AKB48 Heavy Rotation 6th Day Sales – Ponytail’s Record Smashed

On the 6th day of sales for Heavy Rotation, the 500k barrier was breached and Ponytail’s 1st week sales record was smashed. The single sold 20,773 copies today bringing the grand total to 516,012. That’s 2 singles in a row now which has sold 500k +. The final figure for the 1st week will be with us tomorrow.

HMV Shibuya Closes

I was very disappointed to hear that HMV’s flagship store in Shibuya closed for trading for the final time yesterday. The store opened back in 1990 and it was the first HMV store in Japan. It seems that HMV is closing high-rent stores and focusing instead of it’s more profitable online business.  To mark the ocassion there was over 10 hours of live music in the store. There are still HMV stores in LUMINE Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Meguro but it’s only a matter of time before they close too. I was surprised when back in March I headed over to Takashimiya in Shinjuku to find that the HMV store there was gone. Whenever I went to Shibuya, the HMV store up Center Gai was always one of the first places I’d go and visit. It’s a hell of shame to see it’s now closed.