Mr. Children has won the major prize in the 46th Annual Nihon Record Taishou. Congratulations to Mr. Children who won the prestigious "Grand Prix" award on January 31st for their single "Sign". The band debuted in 1992 and won the award back in 1994 with their song "innocent world". Their hit song "Sign" was used for the TBS hit drama "Orange Days" in 2004.

Best New artist of the year goes to Ootsuka Ai who had the hit songs such as "Sakuranbo" and "Daisuki Da Yo" and most excellent song prize went to Natsukawa Rimi with the hit song "Aiyo Aiyo".

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Congratulations to Suzuki Ami. The pop star who was blackballed by the music industry in September 2000 (her parents tried to sue her management for more money) has been signed by Avex officially on January 1, 2005. Here new CD single on the Avex label will be on March 24, 2005. The singer announcedit to the audience during a live performance of her mini-tour as a "New Year's Present" for her fans.

Yea great job Mr. Children! They totally deserved it but I was pulling for Orange Range Either one would be great. Too bad Ayu wasn't there to defend her title.

Great choice for New Artist as well! Otsuka Ai rocks!

And kudos to Suzuki Ami for landing the big deal

eltinator wrote:

And kudos to Suzuki Ami for landing the big deal

Too bad it had to be with the M$ of Japanese music labels.

kndy-nt2099 wrote:

Congratulations to Suzuki Ami. The pop star who was blackballed by the music industry in September 2000 (her parents tried to sue her management for more money) has been signed by Avex officially on January 1, 2005.

Can we get the western Japanese entertainment sites to begin getting the real story out on the part that is bolded as opposed to the one that has been constantly perpetuated to the level of urban legend?

The fact that she was able to re-sign with another major label reveals which story is actually true and it surely isn't the one that was told by the Japanese gossip sites at the time because if that other one was the truth, no major label would have touched her again. Sadly, that old story was taken as verbatim by western Japanese entertainment sites. I would encourage anyone who has the credentials to verify through credible industry sources (not those WaiWai kooks or other tools of the Japanese geino) the following.

This was posted on another forum (credits go to user MotorMouth on Jpopmusic forums who has written some fairly informative stuff about the industry). There were also Japanese sites before that had this information in Japanese but the links I have no longer work.

Quote:

Quote: Suzuki Ami disappeared because her parents wanted more money (and wanted to take control of her contract) when her contract wasn't up. The record company got annoyed in the whole situation and decided to put her career on hold. That is not quite accurate and is the wrong story that gets continually perpetuated. Just going off topic a bit but you can blame the Japanese media for assisting the head honchos of the entertainment industry at the time. The Suzuki Ami case was more about the president of her talent agency being found guilty of evading corporate taxes. Suzuki and her parents wanted to break her contract and move to a different agency because they felt that this represented a major breach of trust. The courts even sided with them and she was allowed to have her contract nullified. Because her now former agency had been found guilty of evading taxes, the question came about as to whether or not she had properly reimbursed her as stipulated in her contract. They refused to open up their books citing that information as being private records. This is when they went to court again to ask to see their records for what they had collected (something really only known to management as they determined the cut based upon what show, etc) and what she was paid. Now think about this. The agency was found guilty of tax evasion. Opening up those records and books would probably result in way more dirty findings including of all things, names (of probably other important people who have ties to other big names, etc). So not too surprising, they were denied and that set the ball rolling by both the media and industry to paint a different picture of the reality. Tetsuya Komuro distance himself from her at this point because she was now damaged goods. To further reveal the level of injustice, the tax evading president got off and did not have to serve his time in prison. This is the sort of politics and corruption that exists. For her recording contract, Sony from their side suggested it would be best to part ways. This took two years of legal work (the courts are not always the fastest thing around) to make sure everything was severed professionally. This is why she did not do much during that time since she needed to make sure there were no longer any strings attached that could cause her legal problems regarding copyrights and royalties.

NoBus: that was some interesting info you posted about suzuki ami. i heard her name a while ago, but haven't heard too much about her since then. i guess i now know why. it's pretty sad that a contract had to stall her career. i wish her the best.

eightysix wrote:

Too bad it had to be with the M$ of Japanese music labels.

