19 replies to this topic

[Kuraudo17]

As strange and exotic as they may seem to the untrained eye, idols aren't exactly a concept endemic to Japan. We have some of these idols idolizing the likes of their western counterparts in Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez. However, Japanese idols don't seem to ever graze the mainstream and the industry is intent on keeping it small. Why is that? What are the barriers keeping idols from reaching a higher level of fame?

 

If UFA idols were on the same level as Ariana or Selena, then there wouldn't be a need for expensive bus tours or handshake events, and quality of life especially for idols who dislike events where they are directly exposed to fans will increase. Why can't idols go mainstream? Is it the relative lack of talent/skill? Is it (arguably) the oversexualization of western idols, even though Japanese idols pose for sexy photobooks before they reach high school?

[mby3]

I'd argue idols are just as mainstream as Ariana and Selena.Few people outside their fanbases know who they are unless there's a scandal. Like I'd never heard of Ariana Grande until that donut licking thing and didn't know until this post that Selena Gomez had done anything after Disney besides date Justin Bieber. You might know them by "that name sounds familiar" but I wouldn't put either as super stars who are household names like say Beyonce. It's also the type of music and where it's from. Western music travels further than Eastern music does as English is a more international language.

[JennyInTokyo]

I think idols may not be as mainstream as Ariana Grande just because of the demographics of the audience they pertain to. When it comes to Ariana Grande, she does have some sort of idol aspect to her (she's young so people look to her as a sister of a friend) but she is promoted and marketed to a mainstream audience so people of all ages and gender can listen to her. Whereas when it comes down to idols they can perform the same music as Ariana Grande, but the way idols are promoted, it's directed solely at the people that give them money and keep them going which are the male fans. I have seen an increase of female fans for idols but it hasn't progressed so far that idols can rely on their female audience as well as their males to keep money coming in. idols promote themselves through photobooks and the essence of being pure and youthful and they don't date to create this fantasy of availability to fans, which is where male fans are drawn to them. Male fans have been the success of idols since the beginning of the idol boom, even before Morning Musume hit the scene. It all comes down to the culture as well and what people from Japan and people from the Western world like.

[taylorniw]

No, there will never be an idol who gets away with not promoting their stuff to the degree Ariana Grande has. #promoteyourdamnalbum

Also, they might not do 'events' but these girls still hustle. Ariana has done lots of collabs with MAC and fashion brands. Selena has had he song lyrics on Coke fans and she also, uh, has a popular Instagram. Selena is definitely the more idol like of the two. Ariana can actually sing, you just don't realize it because you're too busy trying to figure out what she's saying because she hasn't learned to enunciate yet.

[Kuraudo17]

I'd argue idols are just as mainstream as Ariana and Selena.Few people outside their fanbases know who they are unless there's a scandal. Like I'd never heard of Ariana Grande until that donut licking thing and didn't know until this post that Selena Gomez had done anything after Disney besides date Justin Bieber. You might know them by "that name sounds familiar" but I wouldn't put either as super stars who are household names like say Beyonce. It's also the type of music and where it's from. Western music travels further than Eastern music does as English is a more international language.

Selena and Ariana songs have hundreds of millions of hits on Youtube, Spotify, you name it...can't same the same about idols. A single selling 50k units is already a success in idoldom, and that's considering various editions of a single. To mainstream pop idols that would be considered a massive failure. I just wonder why UFA doesn't want to go mainstream. Is it the inability to do so? Is it resistance to change, as is tradition among Japanese corporations?

[taylorniw]

Well, most of their sales are digital (which should be mentioned), something even big idols aren't super successful at in Japan. Japan's digital charts are very different than what you see on Oricon. And while growing, their digital market isn't anywhere near as huge as it is in the west.

The numbers you pull up for western acts if you look for sales won't be pure physical numbers. Charts nowadays include iTunes, streaming, ect.

