Here’s a nice surprise from over the past couple of days: Cheeky Parade, who, despite contributing to the loudness of NATASHA, are typically of the more tradol variety, went ahead and dropped an excellent little rocker all the way back on Wednesday:
Hi Caleb Cooper!
There’s another song (and MV for it), plus another track, but those aren’t half as interesting as a) this and b) the whole release is a “single” in the sense that that’s what it is, but is also not a CD — it’s some kind of card thing. That might be the first time I’ve ever seen that from idols.
Anyway, pretty cool, huh?
The download cards are a neat idea and seem like a good easy sell for devoted wota, plus they can be sold in convenience stores and places where you don’t usually buy music. (Sort of like the pre-paid phone data cards you can buy.) The hook is that the card, aside from the download, is a neat little collectible like a trading card. Negicco released a set of four cards for one of their singles a few years ago, and plenty of fans bought all four although they contained the exact same download. But Negicco only tried it this one time and never did it again, so maybe it’s still not much of a thing yet. I wonder how those sales are counted?
a lot of groups used to use music cards, but most stopped when oricon stopped counting them as physical sales. I think the sub label cheeky parade is on is the only one that focuses on them.