The X-Japan CD sales number problem

[jiangshi girl 8]

The English Wikipedia says, X-Japan has sold more than 30 million copies, it seems many people believe the wikipedia numbers, do you think it's really possible?

If you add every number from this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Japan_discography

It will turn out to be just over 10 million.

Also, let's look at Glay. Glay is a miracle, they have 11 sold-more-than-1-million releases, six singles and five albums, their best album REVIEW is the NO.1 best selling albun in 1997, sold more than 4 million, their single Yuuwaku is the NO.1 best-selling single in 1998. they have sold 38 million + in total.

Then X-Japan, they have only one release which has nodoubtly reached a million, that's Jealousy, also their highest ranking in Oricon yearly album chart is of Jealousy, NO.12 best selling album in 1991, if I didn't remember it wrong, none of their singles have ranked higher.

And X is 30 million?

 

This is the Visual Kei ranking from Nikkei Entertainment, around 2012:

http://bakusai.com/thr_res/acode=6/ctgid=116/bid=643/tid=2688314/

It says 11.88 million

(bands which may not be real VK are not included in this ranking)

 

This is a ranking I don't know where it is from, therefore might not be very accurate, but I have seen it many times in 2ch and other sites:

http://nammyblog.seesaa.net/article/323401673.html

11.74

 

This is a ranking from Music Staion sometime around 2013.

 

This is a ranking from Music Station, comparing sales of artists in Showa and Heisei era, the sales of each one is divided into the two eras, so it's not a complete ranking of best-selling artists in Japan, for example Southern All Stars ranked low here because they have been active in both Showa and Heisei.

But Heisei started in 1989, so every major X-Japan release is in Heisei era.

The 25th in Heisei, Spitz is just a bit above 20 million.

 

By the way, Laruku is clearly not something like 40 million.

Someone in my country's J-pop fandom calculate Hotei Tomoyasu's sales from Oricon, it's not 40 million, only 12 or 13 million. The Oricon numbers are generally lower than the true numbers, becuase Oricon can't calculate every purchase in Japan, but it can never, ever be 10 or 20 million lower, in which case Oricon would be completely useless.

Also I remember Ayumi Hamasaki is much lower than Wikipedia's 83 million, maybe 50 to 55 million, here is the oricon news: http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2015631/full/

 

Here is a site for some Visual Kei Oricon numbers:

http://oriconv.seesaa.net/

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Are they factoring in digital sales too? iirc digital sales really aren't as important in Japan since they're super big on physical CDs, but internationally it's a much more feasible option and may be the cause of the inflated numbers.

Edited January 25, 2017 by Peace Heavy mk II

[jiangshi girl 8]

46 minutes ago, Peace Heavy mk II said:

Are they factoring in digital sales too? iirc digital sales really aren't as important in Japan since they're super big on physical CDs, but internationally it's a much more feasible option and may be the cause of the inflated numbers.

Actually, in that Wikipedia page, only Ayumi Hamasaki, L'arc, Hotei and X-Japan's numbers are significantly different with the numbers from all those charts I listed. So even if their numbers include digital sales, it's very unfair.

Plus while talking about sales of Japanese musicians, people usually mean physical sales.

Also for example, according to RIAJ, AKB48 has a certification of about 16 million downloads, since digital music did not exist in X's glorious days, and I think it's safe to say X haven't released one single hit song since the digital era, I don't know what could make X-Japan 30 million except something like counting 5 youtube watching as one CD sold. 

[desparejo86 160]

I've never looked into X's numbers, but 30 million is not even remotely kinda sorta possible. Not even kinda.

 

B'z are/were much bigger than X and have like a zillion #1 albums and singles, and they have barely cracked 30 million. They were passed by some pop group as Japan's biggest selling act of all time a while back, check it out there.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/12/10/music/total-sales-akb48-singles-hit-36-million-copies-japan-record/

 

"The previous record for total single CD sales by the same artist was held by the Japanese rock group B’z, who sold a combined 35,809,000 copies." that's per Oricon.

 

EDIT: Okay, just realized that's for singles only. Apparently B'z have sold 35 million singles and 45 million album.  Holy fuck.

Edited January 25, 2017 by desparejo86

[r... 720]

I remember reading over 15 years ago that the original BLUE BLOOD album had sold over 1,5m copies. And that was in 2002, before the reeditions and remasters. For that reason, I actually trust the 30 million mark. Japan is incredibly cryptic about sales numbers.

[jiangshi girl 8]

17 minutes ago, desparejo86 said:

I've never looked into X's numbers, but 30 million is not even remotely kinda sorta possible. Not even kinda.

 

B'z are/were much bigger than X and have like a zillion #1 albums and singles, and they have barely cracked 30 million. They were passed by some pop group as Japan's biggest selling act of all time a while back, check it out there.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/12/10/music/total-sales-akb48-singles-hit-36-million-copies-japan-record/

 

"The previous record for total single CD sales by the same artist was held by the Japanese rock group B’z, who sold a combined 35,809,000 copies." that's per Oricon.

