kamichan.com

I’ve been meaning to write about this for quite some time, and I’m doing it now because I thought I’d better get it out before Hey!Say!JUMP have another single out and I get all excited about chart positions again even though I should know better.

Of course I follow what’s happening in the Oricon charts, and when an artist that I like has a CD out I want them to reach that No.1 postition because it looks good, and it adds to their fame and all that. Being #1 on the charts is almost as prestigious as winning a gold medal at the Olympics. But does it really mean anything? Topping the Oricon charts may look like a gold medal, but it’s just a brass medal really, if you consider the ways the Oricon charts are being assembled, ways that could at least be called dubious.

Some time in spring 2006 Ugaya Hiro, a former staff writer for Aera magazine and now a well-known freelance music critic, received a phone call from Kobayashi Toshikazu, a staff editor with Tokyo-based Cyzo magazine. Kobayashi asked Ugaya to comment on the relationship between Oricon and Johnny’s Jimusho. Ugaya told Kobayashi that he knew nothing about Johnny’s and so limited his comments to Oricon’s charts. After the interview, the magazine sent him a draft of his comments for review. Ugaya corrected errors and filled in omissions in the text, but the editor who interviewed him refused to make the changes because there wasn’t enough time and no more space on the page, so the article went to the presses unchanged and appeared in the April 2006 issue of Cyzo magazine under the headlines The Lies Behind the Hits /Does Johnny’s Get Super-VIP treatment?! /The Honeymoon Between the Talent Agency and Oricon.

The one-page article, which relied heavily on two long quotes attributed to Ugaya, with only a brief introduction and conclusion, claimed that Oricon had padded the sales numbers for some artists, used questionable methodology to compile its music chart and favored artists from Johnny’s Jimusho.

According to the article Ugaya said that Oricon includes customers’ advance orders for CDs in its chart data, which supposedly makes it possible for kara-yoyaku (“empty bookings”), which can be canceled before a CD’s release date, to be included in the sales data on which Oricon’s charts are based. The article quoted Ugaya as saying that various people in the music industry had told him that Oricon’s charts “could be manipulated”. He described Oricon as a “mysterious” company because it does not reveal how exactly it collates its chart data.

Oricon, as one would expect, wasn’t too amused about the allegations. But instead of sueing the magazine or its publisher (Infobahn Inc.), which would be the usual procedure in a libel case, they sued Ugaya himself with a demand for 50 million Yen (roughly 460,000 US$) in damages. And even if he should win Ugaya would end up facing legal bills of 7 million Yen (64,000 US$) which is not a small amount of money for a freelance writer.

Needless to say, Japanese media are very reluctant when it comes to covering the trial which went to court for its first hearing on February 13, 2007.

However, in its March 2007 issue Nikkei Magazine took up the story by comparing Soundscan and Oricon data from the year 2006 and coming to interesting conclusions. According to Nikkei, “Johnny’s Jimusho groups, Morning Musume, Orange Range, and other idol-like artists usually show more copies on Oricon than on Soundscan. [...] More importantly, Oricon often under-reports artists in a systemic way”.

Twice in 2006, Johnny’s artists won the No.1 spot on Oricon while being #2 on Soundscan. For the week of February 12, 2006, TOKIO‘s Mr. Travelling Man beat out Janne Da Arc‘s Turning Back on Oricon, while losing by 20,000 copies on Soundscan. Then on July 2, 2006, Endlicheri*Endlicher beat out a Pornograffiti song on Oricon by a mere 893 copies to take #1. On Soundscan, Pornograffiti defeated Endlicheri by 16,000 copies.

Now, how did that happen?

Nikkei explains the Johnny’s advantage on Oricon by the number of CDs possibly sold at live events. That number is provided to Oricon by Johnny’s Jimusho, and Oricon has no way of verifying it. Another reason might me sampling issues. Neither Oricon nor Soundscan count the sales figures of every little music store in Japan. They count samples, and the actual sales figures they publish are being interpolated from those samples. It’s like the Nielsen ratings. Have you ever wondered how Nielsen knows what you’ve been watching on TV last night? Well, they don’t. They just assume you watched the same thing that people like you watched. People that are in their sample. So one reason why Johnny’s artists seem to do better on Oricon might be that Oricon have more stores in their sample that sell mostly pop music while Soundscan have more stores in their sample that sell more rock music. Neither of them counts all copies sold, and that’s why neither the Oricon nor the Soundscan charts are 100% accurate. Charts are to actual sales what exit polls are to election results. Nothing more.

In April 2007 My News Japan published a very interesting interview with Watanabe Shoujiro, political journalist and co-founder of Oricon magazine. Here’s a rough translation:

Q. Both the media and the music industry remain silent about the Oricon trial. Why do you think that is?
A. Nobody supports him (Ugaya). Because all the music companies are connected with the rankings.

Q. Why don’t the media report on it?
A. Because Oricon manipulates the rankings.

Q. Has it always been such a company?
A. It’s an industry newspaper. Industry newspapers get money from the industry. They don’t get general ads. So it’s a natural thing to happen.

Q. When you were editor for Geinou Shijou Chousa (which would later become Oricon magazine), did you go to the stores yourself to check how many copies of records were being sold?
A. No, no. For these rankings I made up appropriate numbers. [...] It was like:
[Do you have the data?]
[We were busy, so we don't have them, Mr. Watanabe.]
[Oh shoot, today's the dealine, so please do them.]
[Well, Mr. Watanabe, just make them up as you like.]
[This record was #1 at that store.]
[Oh that! It's doing well at our store too, please make it #1.]

---

Any questions? It always makes me laugh that whenever I post links to YesAsia there’s always someone who’s like “can you post links to CDJapan too, because YesAsia sales don’t count towards the Oricon charts”. That’s true, they don’t. And I don’t care. Because as I’ve tried to make clear in this post, Johnny’s artists don’t really need it. They will end up taking the #1 position anyway, no matter if a few thousand fans from abroad buy their CDs at YesAsia or CDJapan, and if the sales figures don’t add up Oricon will have a way to fix it. Like I said at the beginning, the next time HSJ will have a CD out I’ll be stalking the Oricon charts every day and I’ll be ridiculously excited if they make it to #1. After all, even if it’s just a brass medal, it’s still shiny and looks nice. But it doesn’t feed the artists, and I won’t buy my CDs at a store I don’t like just so my favourite artist gets another brass medal. What really matters in the end is the actual sales figures which neither Oricon nor Soundscan know. But Johnny does. If it’s not a bootleg but an official CD and you pay for it the money will end up in Johnny’s pockets, no matter if you buy it at CDJapan, Amazon, or YesAsia.And with that said I rest my case.The Oricon vs Ugaya trial, however, is still underway. The 7th and final hearing will be held Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at the Tokyo District Court. The verdict is scheduled to be given on April 22nd 2008, 13:10 at court room #709 of Tokyo District Court.

All relevant information in this post was found through a Google search for Ugaya Oricon case.

Comments