19 January 2012

The Possibilities of the Future for Never Ending Music Power.

So there has been a snow storm coming through the are of the U.S. that I live and as it is not an area used to getting much snow I am stuck having to stay home as the roads just are not safe for me to drive on yet. This of course has given me time to think about the future of this blog.

In 2007 when I began blogging about Johnny's never would I have imagined that I would ever be so active about it and cover so much of it. I mainly just bumbled along trying to find things to blog about to keep posting on a semi-regular schedule so I would not abandon this blog. One thing I decided to do to meet that goal was to start reporting about news about any of the Johnny's groups and such, which did indeed help. But since then there has been the emergence of NYC and the debut of Kis-My-Ft2, Sexy Zone and soon to be A.B.C-Z as well as Akanishi Jin and Yamashita Tomohisa leaving their groups to go solo, while all the other groups are still going strong with little sign of stopping. So there is a lot of cover and as I mentioned in my previous post I no longer have the time to really keep up with it all.

Even though I hate to do it, I just cannot see myself being able to keep up with all of Johnny's anymore. I am sure some readers have noticed the lack of posts about new releases for some groups recently which is pretty much of this issue of time. So I have decided to just blog about the groups I do follow the most. The main groups (sub-units included) will be NEWS, Hey! Say! JUMP, Kis-My-Ft2, NYC, TOKIO and the Juniors. I am still on the fence about Sexy Zone, it will really depend on future releases from them and I am interested in how Akanishi Jin does in the U.S. so I will follow that part of his solo career. From time to time I will probably still blog about some other groups like, Kanjani8, SMAP, A.B.C-Z and possibly KAT-TUN. The rest of the groups I won't follow so much anymore, if I run across a news item of interest I will probably blog about it but nothing outside of that.

I feel bad that I will not be following Johnny's as I did before but there is just so much to follow these days, especially as new groups are being added to the growing list of debuted groups while none of the older groups are disbanding or showing any plans to disband. And then there is always the fact that new Juniors are always being added and there is always the chance that Johnny's will debut a new group at whatever time they feel they should. So I guess in a way it can be seen as a burden of success.

And as this change to the blog has been thought about it I could not help but wonder if I should not make some more changes as well. And the change I was mostly thinking of is to make this blog for all the idols/idol groups that I follow. There really is not much outside of Johnny's that I follow, mainly NMB48, with some DiVA (mostly Akimoto Sayaka), ZONE, Buono! and of course the Yamashita brothers (and ex-Johnny's) Shoon (Sean) and Reon (Leon). There may be a smattering of other idols, like the small handful of K-pop groups I like, but I do not really follow them outside of music releases so they probably will not get mentioned much at all.

Of course before I go ahead with trying a change like that I would like to hear some feedback about what readers would thing first. I know I have my other blog where I have been making posts about some of those groups already but I feel I would prefer to have all the idol stuff on one blog instead of divided between two so I can have the other blog for non-idol things. But you can either leave a comment on this post about your thoughts about it or I will have a poll up that you can vote on to give me an idea of what people think about this.

I would like to blog about Yamashita Shoon and Reon on this blog as they have the Johnny's connection so I would assume that there would still be some fans that might be interested in what was going on with their post-Johnny's careers. And the reason I even got into NMB48 was because Nakayama Yuma's older sister, going by the stage name Yamada Nana, is a member of the group. And the rest I came to like from just going out and trying something new and I would love to share these groups that I like with others.

In any case this blog will remain mostly about Johnny's as they are the ones I follow the most actively. Though as I mentioned it will probably be less general because I do not have the time I used to for keeping up with all of Johnny's as there is just so much to try to track, especially with all the other interests I have.

6 comments:

Chris said...

First please take care of yourself there in the US !

