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One of the best ways of keeping on top of the Japanese music scene (besides logging on to Nippop regularly, of course) is to check out the charts.
The best-known Japanese music charts are those published by Oricon magazine. (“Oricon,” by the way, is short for “Original Confidence,” in case you were wondering.)
Oricon’s role in the Japanese music industry is analogous to that played by Billboard in the United States. Like Billboard, Oricon publishes various types of charts, as well as news stories and features about the Japanese music industry.
Unlike its American counterpart, however, Oricon also publishes a weekly magazine called Oricon Style that’s aimed at ordinary music fans, as opposed to music-biz professionals.
Another interesting difference between Oricon and Billboard is that while Billboard’s charts cover just about every conceivable musical genre (including Mexican regional, New Age and the intriguingly titled “Rhythmic” chart), the range of genres covered by Oricon’s charts is relatively narrow. Perhaps that reflects the more homogeneous nature of Japanese society.
Oricon does have an enka chart, however, if you happen to be a fan of that particular musical genre.
And like Billboard, most of the sales data used in collating Oricon’s charts comes from point-of-sales sources. Some 2,800 retail outlets nationwide send sales data, for the most part directly via fiber-optic cable from their cash registers, to Oricon, which then uses the data as the basis for its charts.
Until a few years ago, shops either phoned or faxed in their sales data to Oricon’s chart compilers, which made the system less accurate and more vulnerable to manipulation.
Like Billboard, Oricon has separate sales- and airplay-based singles charts, but unlike the American magazine, Oricon doesn’t combine sales and airplay data into an overall singles chart.
One Oricon chart that has no equivalent in Billboard is the rental CD chart. That’s because Japan, unique among major music markets, has a thriving CD-rental business.
Oricon also publishes karaoke, cable-radio, radio-request, and game-software charts, as well as charts showing which acts are most popular at various music retailers, and charts that track album and single sales in specific regions of Japan. And the magazine publishes separate charts that track sales of international albums and singles.
Oricon also publishes a “chakumero” (ring tone”) chart, but it’s based only on sales by Oricon’s own chakumero-download service. Billboard, in contrast, recently introduced a chart that tracks overall ring-tones sales in the U.S.
Go to http://www.oricon.co.jp/ranking/ to see a selection of Oricon’s weekly (and daily) chart data – some data is available in English, by the way. Oricon’s chakumero downloads are available by clicking on song titles on the singles chart. Oricon’s charts are disseminated nationwide through print and electronic media.
The print version of Oricon’s charts is an invaluable J-pop database: the writer(s), publisher, label, distributor, producer, arranger, mixer and TV tie-up(s) for each single are all listed.
While Oricon is undoubtedly the No. 1 source of chart data in Japan, it is not without rivals.
Since 1995, SoundScan Japan – a licensee of U.S.-based Nielsen SoundScan, which collates the data that Billboard uses to compile its charts – has steadily gained acceptance from the Japanese music industry on the strength of its 100% POS-sourced data.
But compared to Oricon, SoundScan has relatively few media outlets, and thus is much better-known to music-industry insiders than it is to the general public.
Another Japanese chart service is Planet, which although operated by music retailer/wholesaler Seikodo, collates data from many different retailers – about 1,500 outlets in total.
Like Oricon, Planet has a J-pop news service comprising three or four items daily.
Planet has a much more developed client base than SoundScan Japan, including various print and electronic media outlets, record companies and four mobile sites.
The company has a good reputation in the Japanese music industry.
Other Japanese music charts include those published by Record Tokushin (http://www.tokushin.com/) and Music and Media, a weekly newsletter which provides airplay data from around the country.
One noticeable feature of the Japanese music charts is that singles and albums usually rise and fall much more quickly than in other major music markets. That reflects the fact that Japanese music consumers are generally younger than the music-buying public in other countries; the under-25 market is much more oriented towards current hits than older consumers, who tend to buy more catalog product.
And that explains why more singles and albums go straight in at No. 1 on the Japanese charts compared to other markets. All 20 of the KinKi Kids’ singles, for example, have entered the Oricon charts in the peak position.
Of course, the problem with having so many straight-in-at-No.-1 hits is that people get blasé about it, and the promotional value of the instant chart-topping achievement is diminished.
The last couple of years have seen a steady increase in the number of singles and albums that hover midway or toward the bottom of the charts for weeks or even months. As of May 30, for example, Okinawan band Mongol 800’s album Message had been on Oricon’s indies album chart for no less than 176 weeks, while three albums (Trunk, Departure, and Street Story) by the band HY (also from Okinawa) had been on the indies chart for 44, 13 and 108 weeks, respectively.
Female vocalist Ayaka Hirahara’s smash hit single “Jupiter” is another recent long-seller, having been on Oricon’s top 100 singles chart for 75 weeks as of May 30.
And that’s the long and the short of it as far as the Japanese music charts are concerned.
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