[RenaiHunter]

I'd argue idols are just as mainstream as Ariana and Selena.Few people outside their fanbases know who they are unless there's a scandal. Like I'd never heard of Ariana Grande until that donut licking thing and didn't know until this post that Selena Gomez had done anything after Disney besides date Justin Bieber. You might know them by "that name sounds familiar" but I wouldn't put either as super stars who are household names like say Beyonce. It's also the type of music and where it's from. Western music travels further than Eastern music does as English is a more international language.

That's just because you probably don't get out of the idol culture a lot. Selena and Ariana are easily from the most recognizable female artists nowadays.

I don't follow KPOP that much so if someone names a big KPOP group I wouldn't know their relevancy unless they are big names like SNSD and EXO.

[bloop7676]

I think that for becoming a huge universally recognized star, it works a lot better with being a solo artist. Hikaru Utada and Ayumi Hamasaki went pretty far that way for example. With idols I think there's too much of an emphasis on getting fans devoted to people who appear to be just another face in a big crowd to a casual observer. It seems to me like it's a lot harder to really captivate everybody that way, especially when idol fans are often kind of cliquish about following their particular members.

[Kuraudo17]

Speaking of Kpop, while I agree that language is a factor, it hasn't stopped Kpop so I don't think it's as big of an issue.

 

Digital versus physical goods, I'd say idols rely on physical goods a lot. Pictures, towels, t-shirts, you name it. If they were more popular, they'd be successful on the digital front too. Nothing stops them from getting on Spotify or iTunes, other than the lack of mainstream appeal.

[mby3]

I'd argue idols are just as mainstream as Ariana and Selena.Few people outside their fanbases know who they are unless there's a scandal. Like I'd never heard of Ariana Grande until that donut licking thing and didn't know until this post that Selena Gomez had done anything after Disney besides date Justin Bieber. You might know them by "that name sounds familiar" but I wouldn't put either as super stars who are household names like say Beyonce. It's also the type of music and where it's from. Western music travels further than Eastern music does as English is a more international language.

That's just because you probably don't get out of the idol culture a lot. Selena and Ariana are easily from the most recognizable female artists nowadays.
I don't follow KPOP that much so if someone names a big KPOP group I wouldn't know their relevancy unless they are big names like SNSD and EXO.

Nope. Only idols I know or listen to are H!P and even that's not a lot. I dont hear about them because I don't follow them. I don't follow or listen to Taylor Swift or Beyonce either but I hear about them and their music because of how big they are.

[IchVermisseDenSommer]

I think the mere question is based on some fallacy. The world is big and wide and if you only look throuroughly you will surely find women more cute, pretty and talented than Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez. So instead of asking why can't j-idols do the same as lalala you should rather start by wondering how could Ariana and Selena get that big? And how could many k-pop artists get that big? Would you compare the audience of k-pop and Ariana/Selena with each other? Would you say all of them made it big because they looked good and had nice music to sing? Because all of them were talented? Sure all of this is true but as I already said you will find lots of people just like that that will never make it big in this world! And you will find lots of people that made it big for one short moment and faded afterwards. The marketing concept behind all the people named by you is in it's own way unique and worked out for these exact people or the wave if it comes to k-pop.

 

So instead of comparing their concept to Japanese idols now I'm gonna go on tell you one reason why idols will never made it big as long as the industrie won't change: Idols sell pictures of half naked sexualized 12yo.

We can argue all we want about other reasons of why idols will never make it "that big". But while Japanese law is much more lose with minors in lingerie and while there are exceptions like the idols of Stardust Entertainment that don't make gravure things and why Momoclo might have made it as a household name in Japan for the whole family the latter are exceptions and even nowadays even in Japan lots of people think it's embarrasing to say you are an idol fan. For more reasons than just the half naked children thing but traditional prejudices that go with idol culture (like idols are only for desperate old oji-sans, they are talentless and the agencies shady and such). But besides their image problems in Japan can you really imagine j-idols becoming a big thing in the west longer than until magazines start to investigate them and find pictures of an "alluring" 12yo Duu? Like this one? http://25.media.tumb...clfimo1_500.jpg
So while there might be other reasons to why they never really tried to become big in the west for real and surely lots of reasons why idols never became a fast-selling thing on it's own here like k-pop did I asure you that at least in western Europe the main public would never except something so close to child porn and idols would go down as fast as they rose up.