 

EDIT: Okay, just realized that's for singles only. Apparently B'z have sold 35 million singles and 45 million album.  Holy fuck.

If AKB keeps going like this, they will eventually become the best-selling musician of all time in Japan, but I'm not sure they will.

Personally I think AKB's music is okay, most members are not good singers, but they have nice melodies composed by famous composers, Yasushi Akimoto writes fabulous lyrics for them occasionally.

[jiangshi girl 8]

16 minutes ago, r... said:

I remember reading over 15 years ago that the original BLUE BLOOD album had sold over 1,5m copies. And that was in 2002, before the reeditions and remasters. For that reason, I actually trust the 30 million mark. Japan is incredibly cryptic about sales numbers.

If you google "オリコン アルバム 1989”, then 1900, then 1991, you will find that BLUE BLOOD sold 188 thousand copies + in 1989, 378 thousand + in 1990, not in the top 100 since 1991

1.5m is highly unrealistic.

Although I don't know how Billboard Japan works, Oricon numbers are not cryptic, nothing but physical CDs they have sold, only a bit lower than the actual numbers if we're talking about albums or singles which have dropped out from the weekly top 100 (top 300 since 2002), or if we're talking about the likes of AKB48 whose core fans could buy 100+ copies of a single (It seems even if you buy 1000 copies, Oricon would only count them as something like 50 or lower, but I'm not familiar with idol groups, so can't be certain)

[r... 720]

6 minutes ago, jiangshi girl said:

If you google "オリコン アルバム 1989”, then 1900, then 1991, you will find that BLUE BLOOD sold 188 thousand copies + in 1989, 378 thousand + in 1990, not in the top 100 since 1991

1.5m is highly unrealistic.

Although I don't know how Billboard Japan works, Oricon numbers are not cryptic, nothing but physical CDs they have sold, only a bit lower than the actual numbers if we're talking about albums or singles which have dropped out from the weekly top 100 (top 300 since 2002), or if we're talking about the likes of AKB48 whose core fans could buy 100+ copies of a single (It seems even if you buy 1000 copies, Oricon would only count them as something like 50 or lower, but I'm not familiar with idol groups, so can't be certain)

 

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUE_BLOOD

Check the japanese wiki page.

 

And オリコン is unreliable for old releases and stops updating the sales number after a while (maybe when it drops from the top 500 charts?). Only JASRAC or RIAJ can help you, then. And RIAJ takes fucking forever to update the sales too. It's not uncommon to see an album being certified years after achieving the Gold Disc Certification, which is the first award you can get.

 

But hey, that info was printed in an old magazine (forgot which one). I'm pretty sure the magazine would have verified their source back then.

[jiangshi girl 8]

16 minutes ago, r... said:

 

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUE_BLOOD

Check the japanese wiki page.

 

And オリコン is unreliable for old releases and stops updating the sales number after a while (maybe when it drops from the top 500 charts?). Only JASRAC or RIAJ can help you, then. And RIAJ takes fucking forever to update the sales too. It's not uncommon to see an album being certified years after achieving the Gold Disc Certification, which is the first award you can get.

 

But hey, that info was printed in an old magazine (forgot which one). I'm pretty sure the magazine would have verified their source back then.

RIAJ's certification is for the number of shipments, not the sales.

For example, one of my old favs, Sound Horizon's 2010 album Maerchen was certified as Gold when it was still on Oricon, the Oricon number for it was 85k when it finally dropped from the weekly top 300. Same condition with many many other CDs.

 

As for magazines, writers write whatever they want, especially when the internet was not very developed or no internet at all! I have another example, I don't like to say it, but a famous critic named Ichikawa Tetsushi (nicknamed "father of Visual Kei" by some Japanese VK fans) said Buck-Tick's Aku no Hana had sold 570k in Rockin'on Japan Dec 1990, with no source mentioned, the Oricon number is something like 430 to 440k. Scan here: http://s46.photobucket.com/user/tigerpal/media/Scans4/ROJ9012_p66.jpg.html

Ichikawa was also in charge of the promotion for X-Japan in that magazine.

I also vaguely remember someone in a Japanese magazine said BLUE BLOOD had reached 600k in 1989 or 1990.

 

Of course you can say Oricon is so so so terribly wrong, X have sold triple what Oricon says. But just one thing, if what you believe is true, do you think Yoshiki and all his fanatical Japanese fans would be okay with Music Station, the NO.1 television music program in Japan saying things like what I listed before?

[r... 720]

11 minutes ago, jiangshi girl said:

Of course you can say Oricon is so so so terribly wrong, X have sold triple what Oricon says. But just one thing, if what you believe is true, do you think Yoshiki and all his fanatical Japanese fans would be okay with Music Station, the NO.1 television music program in Japan saying things like what I listed before?

 

Yes.

[herpes 1597]

 

photo of the anonymous wikipedia editor adding that lie