User talk:Natural Rayon

The Japanese Singles Market and Germany

The Japanese singles market: Japanese musicians regularly release singles months ahead of their albums. Ayumi Hamasaki releases frequently MAXI SINGLES. The maxi single "Boys & Girls" consists of 10 tracks of which 6 songs are remixes of the original song version, one is a Karaoke version, and two are remixes of two other singles. To my knowledge all of her albums, which are released in about 1.5 year intervals, are released with all of the previous singles tracks. Hence, each song on her albums is a multi-A-side album. All songs have been featured in the past via radio, TV, and of course CDs (maxi-singles). All Japanese Compact Discs display the date of release on the back side of the jewel case printed on the paper insert, starting with the year, then the month and followed by the day. See http://avexnet.jp/item/hamas/disc/single.html for releases in a reverse chronological listing.

Many Japanese musicians release there singles as two different physical versions in either an 8 cm (3”) or 12 (5”) cm format, where the content is almost identical, except for 1 song out of 4 or where the 8 cm version features only 2 songs.

Maxi singles Germany: Michael Jackson brought to market two versions of “Earth Song” on maxi-singles. Both offered multiple tracks with a slight change in selection of remixes. Unfortunately, I cannot find any reference on the Web of the old prints that are useful to Wikipedia.

Sources: http://avexnet.jp/item/hamas/disc/single.html, http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/, http://www.yesasia.com.