Forum - View topicUK's Guardian on J-Pop's "Idol Factory"
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jmays
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 1390 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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The article is actually from August, but I just happened upon it a few minutes ago, and I think it's still worth reading.
Stuff I learned: Morning Musume creator Tsunku writes 100-200 songs a year (every single Hello Project song). Tsunku goes out of his way to find girls who aren't musically talented or have certain flaws in their rhythm or pitch. There is a group called EcoMoni. The audience for the average H!P concert is frightening. A H!P concert ticket could cost you well over $600, and that's assuming you're fast enough on your cell to get one before they're all gone. It's rumored that the founder of Johnny's groups keeps his monopoly by threatening to pull his acts from TV shows that try to feature other boy bands. Idol photobooks have their own sales charts. Morning Musume's Mari Yaguchi was fired for having a boyfriend. |
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mrgazpacho
Posts: 316 Location: Australia |
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Not bad at all. Thanks for the link. "Coconuts Musume" indeed! 
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Gauss
 Posts: 519 Location: Finland |
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The Guardian article largely tallies with what I've read before. The world of idols is pure business, and the earnings from music incidental to overall profits. The music is just a marketing and branding exercise. The big money is in stuff like merchandise and filming commercials. That's why falling music sales is not necessarily an indication of decreased popularity. It's all the same as long as the money saved from downloading music goes into merchandise instead. It's only a problem if sales creates an image of falling popularity. Then it might affect other operations. But since downloads affect all the idol bands equally I doubt this causes a lot of concern among the promoters.
Anyway, this hypercommercialized idol machine is one reason why I can't help but snigger everytime somebody speaks of the wholesome image of Japanese idol bands. As much as I dislike a number of over-sexualised western artists they are at least far more individualistic than these troupes of money-generating puppet dolls. BTW I was a bit surprised The Guardian didn't mention another defamation trial based on newspaper articles from 1999. Kitagawa sued and won 1,2 million yen in damages. However, the damages came for lesser offenses, while the main allegations of sexual abuse could not be disproven. The sources were considered reliable and trustworthy on this point. |
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