Oricon's year-end sales rankings for 2009 are out, and the results confirm that Arashi is the top selling artist of the year. They had the #1 single, the #1 album, the #1 music DVD, and were #1 for the first time in artist total sales.
In the 42 years of Oricon's history, no one else has topped all four categories in the same year.
Counting sales of singles, albums, music DVDs, and music Blu-ray Discs, Arashi grossed a total of more than 14.46 billion yen. At #2 this year was EXILE, who topped the list in 2008 with 19.58 billion yen in total sales.
In single sales, Arashi had the #1, #2, #3, and #5 releases, with "Believe / Kumori Nochi, Kaisei" in front at nearly 657,000 units sold. The only other artists to occupy the top three spots were Pink Lady in 1978 and Hikaru Genji in 1988.
Arashi are the first to have four of the top five, as well as the first to hold the top two spots in back-to-back years.
Their "All the BEST! 1999-2009" album sold over 1.43 million copies. In DVD sales, they were #1 and #2 with "5x10 All the BEST! CLIPS 1999-2009" (591,000) and "ARASHI AROUND ASIA 2008 in TOKYO" (428,000). More complete ranking lists are available on the Oricon website.
