Anyone who pays any kind of attention to the music charts in Japan knows that for many years now they¡¯ve been a joke.
Year-end charts are increasingly clogged up with mass idol collectives, sales buoyed by multiple purchases from ¡±otaku¡± (obsessive fans), encouraged by marketing gimmicks that tap into the most primal consumer instincts of the fanboy¡¯s reptilian brain.
One gimmick that has caused controversy recently is the use of music cards with a download code for a particular release, usually made available at a much lower price than CDs, and which permit multiple purchases of the same MP3.
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