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Letters (Hikaru Utada Song)
"Letters" is a song by Japanese American musician Hikaru Utada. It was released as a double A-side single with the song " Sakura Drops" on May 9, 2002. Background and development Since she debuted as a musician in 1998, Utada had worked as the primary or sole songwriter for her music. Beginning with her second album ''Distance'' (2001), Utada began to co-arrange songs, such as " Wait & See (Risk)", "Distance" and "Kettobase!" The bonus track on ''Distance'', "Hayatochi-Remix", was arranged entirely by Utada. In March 2002, Hikaru Utada released " Hikari", the theme song for the game '' Kingdom Hearts''. "Letters" was written and arranged solely by Utada. It featured six different guitarists all performing the acoustic guitar in the backing, including Char, Hisashi from Glay and her own father Teruzane Utada. Promotion and release The song was used in commercials for NTT DoCoMo's 2002 range of FOMA cellphones. This was the third song of Utada's to be used in collaboration wi ...
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Hikaru Utada
, also known mononymously as Utada, is a Japanese and American singer, songwriter, and producer. She is considered to be one of the most influential and best-selling musical artists in Japan. She is best known by international audiences for writing and producing four theme-song contributions to Square Enix and Disney Interactive Studios, Disney's collaborative video game series ''Kingdom Hearts'': "Hikari (Hikaru Utada song), Simple and Clean", "Passion (Hikaru Utada song), Sanctuary", "Chikai (Hikaru Utada song), Don't Think Twice", and "Face My Fears". Utada was born in New York City to Japanese parents, record producer Teruzane Utada and singer Keiko Fuji. She began to write music and lyrics at an early age and often traveled to Tokyo as a result of her father's job. After signing to EMI Music Japan, Toshiba-EMI, she released her English-language debut album ''Precious (Cubic U album), Precious'' under the name Cubic U in 1998, which was a commercial failure. In the follow ...
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Final Distance
"Final Distance" is a song by Japanese recording artist Hikaru Utada for her third studio album '' Deep River'' (2002). Written by Utada herself, the song was produced and composed by long-time collaborators Akira Miyake, Utada's father Teruzane Utada and herself. "Final Distance" was originally recorded as "Distance" which was taken from the album with the same name, despite not being a single. The song was re-recorded, re-arranged, and dedicated to Rena Yamashita, a six-year-old victim of the Ikeda school massacre who had written an essay about being inspired by Utada. Utada had stated that the meaning of the word "final" for the song "Final Distance" is "most important" rather than "last." Musically, "Final Distance" incorporates more instrumentation than the previous version, including violins, an acoustic piano and synthesizers. The song strips the original pop music from "Distance" and is a pop ballad song. Despite being written in 2000 from the original version, Utada refle ...
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Music Download
A music download is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyrighted material without permission or legal payment. Music downloads are typically encoded with modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) audio data compression, particularly the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format used by iTunes as well as the MP3 audio coding format. According to a Nielsen report, downloadable music accounted for 55.9 percent of all music sales in the US in 2012."All music sales" refers to albums plus track equivalent albums. A track equivalent album equates to 10 tracks. By the beginning of 2011, Apple's iTunes Store alone made 1.1 billion of revenue in the first quarter of its fiscal year. According to the RIAA, music downloads peaked at 43% of industry revenue in the US in 2012, and has ...
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Gold Typhoon
Gold Typhoon Group is a Chinese entertainment company founded in Hong Kong as Gold Label in 2004 with the support of EMI. It acquired EMI Music Taiwan / EMI Music China (Typhoon Records) in 2008 to adopt its current name. On 1 January 2011, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Pacific Global Management Asia (PGMA) under the leadership of Chairman Louis Pong. The company was acquired by Warner Music Group in April 2014. Gold Typhoon represents many Chinese and international artists, and has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong. In 2004, former Go East Entertainment CEO Paco Wong decided to not work with the parent company of Go East, Universal Group Hong Kong, but to instead work for EMI Hong Kong as they promised to launch a new label. Paco Wong was to have total control of the new label which became Gold Label Entertainment. History In 2004, former Go East Entertainment CEO Paco Wong decided to not work with the parent company of Go East, Un ...
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Toshiba EMI
, formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. When EMI Music Japan was trading as Toshiba-EMI, it was involved with the production of anime. On April 1, 2013, the company became defunct, following its absorption into Universal Music Japan as a sublabel under the name EMI Records Japan. History The company was founded on October 1, 1960, as . From 1962, it licensed Columbia (UK) titles for release in Japan. After an injection of capital by Capitol EMI, EMI acquired 50% of the company in October 1973, and the name was changed to Toshiba EMI Limited. On October 3, 1994, the equity ratio of the company was changed, in which EMI obtained 55% with Toshiba owning the remaining 45%. On June 30, 2007, Toshiba Corporation sold the remaining 45% stake in the company to EMI, giving EMI full ownership ...
