Steve McClure has lived in Tokyo since 1985. Formerly Billboard magazine’s Asia Bureau Chief, he now publishes the online music-industry newsletter McClureMusic.com.
For Steve McClure's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Play it safe. Follow the rules. Respect authority. And, above all, don't stick out like that silly proverbial nail. That's Japan's recipe for social harmony. Student, salaryman, office lady, homemaker — everyone has a role to play in society, so just fit into the mold ...
Fifty years ago this week, the Fab Four played some of their final live performances in Tokyo. We speak to fans who were ‘swept off their feet’ by the visit.
What comes to mind when you think of Osaka? Maybe takoyaki (octopus dumplings), the Hanshin Tigers, Universal Studios Japan, wacky comedy and down-to-earth, unpretentious people. Osaka wants to add jazz to that list. The city has scored a coup by being chosen by UNESCO to ...
This was supposed to be the year that changed the Japanese music business. Back in March I wrote that major international streaming services Spotify and Rdio would likely launch in Japan "sometime in the next few months." That, I confidently predicted, would be a sign ...
If Harvey Thompson had been a better 10-pin bowler, jazz would have been the loser. "I never knew I'd be a jazz singer," says Thompson, whose smooth and smoky jazz vocals have won him a core of dedicated fans in his adopted country of Japan. ...
With international repertoire's share of the music market down to about 15 percent, it has never been harder to break foreign acts in Japan. And given the shrinking market for non-Japanese music, it seems quixotic to set up a company specializing in bringing foreign ...
It has been a year since Japan introduced penalties for downloading pirated music and video files. So far no one has been arrested — let alone punished with the maximum two years in prison and/or fine of up to ¥2 million that the revision to ...
A few weeks ago I was preparing to do a guest slot on InterFM’s “The Selector” program, which features music mavens sharing their favorite tracks. While I had a few tunes from the not-so-recent past in mind, I needed some newer stuff to round out ...
Are summer festivals killing Japan's live-music market? Weird question, right? Hundreds of thousands of people shell out gobs of yen every summer to see an amazing array of domestic and international acts rock out at festivals up and down the Japanese archipelago. (Organizers say last ...
I've been to a lot of music-industry conferences over the years, and for the past decade I've listened to the same old song: How can the recording industry fight online piracy, which it blames for plunging music sales? So at this year's Music Matters (MM) ...
