Japan Is About to Become the Largest Music Market In the World...

[Ceewan]

Monday, June 17, 2013
by Paul Resnikoff

Last year, Japan startled the industry by almost beating the US in total recording sales. Now, it appears that Japan may grab the crown as the biggest music market in 2013, with healthy physical sales a big part of the reason.

Here's what the year-end, 2012 tally looked like, according to industry trade group IFPI

Combined, the US and Japan accounted for more than half the entire global recording industry total in 2012, though the US was only 1.3 percent larger than Japan. And while the US was struggling and losing money, Japan was one of the few markets that actually gained ground last year (by 4 percent).

That may represent a very humble beginning for the Japanese market. According to stats just released by Japanese trade group RIAJ, first-quarter digital sales ballooned 70 percent over 2012. During the same period in the US, however, album sales drop 4.9 percent, while singles slipped 1.3 percent according to Nielsen Soundscan.

Here's the digital resurgence currently happening in Japan.

But the far bigger story is happening on the physical side, with some potentially massive lessons for the broader industry to ponder. Last year, CDs and physical formats suddenly started ticking upward in Japan, thanks partly to a reinvestment in physical packaging and sales by J-Pop, K-Pop, and other genres.

Now, it appears this re-emphasis could be going into overdrive. According to the RIAJ stats, CD sales nearly doubled year-over-year during the first quarter, with CD-based revenues rising 92 percent. That means a lot more industry revenue, simply because pound-for-pound, physical pays more and supports far greater product bundling.

source:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130616japan

 

[Robot_X]

Awesome :tea:

 

[testament101]

I can't help but think these numbers are at least partially attributed to a certain idol group and the way that they're marketed.

 

[elgringo14]

As a coincidence, Japan is the developed country with the strongest laws against online piracy... :exhausted:

 

[Ceewan]

As a coincidence, Japan is the developed country with the strongest laws against online piracy... :exhausted:

That is an assumption I presume. Back that up.

There is a lot of P2P activity from Japan on my utorrent that says sharing is still pretty active there and plenty of articles on torrentfreak that says piracy increases legit sales rather than decreases them. Try the music torrent section here (or any torrent section here) and see how many Japanese IPs show up. As far as having the strongest laws I do not know if Japan surpasses China and all others or not. The enforcement of such laws in Japan are fairly weak although not non-existent.

 

[Xcaliber9999]

Good for Japan

I also remember how some crazy fans always buy hundreds and thousands copies of AKB48 each just to shake hands with their idols ... (as for those thousands CDs let's just say they find their home in garbage) what a waste of money and resources.

 

[Summer-Time-Fun]

As a coincidence, Japan is the developed country with the strongest laws against online piracy... :exhausted:

Well, I don't know if that's true or not, but if true, The UK and the US is not far behind them. I'm thinking like, the UK is in the buggy with the driver.


It's good to see the physical CD sales going up though. I hope that trend continues.

I can't stand MP3s. It's bad enough digital lacks the dynamic range of analog's continuous waveform architecture, but to make things worse Mp3s are converted a second time as loss-less.
At least with physical commercial CDs you're almost always getting a loss-less version of the record. Though, any loss-less digital download is a great option to have at the end of the day, but not everyone provides that option. This trend has to be because of the Idols. A new physical Idol CD in the mail sounds exciting,

... and the cover art is usually always great! :grassdance:

 

[bjharm]

It way too general but AKB48 and its host of sisterbands did have a big imput on the recovery of Japanese music, there was always plenty of talent just no money! but when AKB48 started up back in 2005 the increase in $ gain in the industry has been in direct proportion of the increase in popularity of AKB48 over the years. Love or hate AKB48 or deride them as just a 'idol' girl band as you like but the simple truth is they are a money making machine and this has had a flow on effect over the whole of the Japanese music industry.

 

[cattz]

The real question is how much of this is die hard AKB otaku buying the CD's at full price so they can get their vote cards, only to toss out the CD's/sell them for the equivalent of 5-10 cents..

 

[camlost245]

There was a related article in the Japan Times last week.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture...music-no-longer-dominates-world/#.UcPeAvnBOSo

British, U.S. music no longer dominates world
...far from pop music shrinking the globe, there is evidence that many countries’ indigenous bands and singers are now thriving thanks to new technology.

My take on it is that the ability to create generic pop music has spread to the point that countries don't need to import crappy pop songs in foreign languages. There are lots of really good musicians and bands that major record labels haven't been taking chances on because the business side of the music industry doesn't like risk.

I hope once generic pop music loses its world-wide market value the U.S. and other industry giants can return to making good music (or I guess I should say "music that I like").

 

[Freedom Kira]

My hypothesis is that people are starting to get fed up with shitty American music that has been coming out for the past few years and have turned to overseas sources for music. There's nothing denying the possibility that the increase in sales in Japan may have been largely accelerated from exports. It certainly helps that idol groups like AKB48 have unintentionally gained momentum and a relatively strong following in the West.

Maybe one day we'll be hearing a large amount of Japanese music on our radios, when radio stations start getting equally fed up. Gangnam Style gained enough momentum to be played back a few times, so I don't see why not.

 

[Summer-Time-Fun]

My hypothesis is that people are starting to get fed up with shitty American music that has been coming out for the past few years and have turned to overseas sources for music. There's nothing denying the possibility that the increase in sales in Japan may have been largely accelerated from exports. It certainly helps that idol groups like AKB48 have unintentionally gained momentum and a relatively strong following in the West.

