Feb 17 2010
Morning Musume single sales vs AKB48… LOL
Well today has certainly been hilarious, some Morning Musume fans in hysteria proclaiming the end of Hello Project, some AKB fans taking the opportunity to rub it in, and the rest of us just finding the whole thing amusing…
The weekly sales figures for Morning Musume’s single “Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai” which was released last week:
http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/w/
The daily sales figures for yesterday for AKB48′s single “Sakura no Shiori” which was released yesterday:
http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/d/
I think the numbers are pretty self explanatory. 
But just for some perspective:
- That’s more copies sold by AKB48 in a day than the total of all of Hello Project(Morning Musume, Berryz, C-ute, Buono!, S/mileage, Guardians4, and Mano Erina)’s respective acts last singles sold in their entire first week.
- More copies sold in a single day than Morning Musume managed to sell in the entire of 2009.
As for why, well let me write down my thoughts…
First the facts of each song:
AKB48 – Sakura no Shiori:
- Ending theme to a drama airing at midnight, central theme of drama involves school graduations.
- Song is about graduations.
- AKB48 are all over TV.
- PV directed by an award winning well known film director.
Morning Musume – Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai:
- Ending theme for February for a news program that airs at around 1.30am.
- Song is about women wearing make-up.
- Promotion of the song was lacklustre at best.
- PV directed by ???
So with it nearly being school graduation time the odds were already stacked against Morning Musume before we even get to actually hearing the song or watching the PV:
AKB48 – Sakura no Shiori:
Morning Musume – Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai:
And what observations can be made about that then:
AKB48:
- Nice melodic song (“beautiful” would be an appropriate description) sung by what could be a class of schoolgirls singing. Fit for purpose as a song for graduation.
- And as for the PV well you can certainly tell a decent director has worked on it. Again fits the song perfectly.
Morning Musume:
- As put by tasukidaisuki: over-synthed vocals mixed with mega drive game battle music. What exactly is their target audience with this? What genre does it even fall into?
- Yet again the members singing most of the lines are the same old ones singing most of the lines in all of their other recent songs. Makes you wonder what the point of the rest of the group is.
- And yet again the PV is just some miscellaneous dancing in front of a miscellaneous background with some miscellaneous close up shots scattered haphazardly throughout. If you look at it on it’s own it might not be so bad, but if you look at in comparison to their prior 41 PV’s then this formula is somewhat tiresome. *roll dice, make PV, rinse, repeat*
And I think we can see fairly easily why the sales figures are the way they are.
The only conclusion I have is that tsunku♀ doesn’t really care anymore. It seems as if he’s just making Morning Musume release new singles for the sake of releasing new singles. There is no target, no direction whatsoever. Perhaps all he does want to do is continue selling to the same set of fans over and over again until it comes to the point where it costs more money to release a single than they make back in sales.
I think ambition (or the lack of it) is the real reason for other idol bands (or even certain seiyuu *cough*Nana Mizuki*cough*) overtaking them in sales. I’m sure if tsunku♀ had the desire to make a good single + PV he could…. but I just don’t think he cares anymore.
If I were in charge here would be my possible suggestions (some more drastic than others, lol):
1) Graduate all members and have a year long nationwide TV talent show where the member graduating picks the girl that’s going to replace her in the “next generation”… MorningMusume2.0. And make sure not to make the same mistakes with v2.0 as with v1.0 lol.
2) Don’t graduate anyone or add any new members, re-order the assignment of lines in songs based on singing ability and who harmonises with who…… rather than the current method of assigning lines based on seniority and completely ignoring singing ability. Let Linlin lead a song by herself, she can sing!!
3) Have a PV that doesn’t have them in it at all. Get a decent director, and maybe a vaguely famous actor or something, make it exciting. And get the song onto something popular, be it an advert or a TV show airing at a reasonable time. And then get the entire group all over tv and into the public eye at all times rather than just the few weeks leading up to a single release.
February 17th, 2010 at 22:10pm
the tsunku♀ made me lol…
February 18th, 2010 at 0:50am
Probably the most accurate description of Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai that i’ve read:
February 18th, 2010 at 8:35am
But we all know what will happen, they’ll slowly drift on like a ship where the rats have had the good sense to run away and the remaining people have become plague carrying cannibals. I recon on this cannibal ship of death Junjun would likely survive to the point of feasting on her own flesh, she’s got more to her than the rest, unless they manage to gang up on her.
February 20th, 2010 at 14:07pm
Well written xDDD
While Sakura no Shiori has the power to appeal and sell by itself, we have to take into consideration that the single had three b-sides, with their respective pvs, making a total of FOUR pvs for a measly 1500 yen. That was what really drove me to buy this xD.
The single I bought included:
-Three songs and two instrumentals
- Three pvs
- An alternative close-up version of the third b-side, hidden in the menu.
- A 15 minute long ‘omake’ video (the girls acting some stuff in front of the camera), which is different in both versions.
- And depending the place where you bought it, you could get different bonus pictures, or even alternative covers.
