a kansai debut for 2014. It's not something that I desperately hope for or need but if they're to EVER debut another kansai group, the time is now to ride Kanjani8's recent success and being 10 years since the last debut. I just can't imagine who from the current lineup will make the cut. I don't like the idea of a huge group with large age gaps for clearing up the bottleneck of order kanju's. Just have to wait (hopefully not for too long) and see.
I did this graph on a whim. NYC's first single is actually YwBIS and their second single is NYC boys. I love BiShadow, they were the reason why I started following the juniors and I would've been happy if they were able to debut as a group or together with other juniors. Didn't happen though right? We'll that hasn't stopped fans from wondering if they would've sold better than Sexy Zone. Even though there's very little to go off here, and not that it should matter, but I don't think they would've. I adore Kochi. He has so many great qualities that may give him an easier ride in life as an adult, but his hardly idol material. Hokuto's had a surge in popularity since Bakaleya by playing the iconic intelligent cool beauty, but I have to say Shori makes a more attractive front man (not just in terms of physical appearance). When paired with Jesse who is a good performer, dancer and singer, I find it hard to see Hokuto having any strengths. I've always thought Shori had a nice voice and he proved that his singing can improve with his latest solo on SC. I loved everything about that performance and even though it wasn't perfect, you can really see him starting to hold his own and stand out as a performer. I still don't know what plans management has for Marius and Sou but they were very smart additions to the group.
Nogizaka46 has pretty much plateaued. Well not really, but I don't see them ever being a threat to any of the 48 groups. If they hadn't been pitted as AKB48's official rivals and the same group of girls were just another 48 group, they'd probably be selling higher than they are now.
Completely opposite to JE's volleyball debuts, with each new 48 group their debut single have always sold better than the group before them. Unlike JE groups, each 48 group do benefit from each others success. If we consider the present timeline, I don't think anyone thinks the sister groups can ever hold a candle to AKB's success. But if you look at their progress per release, in 4 or 5 years time SKE, NMB and even HKT may be direct rivals to AKB in weekly sales. I'm really holding out to see if that day will ever come.
I know very little about NMB besides their 2 aces so I can't really comment but SKE has always been very slow and steady. With 17 of their members ranking in sosenkyo this year (and so many raking every year) so don't get why they haven't reached 600,000 yet. Were the fans all saving their money from not buying or buying less of the previous singles inorder to power vote in the elections? I personally think that's a dumb idea but whatever. No excuses this time (unless you're all still broke after the elections) Utsukushii Inazuma deserves breaking that 600,000 line. NMB fans got their group over the 400,000 line at last and I have faith we can push our girls forward more.
HKT has the potential of an nuclear weapon. They can honestly go so far. They're definitely the group to watch out for in the next 2 years.
Stats aside. I'm so glad for last nights Ongaku no hi. I don't know why, but I find most of Sexy Zone's group performances on SC boring. It's not until I see them performing on music station or other music shows that I get a little excited as a fan.
Last night has a lovely marriage of performances by JE and 48 acts. We saw the return of the Sexy Rose that after 2 years has now multiplied into a Sexy Bouquet.
Fuma being the one with the big enough balls to throw his bouquet away within the first 5 secs of the song.
Nakajima as always, giving other guys flowers kissing up to his sempai's being charming on stage.
So cute <3 makes up for the psychotic looking screencap of Fuma earlier.
I can kind of understand Mari and Sou's exclusion from Bad Boys and them getting side lined in Real Sexy since after watching the pv and listening to the lyrics carefully I realised it was for Real Scope which only the older 3 appear in now. Then again, I don't get why Mari and Sou don't appear anymore but guess that's a whole other can of worms. Hope the obvious split will be gone next single.
There's so much sexiness (will put Sexy Zone's apparent sexy to shame) in this choreography. If only the single covers matched this style more, SKE should have no problem getting over that 600,000 mark.
Akarin. From a lunatic high of what ever she usually inhales x 10 to be that energetic in Koisuru Fortune Cookie to smooth and sexy. Amazing.
Dexter season 8 premieres tonight!! The beginning of the end. I don't think I'll have any shows left to look forward to after it end.