Oricon - Weekly International Album Chart (7/3)

Weekly International Album Chart (Japan) - 7 March 2010

1. Beady Eye / Different Gear, Still Speeding
2. PiNK / Greatest Hits
3. V.A. / Grammy Nominees 2011
4. Pink Friday / Nicki Minaj
5. Rihanna / Loud
6. JYJ The Beginning
7. Boom Boom Satellites / Experienced
8. Lady Gaga / The Monster
9. Bruno Mars / Doo-Wops ＆ Hooligans
10. Charice / Charice

Source: http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/wa/w/

Liam Gallagher's new band Beady Eye went straight to #1 spot with their debut album "Different Gear, Still Speeding". Ex-Oasis' guy and co. sold more than 28,000 copies for its first chart week in Japan.

Here is a little note. There is a limited-Japan-only edition - a CD+DVD set. Adding a DVD to an original album makes the edition an exception of Retail Price Maintenance system. This means that the retail price of CD+DVD can be understandably cheaper so that more retailers can aggressively order the 2-disc edition. Let's see the retail prices of them on amazon.co.jp:

Beady Eye "Different Gear, Still Speeding"
Limited Japan-only edition: 2,441 yen (bonus DVD containing 5 bonus content)
Regular Japan-only edition: 2,520 yen (2 bonus tracks)

CD+DVD is cheaper than 1CD?! Yes it is!I think more record labels adopt this strategy as few people nowadays buy a record at full price. There is a big debate on this here but I still can't judge it's really good or bad. Hope will see sometime soon...

Oricon - Weekly International Album Chart (28/2)

Weekly International Album Chart (Japan) - 28 February 2010

1. Super Junior / Super Junior Japan Limited Edition - Super Show3-
2. PiNK / Greatest Hits
3. V.A. / Grammy Nominees 2011
4. Rihanna / Loud
5. Lady Antebellum / Need You Now
6. Charice / Charice
7. Bruno Mars / Doo-Wops ＆ Hooligans
8. Lady Gaga / The Monster
9. Taylor Swift /Speak Now
10. Nick Carter / I'm Taking Off

Source: http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/wa/w/

Super Junior is a Korean idol group (again!), who I didn't know until I checked this week's album chart. Over 12,000 copies of their lates album were sold for its first chart week. Is this figure great or not? If you were told that they played three sold-out Yokohama Arena shows in this month and will play at a baseball stadium Tokyo Dome in April for 2 days in row, you will feel 12,000 copies sold is actually under expectation.

Modern-look Yokohama Arena can accommodate 17,000 people and the biggest in-door concert venue Tokyo Dome can 55,000 people for a concert. I don't know if both Tokyo Dome shows are already sold out. However, if so, it means more than 160,000 people in total go to see the artist. 160,000 is a far big number compared to 12,000 because it means literally only less than 1/10 of the concert goers buy the album. You have to bear in mind that there are the certain number of fans who go to more than one concert of them in a year. There's however also a number of people who can't go to see the Super Junior play live.

What would that mean?　Fans don't buy their favourite group's recordings, although they go to their shows? Do they illegally download them? I think we'll see what's happening in K-Pop movement in Japan soon.