resop2 wrote:All kidding aside about adding extra members to 11-gen as a gimmick, the management of Morning Musume is probably in a panic right now, trying to figure out a way to retain sales rather that have them slowly slip down. Obviously, if Tsunku "drops the bomb track, yo" then everything will be okay. But, that's easier said than done. And, a good gimmick would be easier to come up with than a compelling can't miss song. So other than adding three members from the Reina audition and having MM play live segments in their concerts, or adding Kikkawa Yuu, what sort of gimmicks are out there to keep the sales at a higher benchmark?
The only gimmicks that can reliably increase sales are things like handshakes and other special events. But you're putting the cart before the horse. "Singles" are sometimes known as "Promotional singles" for a reason. You don't really sell singles to make money. You sell singles to attract fans and so that your act has something to perform at the real moneymaker - concerts. The financial metric is a bit different when your singles are massive hits selling in the hundreds of thousands or millions like AKB, but even then, not so much, because making a huge AKB PV costs a lot of money which offsets some revenue from the top-selling jam.
And similarly, adding Kikkawa Yuu to MM doesn't make sense from a financial perspective unless a MMKY concert is more lucrative than separate MM concerts and KY concerts.
So bottom line, sales charts matter, but they matter more to fans, for whom they are a proxy for group popularity, than they do for the organization itself, which is more concerned with the actual bottom line than with indirect markers of success.