Some of the best tickets for Madonna’s shows here in September will be sold on an online auction, Ticket Pia announced yesterday. The Queen of Pop will be playing in Japan for the first time in 13 years with her “Confessions” tour, and has shows set for Osaka Dome (Sept. 16) and Tokyo Dome (Sept. 20). Of the 3,000 Premier seats closest to the stage for each show, 500 will be put up for auction as “platinum tickets” between July 9-18. The face value of the tickets is ¥50,000. Pair tickets for shows in the U.S. have already fetched over $5,000 in auctions, and similar prices can be expected here. The measure is also partly an effort to deal with “dafuya” or yakuza-connected ticket scalpers, always a problem for popular shows.
• The second album from Def Tech has repeated the accomplishment of last year’s eponymous debut. “Catch the Wave”, released on April 26, has managed to stay in the charts and finally broke through the one-million barrier this week. The feat was achieved just over a year since “Def Tech” became just the second indies album to sell a million copies (the first was Mongol800’s “Message” in 2002). “Catch the Wave” is the second album this year to go quadruple-platinum, after Koda Kumi’s hits collection “Best – Second Session”. In Japan, the threshold for platinum status is 250,000 copies, compared to 1 million for the U.S.
• Rock group B’z have extended their own record with their 42th single, “Splash”. Needless to say it entered the Oricon charts at No.1, the 38th time in a row they’ve done it. The record stretches back to their 5th release, “Taiyo no Komachi Angel” in June 1990. Their 4th single, “Be There” released in May 1990, made the Top 10. So their string of consecutive Top 10 hits is now at 39, putting them in a tie for first place with SMAP.