I mean come on Heavy Rotation was a big topic even without AKB marketing it in the west.

[taylorniw]

They could get rid of all the bikini photos and all the blatant sexualization (because it doesn't always have to be BAM right in your face and often isn't) and it still wouldn't work. It's never going to be socially acceptable to be a huge fan of someone still in grade school if you yourself are not in grade school. Even if every girl had to wait until she was an adult to be an idol, I think you'd still end up with the situation I mention below because it's not as if Sayumi's fans were any less fervent than the younger girls.

 

I have a friend who lived in Korea and even she said that while everyone listens to kpop, personal name recognition is low, unless you've really hit it big, and knowing everyone's name in a group is seen as sort of weird and immature for anyone who isn't a teenage girl. 

 

Even in the US being obsessed with someone like Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez would be weird. It's one thing to be a fan, but being a hardcore fan is seen as something else entirely. I remember when Lady Gaga's Artpop came out and people were making fun of the super obsessed fans buying tons of copies and trying to convince others to do the same. Ridicule on pretty much every site dedicated to talking about pop culture.

[IchVermisseDenSommer]

Oh no I think you got me a little wrong. I said the first thing why they would never make it is because of the sexualization. There are lots of reasons why they would never be accepted. But that's the one thing they could only overcome by changing the rules of idols in Japan: that they are catering lots towards people that love to invest in them because of child nudety. But if we ignore that then there are really specific reasons why they wouldn't make it. If we look instead to Momoclo e.g. then it is of course that "girlgroup and boygroup" fandom is only accepted if you are a teenager. Some exceptions might have been Take That (later on) and Destiny's Child because they were seen as artists. Or you can just sell well because the music your group gets assigned is suitable for the radio and/or for clubs (or you have some concept which is so interesting that you are at least accepted as some hype as the weird stuff from the far far east like Babymetal and Kyari. But it's very likely that this is ephemeral if you don't change your concept to the latter while people are still interested in you and so far can't be compared to an Ariana or Serena kind of popularity).

So so far we have the sexualisation, the music and that they are teenagers as reasons for why they wouldn't make it. But another thing that is missing on the list is the network. Most idol companies are rather "small" compared to Disney which could get Ariana and Serena at least domestically big even while they were teenagers (and domestically big for such a huge company from America also means they have Europes youth in their pockets) and that could give them the collaboration with big international brands. For k-pop it's rather that their lables are huge and widely accepted in Korea and thus also have connections with international brands even though they didn't venture towards the international market for the longest time. All of them have the network to market their singers through brands that are known globally. Also k-pop can rely on everything that came with the korean wave such as dramas, fashion and make-up. The Japanese companies on the contrary usually even struggle to get tie-ins in Japan let alone internationally. And idols that are signed to big music lables in Japan are mostly a side project of those so they will never be the ones that are used for really big marketing coups. The only ones that kind of work against it are the G48 groups. I think G48s management is strongly working on getting even bigger at networking and are already venturing to the rest of asia. But I don't really think they will ever overcome the fact that they rose from a super small company that is doing the main management for the group over the next years. They already have this huge problem with their Chinese branch going on. And I think this is one of the best examples of what happens when a small company tries to venture internationally but hasn't a collection of reliable partners beforehand.

[JennyInTokyo]

I would have to agree with a lot of the comments here! It might seem like idols are so POPULAR in Japan and some other countries across the world, but compare them to Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez in terms of sales number and other factors and idols really are niche compared to them which is another factor added to my first comment on this thread. It's quite an interesting topic of conversation to have on here!!!