Maybe one day we'll be hearing a large amount of Japanese music on our radios, when radio stations start getting equally fed up. Gangnam Style gained enough momentum to be played back a few times, so I don't see why not.

I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of music Freedom Kira.
For example, Europe has produced some of the best music over the years.. much better then the US (with the exception of Country or Jazz). So why is Europe not in the lead over Japan? You can't tell me Japan makes better music then what comes out of Europe, though they have some amazing New Age music and some great pop bands. I think the radio stations are to blame to a large extent for promoting the worse selections. There are so many great unknowns out there, listen to some of the music on Spotify. As far as I'm concerned almost everything after the 70s, 80s and early 90s sucks. You don't hear bands like Floyd, Genesis, Zeppelin, Yes, Tears for Fears, The Police, The outfield, Peter Gabriel, Ozzy Jake E Lee days, Queensryche, ..ect. Most of the stuff on the radio today is commercial crap. People stealing samples because they can't write their own music.
I think Japan's DVD success is more related their Idol industry. Cuteness sells. If the United States sold DVDs of young cuties legally it would be a game changer overnight. But if we're talking quality of music here, Europe should be in the lead IMO.

 

[Ch4rd]

You guys attributing it to AKB probably should actually go look at the oricon charts. Idol music is not particularly dominating in the grand scheme of things in the Japanese music scene. http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/ja/d/2013-07-04/

The real difference is just that Japan has a market that responds well to the "old" type of music market; that is the purchasing of physical albums. The US has moved to online models where sales for full albums/singles are not as high, but rather individual tracks sell more. In addition a largely disenfranchised market results in lower sales. Attributing it to foreign sales is just naive, we're barely a drop in the bucket.

As far as I'm concerned almost everything after the 70s, 80s and early 90s sucks. You don't hear bands like Floyd, Genesis, Zeppelin, Yes, Tears for Fears, The Police, The outfield, Peter Gabriel, Ozzy Jake E Lee days, Queensryche, ..ect.

I don't think its particularly that music these days "sucks", but I highly doubt you will ever see bands as big as the Beatles, or any of the groups you mentioned again, simply because there is just so much choice out there in what you can listen to. The internet has opened up lots of options for discovering music, you are not just limited to word of mouth and the radio. I'm not even talking about Japanese music in our cases, but even just in the North American market, you have the vast amounts of electronic music even outside the somewhat popular electrohouse scene, or indie rock, or indie hip hop. Add to it that you have a whole ton of streaming services like spotify or last.fm, and I think you can see why us sales are much lower than before. There's just a huge shift in the way people are listening to music.

 

[bjharm]

"You guys attributing it to AKB probably should actually go look at the oricon charts. Idol music is not particularly dominating in the grand scheme of things in the Japanese music scene."
While the AKB48 and sister bands have slipped since their centre and face Atsuko Maeda graduated they still revived the Japanese record industy by the sheer numbers of records their fans buy over the YEARS. I think they sold more than any other girl band and perhaps boy band as well.They hardly the best the Japanese music scene have to offer but you can not take away that more people in Japan buy physical records now because of AKB48 than they did eight years ago. I think if you check who top on the karaoke rooms you find that indeed AKB48 and sister bands dominate along with of course the K-POP bands.

 

[cattz]

I think if you check who top on the karaoke rooms you find that indeed AKB48 and sister bands dominate along with of course the K-POP bands.

It's mostly vocaloid stuff as far as Karaoke tbh....

:tea:

 

[dwnldingDaikaiju]

AKB48: It's not just handshake tickets. They release singles in type A, type B, and type K, limited and normal, along with theater edition.

Fortunately, for now at least, I only buy the three limited.

 

[dwnldingDaikaiju]

You guys attributing it to AKB probably should actually go look at the oricon charts. Idol music is not particularly dominating in the grand scheme of things in the Japanese music scene. http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/ja/d/2013-07-04/


AKB48's single came out 5 weeks ago, so that's a little unfair.


Here is something better:
http://jmanmoonwalkdotcom.wordpress...otal-sales-revenue-ranking-for-the-year-2012/

"For the second year in a row AKB48 Tops, Oricon ‘Artist Total Sales Revenue’. This includes only CD (Singles and Albums), DVD and Blu-ray sales for the year 2012.

1. AKB48 – 19,098,000,000 Yen (approx. US $ – 226,441,166).

2. Exile – 12,177,000,000 Yen (approx. US $ - 144,380,253).

3. Arashi – 10,454,000,000 Yen (approx. US $ – 123,950,987).

4. Mr. Children – 9,947,000,000 Yen (approx. US $ – 117,939,589).

5. Kanjani8 – 4,916,000,000 Yen (approx. US $ - 58,288,028)

6. Kis-MY-Ft2 – 4,417,000,000 Yen.

7. Girls’ Generation – 4,332,000,000 Yen.

8. SMAP – 3,521,000,000 Yen.

9. KARA – 3,417,000,000 Yen.

10. Namie Amuro – 3,210,000,000 Yen."

 

[bjharm]

Even as far back as 2011 Akb48 had brought in US$200 million in Japan on record sales alone. In 2011 and 2012 AKB48's singles occupied the top five spots of the Oricon Yearly Singles Chart and by 2012 Oricon announced that AKB48 had sold 11,787,000 units of its CD singles becoming the highest selling female band in japanese history. May this year AKB48 released its 31st single selling 1.9 million in little over a month, though it was the election single ie the one the fan buy so they can vote for their fav girl, still it carmed many worries of loss of sales since the Acchan left AKB48 last year, though perhaps prematurely.