^ Yes, and I don't understand this, I don't really think it's a bad sinlge. Why do you think that sales have been so low?

Perhaps most fans don't like this kind of image from Ebichu??

I do not know ... I understand that these factors can make that the sell be something less, but we are talking about this are their worst sales since they made majors.

It's not a bad single, but as others have noted perhaps not a song that we've come to expect from Ebichu. The B-side songs are also somewhat disappointing, although I do enjoy the fourth song (though I do not remember its title, embarrasingly). Whichever way you look at it, these sales figures are very disappointing as well.

event tickets included in CD for female idol group play the biggest part in sales, not the quality of the single it self or any performances on tv show. AKB48 have 300 girls doing handshake each time they release a single, they can sell million no matter the quality of their song.

Momoclo on their peak can sell 70k single and 200k album without any event ticket, that's because they're way more popular than any stardust group and arguably the closest to AKB48. Babymetal is another example.

Imo, Massugu is a good single, but without event tickets, sales will be very low. It needs Momoclo or Babymetal popularity to pull off no event ticket and still sell well.

I guess you are right, but it's a shame not to do 2shot event because this week the number one has only sold 25k, Ebichu easily could have achieved the top spot

I love Summer Dejavu, in Massugu I enjoy Mayama's parts.

In my opinion it comes to:
Sales are low because they won't do 2shot event this time --> as far as I know they aren't doing it because of the members health (Hinata, Kaho)

I rather have them healthy than being #1.

I haven't listened to the single yet, but even if it's not as good as the previous ones there's no reason to panic. They've being having very consistent high quality single/album releases, so a bump on the road at some point was bound to happen.

Mattthecat said:

I'm no expert here by any means but are those fan events like 2shots really that important?

Yes.

Assume you want to get a 2-shot with every member, as this is not uncommon. To get one 2-shot ticket, you have to buy a box of 3 singles, times 8, you now have one person buying 24 singles, when they would have otherwise only had reason to purchase maybe 3 for all the B-sides. Now, assume you want a picture with every member in each different outfit they plan to do for the 2-shots (you'll notice they often say in advance which costumes are going to be used when, for this very reason). Now you've bought at least 48 copies of the single, if not more for additional events. Even assuming you only have 100 fans who are willing to buy that much, and maybe 1000 fans who will buy 3 copies apiece for all the songs and maybe one 2-shot with their fave, and 5000 casuals who will buy one copy, that's 12,800, but that's still an almost 40% increase than what you'd have if those 100 fans weren't encouraged to buy in bulk. Considering Ebichu can sell out arenas at this stage, they certainly have more than 1000 people willing buy all 3 copies and more than 100 who would be willing to bulk buy in exchange for tokuten like a 2-shot. Without such incentives, the only motivation is to see them chart highly, and that's kind of arbitrary and not really worth fighting for with your wallet.

To put things in perspective, when Soundscan still made public reports about Japanese singles, AKB's regular versions (aka the ones that don't provide high incentives like handshake events or 2-shots) sold around 100k at their peak. Throw in the theater editions and the limited editions, both of which are heavily incentivized, and suddenly you're up to 1 million or more for Oricon. They wouldn't sell that much without the careful branding and development of the fans' relationship with the group, so it's not as though anyone can do it, but the same happened to Morning Musume. They didn't do incentives, and then they did, and they went from selling 25k-30k to selling 85k-100k almost overnight. It's not a coincidence with them, and it's likely not a coincidence here.

But watch them spring back up tomorrow with double what they had today. There's no telling.

Pretty much, yes.

Ebichu has always done it, as far as I can remember. Even in their indie days I think they were still doing 2-shots, or at least since their major debut (see some very old 2-shots here).

Some artists do tokuten, but not many. Artist sales have slowly decreased over the past 15 years, even if their popularity is more or less the same. It's really only idols keeping the physical music market afloat, and it's primarily because they incentivize mass purchases. It's also why you see no-name indie idols land in the top 10 on Oricon charts pretty much every day/week, beating out older and more prestigious artists just because they have a bunch of fans with a bunch of income devoted to that idol group.