[Sky☆Dancer]

I think solo artists and groups are very different. It would be better to compare to Fifth Harmony or even better One Direction. Boy groups have it better because they can appeal to all age girls. Girl groups can either be cute and appeal to smaller girls, or sexy and appeal to an older audience. This is because, unlike Japan, girls can like boy groups but it's a little odd for guys to like girl groups unless they are hot and sexy. At least in USA, I've never heard of a guy saying that he likes a group because the girls were cute. But I've heard many different age groups with girls saying that they like One Direction. 

 

Having bonuses for fans who buy the groups single/album/ect. are a more new concept. When H!P was in the Golden Age, they never really had this (if they did please correct me). The earliest fanclub event was in Hawaii in 2005. It was really AKB that brought this new thing of a benefit of buying the physical copy. That's one of their things is the new thing where you can see your idol up close and personal. Unfortunately, this albums are more often then not discarded. After one of the Senbatsu Election, there was a picture of all these used singles in the trash. 

 

And American singers do their own bit of pandering to their fans. Ever heard of backstage passes? Crazy expensive tickets to hang out with your favorite singer. They even release their concerts on DVD. But I don't think idols will ever reach the popularity of Selena or Ariana. Not saying they aren't good, but the language barrier is such a hard one to cross for a large majority. Other then songs here and there, the only songs that make it big in America from overseas is from England. It's stupid and I wish people would have more of an open mind. The closest H!P got to having an idol solo artist that was big was Aya Matsuura. 

[taylorniw]

Yes but they're so expensive they aren't as accessible as buying a 15 dollar single off a chance to meet your idol. I also don't believe we're discussing whether jpop idols could make it in America but rather if any of them could ever be the equivalent of these pop stars in Japan.

It's also worth noting that Fifth Harmony's fanbase, as in the people who buy their stuff as well as the people who can actually name them (they're bigger as a whole than as individuals), are girls. Their album actually underperformed considering it followed to major hit singles. Maybe some dudes 'like' them when they see a photo or a DVD but I don't think it's comparable to how the men in the wota fandom like their idols.

I've also been told that H!P did do handshakes back in the day. This person went to one to meet 6th gen when they joined. Whether it was as regular as it is now, I don't know.

[Juandalyn]

There was also a handshake event for Nanchatte Renai, and I think for some other singles as well. I guess it just wasn't that all promotion was based on handshake/high-touch/do anything with your oshi things.

[Snipey]

They had one, it was Matsuura Aya. With all kinds of shows, hit songs and endorsements she was the it idol. Nowadays even AKB soloists can't hit that level of 'the idol' like she did.

[akb48princess13]

idk if i could compare anyone with ariana grande and selena,i am a big fan of ariana but i don't know if any body could be on ariana's or selena's popularity maybe with kpop but i don't know about jpop

[☆RisaReinaSayu☆]

As far as I understood and observed that type of idol appeared multiple times already. Hamasaki Ayumi and Amuro Namie are both former idols in their own right with certain idol undertones to their celebrity still present to this day. Then there's Matsuda Seiko who honestly speaks for herself. Koda Kumi is another celebrity with a lot of idol undertones plaguing her throughout her career. From a male counterpart perspective you need look no further than Gackt. Miyavi could also count and for that matter X Japan's Yoshiki and hide can also count (in a manner of speaking). These are all people with names known the world over, but ignored by the large majority of the people who couldn't give a rat's bottom about them and that goes perfectly with Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez. One (Ariana Grande) is a one trick pony who will fade away, but remain respected by a chunk of her local population like Matsuda Seiko has in Japan. The other (Selena Gomez) is much like Namie Amuro, both names ended up on the map for something they did in their youth that generally isn't looked back on fondly by them (Namie and Super-monkeys or whatever they called themselves, Selena Gomez and her connection to Barney and Friends and her years as a main attraction for Disney), and both names have stayed prominent somehow despite their general nature to lay low for long stretches of time. The public is always aware of them and willing to give them a shot when they put out something new despite what the media might be digging up and publishing about them.