So that’s the reason the single reached platinum. They sold the whole package for a small price, and full of songs of different genres (in case someone didn’t like the a-side) and interesting bonuses. You know, if H!P did this kind of stuff, too, put all together in one DVD instead of selling different versions with little content, I would buy their single releases instead of just albums. And worse of all, I actually liked Onna Medatte ga Naze Ikenai, but it hurts to see how much potential on good songs and pvs is wasted every time.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:09am
I’ve never really liked MM for the exact reasons you highlight in this writeup. The sad thing is they gave J-pop it’s popular uber-cheese reputation, whereas much of the stuff that comes out of Japan is much, much better. And I have to highlight this Every. Fricking. Time. someone takes the p*ss out of me for listening to it.
Good to see the Japanese public are starting to do what us Brits seem to be scared of doing and voting with their yen.
also, AKB48 == <3
March 10th, 2010 at 19:46pm
Morning Musume or Hello! Project groups never has specific genres o-o. You might as well just call the genre ‘tsunku’ or ‘h!p’ xDDD Lol. And you call Morning Musume cheesey!? AKB48 are FULL of cheese and their PVs make them look even more cheesey o-O This is just a new generation group for gathering more wotas in the future. Morning Musume is proudly known to be the classic japanese girl group.
March 10th, 2010 at 19:51pm
Oh and NEVER blame Tsunku. Blame UFA. Tsunku just writes songs and lyrics.
March 10th, 2010 at 19:59pm
For the record… I didn’t call MM cheesey anywhere in my post. There is absolutely nothing wrong with cheesey music, cheesey music is fun!
I’d say Onyanko Club were the “classic” Japanese girl group, they somewhat pre-date Morning Musume by *a long* way.
“Tsunku just writes songs and lyrics” …why blame UFA then? By your admission they didn’t write the crap song, Tsunku♀ did.
March 11th, 2010 at 20:00pm
The cheesey part was replying to cmn ^^; Tsunku has always written MM’s songs from when they started, so it’s not like he lost it or anything (it was probably just this time). But I would blame Tsunku for the bad choice of members recently, maybe it’s a time to shoot out a Morning Musuko?? xDD (joking). It’s just UFA’s choices and funding that is letting Morning Musume down (the budget pvs, photo shoots, concerts etc.) and they seem to think using the same formula over and over again is okay just for the money. But oh well, isn’t this stuff likely happen if a group were still around after 10 years? It’s just bad management. Their new single isn’t that bad, I actually prefer the B side to the A side anyways. ^^;
April 4th, 2010 at 13:30pm
At least every Morning Musume member were/are noticed, instead of being bombarded with like 50 girls (like Onyanko Club and AKB48); people don’t even know half of them and most of them just do backup dancing instead of actually having their own camera time. Their group division is terrible and useless because there are still too many of them, I’d divide them into smaller and more sensible numbered groups like Hello! Project does.
April 17th, 2010 at 18:12pm
“Their group division is terrible and useless because there are still too many of them, I’d divide them into smaller and more sensible numbered groups like Hello! Project does”
Who says AKB48 doesn’t divide them into sensible groups, open your frickin eyes!
They have No.3b (3 ppl), Queen & Elizabeth (2 ppl), Watarirouka Hashiritai (5ppl), and they divide the teams into A K and B (approx 19 ppl each), for your information.
Want more? I will hereby explaining you about the groups are divided into SENBATSU and UNDERGIRLS for each songs to date.. Each group have fewer girls to perform well on the single..
And so if I recall, Watarirouka Hashiritai’s first week release beat the overall first week release of Momusu’s in Onna ga blah blah single
As an old saying, YOU DON’T KNOW, SO YOU WON’T LIKE….
April 23rd, 2010 at 13:34pm
Yeah.
MM is pretty much on the edge of falling. I just wait and see how long will Tsunku keep on feeding MM without open up his eyes. Or he had enough money to take care the rest of his life?
Just don’t let MM pull the other H!P’s groups to its grave.
Stupid Tsunku….
July 18th, 2010 at 14:02pm
I like both H!P and AKB48. Regardless to how many single sales they each have. H!P OWNS AKB48 for live stage performances, all AKB48 does is mostly lipsync and try to concentrate on the simple dances. Morning Musume has more energy and stage presence/charisma than AKB; that’s why some people still love H!P, they don’t care if AKB48 are ‘in’ nowadays. I bet you international fans are more impressed with MM when they went to LA and Paris to do a concert than AKB48. AKB are just covered up with their single sales success rather than their spontaneous performances live. Though, I love AKB’s dramas *___*
July 18th, 2010 at 14:08pm
Lots of H!P stuff is lip sync’d too.
Take for example the Kirarin Revolution special live, they only sung one song live during the entire concert, and that song was cut out of the DVD release (presumably because it wasn’t sung particularly well).
July 29th, 2010 at 17:51pm
Well, in my opinion H!P does take the singing performance to another level. For example Berryz Kobo – gag 100 kaibun aishite kudasai (acapella version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ-FVtSUvLs and their Dschinghis Khan + acapella (halfway): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLNTiPAdeaE
I just think H!P concerts seem more worth going to than AKB’s and I care more about how they really perform live than sales.