Soundscan Japan has released its rankings for the year 2014. This is for the period covered December 30, 2013 – December 28, 2014. Included in the charts below are the top Artist Total Sales, Japanese albums, Western albums, singles and the ranking of Record Label market shares.

Check out Soundscan’s 2014 charts below.

As also previously noted, Soundscan numbers are calculated based on POS-sources (point of sales) and ranks sales for each version individually for CDs (both Singles & Albums). Soundscan also doesn’t include label-owned and agency owned stores. Soundscan number may or may not be higher than Oricon numbers.

And as has been also indicated, these rankings are also a reflection of what people in Japan who use conventional purchase methods (i.e. music/convenience stores and unaffiliated online retailers) are buying.

Arashi topped the Artist total Sales ranking for the second year in the row. In comparison, their total sales last year is at 5,166 million yen.

For the charts below, Soundscan tallies the units sold for each version. Arashi and the Frozen soundtrack topped the Japanese and western album charts respectively, with THE DIGITALIAN selling 604,718 copies and Frozen OST selling 837,102 copies of their Limited Editions.

The singles chart for each version is also topped by Arashi with GUTS! single. For comparison, last year’s top single was Arashi’s Endless Game (CD + DVD Limited Edition) which sold 388,811 copies followed by Calling/ Breathless (CD + DVD Limited Edition B) which sold 337,949 copies.

Below chart combines the different editions sold. Frozen OST topped the album charts selling over 1 million copies and AKB48 topped the singles charts with Labrador Retriever. This is the updated numbers of the previously released Nikkei Entertainment charts, since the covered period extends until end of December 2014.

Sony Music Entertainment ranked first among the record labels in terms of total sales, followed closely by Universal Music, and with Avex Group completing the top three.

(via Phileweb, Musicman-net, Soundscan 2013)