After the 14 years and 4 months since singer Hamasaki Ayumi�s (33) debut in April of 1998, she has established a new record.� The August 20th�Oricon Weekly Album Ranking (for August 6th through August 12th) shows the tally of sales from her 110 releases (65 singles and 45 albums) as 50,023,000 copies sold. This is the first time that the total sales of singles and albums have broken the 50 million mark �for a solo artist.

Since the Oricon ranking charts were established in January 1968, the only other artists to break the 50 million mark are B�z (July 13, 1998) and Mr.Children (March 26, 2007). �Hamasaki has thus become the third artist to have achieved this feat, in addition to being the first soloist to do so. The second-ranked solo artist below Hamasaki is Matsutoya Yumi, who has has a total of 38,390,000 sales, while for male solo artists, Fukuyama Masaharu ranks first with 21,633,000 in total copies sold.

In addition, Hamasaki also has other various titles under her belt as a solo singer such as �Most Consecutive First Place Wins� (25�singles), �Highest Total Number of First Place Wins� (37�singles), �Most Consecutive First Place Wins (Year)� (for 12 years), �The Number of Singles That Have Reached Million Sales� (5 singles), �Consecutive Million in Sales (Year)� (for 4 years), �Highest Number of Total Copies Sold� (for 21,416,000 copies), �Most TOP10 Rankings� (48 singles), and �Most Consecutive First Place Wins Since the 1st Album (Year)� (for 13 years) for albums.

Hamasaki spoke happily about her new record, commenting, �When I debuted, I did not think I would be able to reach this far, but I'm really glad to have established a great record like this while gaining the support of many people.�� She continued, �This is not Hamasaki Ayumi�s record � I believe it is my fans� record who have cheered me on and have been continuously supporting me.� From here on out, I will continue to deliver more songs, so please support me.�

Source and Image: Oricon via Yahoo Japan