Well they may be the M$ of Japanese music labels but without them your whole J-Pop economy dies and hate them or not if you get rid of AVEX then you get rid of J-Pop.

COngrats!
i also like orange range..

Sweet, I'm actually listening to Mr. Children's new CD Shifuku no Oto right now haha. Congratulations to Sakurai and crew, they totally deserved it, their new material is almost as good as their older material back in the Bolero/Shinkai days. And I had a feeling about Ootsuka Ai as well.

Too bad about Ami landing that Avex label though hehe. I don't much like Avex, but if the Ayutrain ever slows down then where the hell am I going to get new Bump of Chicken CDs from? I hope Bump jumps ship to Toshiba EMI or Polydor..

Catch you later,
Id

Alright, so there's finally an official thread on Japanese music. Long over due, but here it is.

I'll come up with some basic rules in the next couple of days so look forward to that. Although I do have one basic rule:

1. NO REQUESTS. You'll be amazed at how useful Google is when you use it.

Other than that, get posting.

Cool. With the existence of this thread, you should be able to purge a lot of those similar individual threads...

bmwracer wrote:

Cool. With the existence of this thread, you should be able to purge a lot of those similar individual threads...

Yep, I exactly what I was aiming for.

eightysix wrote:

1. NO REQUESTS. You'll be amazed at how useful Google is when you use it.

i have a request: why don't users utilize the search function more? either here or other search engine? hahahaha...

BTW 86, good thinking, and bravo!
_________________

Here's my Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/kwan1?ref=profile

niko2x wrote:

i have a request: why don't users utilize the search function more? either here or other search engine? hahahaha...

L-A-Z-Y.

My favorite bands:

Limited Express
Guitar Vader
Detroit7
Every Little Thing
Pop Chocolat
Titan Go Kings

Favorite Singer:

Utada Hikaru
Sakamoto Maaya

Favorite Composers:

Kanno Yoko
Kawai Kenji

Favorite Guilty Pleasure:

Puffy
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bmwracer wrote:

L-A-Z-Y.

hey what does that spell? can you look it up for me? hahaha...(ok, ok, i'll shaddap)
_________________

Here's my Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/kwan1?ref=profile

niko2x wrote:

hey what does that spell? can you look it up for me? hahaha...(ok, ok, i'll shaddap)

*rolling on the floor, clutching sides*

I think I'll follow kitakaze's lead:

Favorite Bands:
Every Little Thing
Bump of Chicken
Do As Infinity
Luna Sea
X-Japan
The Brilliant Green
M-Flo (I think they count. )
Zone

Favorite Singers:
Utada Hikaru (I'm a HUGE fan. )
Misia
K
Sakamoto Maaya
Ozaki Yutaka
BoA

Favorite Guilty Pleasure:
L'Arc~en~Ciel (Seeing as I'm obviously not a fangirl. )

Wow, I can't believe I forgot Maaya-chan. I edited my post . Thanks for putting that up there eightysix.

Did you get Utada's English album too? I think I'm the only fan that's forgiving of Easy Breasy.
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since i'ce spammed the beginning of the thread with some lame jokes, i might as well so somthing good.

It's not Jpop or nothing, but for all those who wanna relax to some shakuhachi music (traditional Jpn 8 holed (hense, shaku-HACHI)) here it is:
Click on me
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kitakaze wrote:

Wow, I can't believe I forgot Maaya-chan. I edited my post . Thanks for putting that up there eightysix. Did you get Utada's English album too? I think I'm the only fan that's forgiving of Easy Breasy.

I've always been a big fan of Maaya-chan. The Sakamoto Maaya/Kanno Yoko pairing has worked well for many many years now.

Yep, I have Utada's English album. I think I've only listened to it 5 times since I've gotten it and I haven't listened to it recently. But I still think she made a big mistake with that one line in Easy Breezy (you know which one I'm talking about ), but I think people seem to have forgotten about it. My personal favorites on that album are Exodus '04 and Kremlin Dusk. It's definetely not her best album though.