It has been finally announced that Akanishi Jin's first U.S. solo single will be released on November 8th. The single will be the one that has been rumored to be it for a while, Test Drive, which he worked with U.S. artist Jason Derulo with.
From what else I can get from the photo of the newspaper article this is coming from the single will be released on iTunes (not sure if it's U.S. only or not) and it seems like for his U.S. career he will be going by the name JIN.
It was also announced that on December 7th he will release a mini album in Japan.
Tokyo Graph twitter (English)
Can't say I'm surprised by the name change, it seems to be the big worry when artists come over to try to break in to the U.S. music industry whether or not the U.S. audience will take to a "foreign" sounding name. And it's not a big change either as it's just his first name which is hard to mispronounce in English.
It's also nice to see that he does plan on making sure he gives his Japanese fans something as he works on his American career.
So he won´t release a CD but just on itunes?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I hope that everything goes well for Jin but I think it´s quite hard for a foreigner to become successful in the US. But I´m thinking positive and hope that he´ll be satisfied with his release.
Yay for the minialbum that will be released in Japan XD
ReplyDeleteSomehow I´m much more excited for that.
I hope it will be in Japanese because I don´t like Jin´s English/American style hiphop songs at all >_<
Japanese suits him much more or maybe because I´m just Japan biased XDD
"Eternal" was so beautiful ~~~~
Sorry but I have a feeling that Akanishi will flop in the US.
ReplyDeleteI´m not American and I´m not living in the US but there are so many artists who want to become successful there but the music business is really hard there.
Also I´m not sure of how US Americans will react to a Japanese who is doing RnB and I wonder if Derulo could be any of help.
So many people say that he will flop in the USA. Thennary Nak, you live in the US, don´t you?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think? Would Americans like to buy something from JIN? I imagine you know about the US music much better than me.
But I wish Jin good luck.
@ Jackie
ReplyDeleteIt's really rare for any artist to release a physical CD single in the U.S., it's all digital singles these days.
Well he's said that he would just be happy releasing music in the U.S. no matter how it does so I think he has a pretty good attitude about doing this.
@ Misa
Well information about the mini album has come out and it looks like more like a single for this single that happens to have some of the songs from his solo lives on it too. So you probably have to keep waiting for him to release something else like Eternal.
@ Anonymous
I think it's hard to say at this point and really depends on what kind of promotion he has, but going with the past track record of Asian artists trying to break into the U.S. market it doesn't look all that great for him.
If Americans can enjoy a group like Far East Movement (a group of five Asian-Americans) I think if Jin's music is good/catchy enough he can find the same success. But it'll probably be something that will take time and dedication if it will ever happen.
@ Karina
I do and it's hard to tell what artist will make it big here or not. Even so your question has gotten me to thinking and I've gone ahead and written a post about it.