Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Top 10 bestselling artistes for 2008 (Oricon)

Units in terms of million yen.

1) EXILE (19,582)

2) Hamasaki Ayumi (7,188)

3) B'z (7,156)

4) Amuro Namie (6,802)

5) Kobukuro (6,691)

You may wish to note that albums are prized much higher than singles. As such, even though ARASHI sold more than 1.5 million copies of their 4 singles this year, they are not in the top 5.

EXILE released a number of albums this year which did very well in the albums charts. Likewise for Hamasaki, even though her singles didn't get into the Top 25 of the singles chart, her complete hits compilation did much to push her up to the bestselling ranking.

It is also worth noting that these artistes in the top 5 released best hits albums instead of a brand new original album. It seems like the trend these days is that past hit songs will sell but new works won't.

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