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CD Single
A CD single is a single (music), music single in the form of a compact disc (CD). Originally the ''CD single'' standard (as defined in the Rainbow Books, Red Book) was an 8 cm (3-inch) "mini CD" (''CD3''); later on the term referred to any single recorded onto a CD of any size, particularly the 12 cm (5-inch) "full-size" disc (''CD5''). From a technical viewpoint, a CD single is identical to any other Compact Disc Digital Audio, audio CD. The format started gaining popularity in the early 1990s, but quickly declined in the early and mid 2000s, in favor of Digital download (music), digital downloaded singles and CD Album, albums. Commercially released CD singles can vary in length from two songs (an A-side and B-side, A side and B side, in the tradition of 7-inch 45-rpm 7 inch record, records) up to six songs like an Extended play, EP, which would be marketed as a maxi single in some regions. Some contain multiple mixes of one or more songs (known as remixes), in the tradition ...
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Recording Industry Association Of Japan
The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Association, and adopted its current name in 1969. The RIAJ's activities include promotion of music sales, enforcement of copyright law, and research related to the Japanese music industry. It publishes the annual ''RIAJ Year Book'', a statistical summary of each year's music sales, as well as distributing a variety of other data. Headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, the RIAJ has twenty member companies and a smaller number of associate and supporting members; some member companies are the Japanese branches of multinational corporations headquartered elsewhere. The association is responsible for certifying gold and platinum albums and singles in Japan. RIAJ Certification In 1989, the Recording Industry Association of Japan introduced the music recording certification systems. It is awarded based on shipment figures of comp ...
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Chūō, Tokyo
is a special ward in the Tokyo Metropolis in Japan. The ward refers to itself in English as Chūō City. It was formed in 1947 as a merger of Kyōbashi and Nihonbashi wards following Tokyo City's transformation into Tokyo Metropolis. Chūō-ku, as a combination of Kyōbashi and Nihonbashi, is the core of Shitamachi, the original downtown center of Edo-Tokyo. Literally meaning "Central Ward", it is historically the main commercial center of Tokyo, although Shinjuku has risen to challenge it since the end of World War II. The most famous district in Chūō is Ginza, built on the site of a former silver mint from which it takes its name. The gold mint, or , formerly occupied the site of the present-day Bank of Japan headquarters building, also in Chūō. As of October 1, 2020, the ward has a resident population of 169,179, and a population density of 16,569 persons per km2. The total area is 10.21 km2. However, because of the concentration of businesses, offices ...
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Oricon
, established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ... and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc. was originally set up as a subsidiary of Original Confidence and took over the latter's Oricon record charts in April 2002. The charts are compiled from data drawn from some 39,700 retail outlets () and provide sales rankings of music CDs, DVDs, electronic games, and other entertainment products based on weekly tabulations. Results are announced every Tuesday and published in ''Oricon Style'' by subsidiary Oricon ...
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Ringo Sheena
, known by her stage name , is a Japanese singer, songwriter and musician. She is also the founder and lead vocalist of the band Tokyo Jihen. She describes herself as "". She was ranked number 36 in a list of Japan's top 100 musicians compiled by HMV in 2003. Career Initial solo career Sheena released her first official single " Kōfukuron" in May 1998, when she was 19 years old. She subsequently made singles " Kabukichō no Joō" and " Koko de Kiss Shite", the latter becoming her first hit. This was followed by the release of her first album, '' Muzai Moratorium'', in February 1999. The album was a major hit. " Gips" was due to be the next single, but when Sheena had to cancel recording due to illness, " Honnō" was released as the fourth single instead. Sheena chose a hospital as the setting for the music video for "Honnō". The fifth and sixth singles, "Gips" and " Tsumi to Batsu", were released at the same time to prevent overlap with the release of her second album, ...
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Wild Life (concert)
''Wild Life'' was Japanese-American singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada's final concert tour before her scheduled hiatus from 2011. Utada performed only two dates at the Yokohama Arena, Japan on December 8 and 9, 2010. Tickets Tickets were initially going to be distributed through purchases of the limited first-press issues of the album supporting the tour, Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 2, with people being told to visit a website to enter the draw, but this idea was later scrapped. Instead, the codes received in the album are now for a website in which people can view the show on demand, watch a special movie (which later turned out to be a "Making of" featurette about the making of the ''Goodbye Happiness'' music video), view pictures from the concerts, as well as sign up for a special gift of the week. The site went live on January 13, 2011. Concert Tickets to the show were sold in a "lottery"-style fashion, similar to that of previous Hikaru Utada concerts (not counting ''U ...
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Utada United 2006
Utada United 2006 was a Japanese concert tour by Japanese-American singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada. It was Utada's second concert tour of Japan following her Bohemian Summer 2000 tour. A live DVD of the tour was released on December 20, 2006. Overview During the filmed concert, Utada wore 4 different outfits. The first outfit worn was a long, tattered, black and white outfit(which seemingly resembled a wedding dress), with pieces of cloth that hung a little above her ankles. Near the shoulders, this dress seemed to puff out, or become feather-like. She sang her first 7 songs in this outfit. Then she wore a leather-like coat, that resembled a ballroom gown from the waist down. She sang her Exodus songs in this dress. When looked at closely, you can see that underneath it was the next outfit, which was a red dress. It had strips near the shoulders, and allowed her to move more, A feature which was helpful in performances like Can You Keep a Secret? and Wait & See ~Risk~. She sa ...
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