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.

Oricon - Weekly International Album Chart (27/12)

Weekly International Album Chart (Japan) - 27 December 2010

1. Michael Jackson / Michael
2. Mr. Big / What If...
   
3. Black Eyed Peas / The Beginning
4. Bon Jovi / Bon Jovi Greatest Hits
5. Lady Ga Ga / The Monster
6. PiNK / Greatest Hits
7. Taylor Swift /Speak Now
8. Lady Ga Ga / The Remix
9. Lady Ga Ga / The Fame
10. Kesha / Cannibal

Source: http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/wa/w/
also check the last week's chart here

K-POP idol groups 2PM and U-Kiss, who were both in Top 10 last week, now can be seen nowhere in Top 10 this week. Their names are even not seen in Top 30 now. It's so interesting. I reckon many Japanese people seem to think K-POP are so popular and Korean pop stars have a huge fan base here in Japan. I think they do actually. However, I am now wondering if K-POP really can be said it reaches the mass. Of course some K-POP artists such as TVXQ (東方神起) and Girls' Generation (少女時代) are so hot and selling more CDs than many of the J-POP artists this year. Nevertheless, I now guess other smaller K-POP artists are only popular amongst many of the K-POP fans. Let's think in this way: if they really succeeded in drawing the mass to their music, 2PM and U-Kiss, for example, should have been remained at least in Top 30 this week. Their large decline in the chart shows they actually don't.

I hope this hypothesis will be proved with more examples soon.