Ayumi Hamasaki has decided to make the album available to fans on a USB flash drive due to the declining usage of CDs in the music industry. With her tenth original album, “NEXT LEVEL,” marks a new stage in the era of digital music.
This is actually the first USB distribution of a major label in Japan. The USB album will be released in limited quantity on the same day as the regular CD version on the month March 25. The album, “NEXT LEVEL” will be released in a total of 4 different packages, including a CD+DVD combination. The USB edition will include all 13 tracks from the regular CD, 6 music videos, and a lyric booklet.
The USB flash drive itself will have a capacity of 2 GB. The album will take up about 800 MB, while the remaining 1.2 GB of space is free to use. And it will be packaged in a case the same size as a normal CD case, making it easy to display in stores. Oricon will apparently include the USB drive version in its sales tracking. Now that’s the next level of music.