I can understand your feeling. Being able to follow ALL Johnny´s is not easy and takes lots of time, also there are lots of changes and debuts going on so it´s hard to follow everything.
As for me, I don´t follow all Johnny´s activities because I have a life outside Johnny´s and internet too and if I would be big fan of everyone, I would sit infront of my PC the whole day.
Most important are for me HSJ/NYC, Sexy Zone, and Kismy, so I´m glad that you decided to keep on blogging about them.
To be honest, I absolutely wouldn´t mind if wou would stop posting about Arashi, K8, SMAP for example because I noticed that not many people comment on those posts about those groups,including me. It´s just that I´m not interested in them.
I have the feeling that most people comment on HSJ or Kisumai posts or about Juniors.

I respect your wish to make a blog about all idols in one but to tell the truth, I think most readers here are not fans of female groups and just enjoy reading your blog because it´s about Johnny´s only.
On the other hand, there might be some who would be happy if you post about different idols.
Personally, I would prefer if it would stay a Johnnys-only-blog but even if you would change it and make it into a all-idols-blog, I still would continue to read and comment on your blog.
If you want a change, then I´ll respect it.

Ani2 said...

Hm, I imagine having several blogs is troublesome, isn´t it? Having just one blog would be fine for you indeed.
But I´m not sure if all readers agree with that and I mean the readers of your female idol blog and this J-blog. Like let´s say there are J-fans who don´t like AKB groups, I could imagine that some might going to visit your blog more rarely as before. Looking at the poll, the majority wants your blog to continue with Johnny´s only, but in the end it´s your decision and I agree with Chris, I won´t stop visiting your blog just because you would post about other groups as well.
But personally, I also voted for continuing posting about Johnnys only.

Don´t worry about keeping up with all Johnnys or not, I think nobody here expects you to follow all activites of all johnnys. It would be the best if you would just concentrate on specific groups who you´re interested the most in (like the one you mentioned) and the Juniors because it seems that many here have the same preference in groups as you (including me).

So that was my opinion. Please do what you think would be the best for you.
I hope some others will comment on this issue too, because I´d like to hear other people´s opinions on it.

AimxAim said...

I understand what you mean about only blogging about the groups that you care about the most. I do the same exact thing on my blog. Though I guess I am crazy as I cover about 15-20 different idol groups. XD But it is very time consuming. And I tend to get behind on a lot of things going on very quickly. XD

I choose for you to make this a general idol blog. Since I am a fan of both male and female idol, I even like quite a bit of Kpop, I would love the changes. Early on in my blog I made the same type of decision as you. My blog used to be solely Hello!Project, but as I discovered Johnny's and other idol groups I wanted to blog about them also and decided to make my blog 100% about idol groups. But I never really thought about how my readers would take it. I pretty much did it for myself, and it honestly hasn't hurt my blog in the slightest. It actually increased the number of readers quite a bit. Though my readers are pretty divided. There are the readers who come to read Johnny's solely and those who come to read female idols solely. It's not really a big deal. Readers can simply read the entries that intrest them. As Chris said he does that anyway skipping the Arashi, SMAP, and Kanjani8 posts. Even I do that, skipping posts about Johnny's I'm not really a fan of.

Also, it is super difficult to try and keep track of 2 different blogs. I tried to keep a blog about idols and one about Jrock, but I found that I really only had the time for one of them. XD

Whatever decision you make I'll keep reading your blog as often as ever.

Kess said...

To be honest, if you feel its better for you to narrow the number of groups to cover, then by all means, do it.

But, if possible, I would like some coverage on Shoon. Its been awhile since I've ever anything from him.

That being said, keep up the good work!

Karina said...

If you want to make a general idols blog, then it will be fine for me.
I´m mostly into Johnny´s but I also inform myself about other (girl) idols too so I think posting about different kind of groups could bring "fresh air" into your blog .
I don´t see a problem with having Johnny´s and different idol fans reading your blog.
For example, if there are people who don´t want to read about Johnny´s, then they can skip those posts and wait until you post about NMB etc.
It´s easy like that.
I´m fine with a general blog!

Natalie (DSQ) said...

At first I was sad you wouldn't follow everything, but then I realised thats what I do too on my blog lol!

So it is fine with me :) I really only care about HSJ, KMF and SZ so keep speaking about those guys and I'll keep comming back for more. Although I would probs keep comming back even if you spoke about none of those guys since you blog is so great~