Music industry makes united declaration against ticket scalping
Tenbai No, a group that is against ticket resales, took out full-page ads in this morning's Asahi and Yomiuri newspapers. The black-and-white ads featured the words "Hantai shimasu" ("to be opposed to") in large type and a statement that read: "We are against the high-priced ...
Jazz trumpeter Toshinori Kondo issues a challenge to modern-day musicians
On a chilly Friday afternoon in December, trumpet player Toshinori Kondo reclines in the clutter of his Kawasaki recording studio, pours out two cups of shōchū liquor, and starts to explain what prompted him to abandon a lucrative career in Japan and move to ...
AKB48 may be the pop the economy needs: ex-chief cabinet secretary Edano
In Yukio Edano's essay “Popular Songs Change with the Times; Yasushi Akimoto, the AKB strategy and the Japanese Economy,” the Democratic Party of Japan Lower House member of Japan argued that AKB48’s business strategy “could be effective for the economy in general.”
Record Store Day finds its groove in Japan
It won't be business as usual at Big Love Records this Saturday, April 19. The store, one of the best places to shop for records in Tokyo's trendy Harajuku neighborhood, will be selling limited-edition music from various artists, including film director David Lynch. Meanwhile, ...
Babymetal aren't the latest chapter in the 'wacky Japan' story
The British are mad, aren't they? That Kate Bush with her crazy gyrating around a cello in the video for "Babushka," that daft loon Robbie Williams with his funky skeleton costume, those kerrr-azy Tellytubbies with their wacky dance routines — what is it about ...
Spotify, Rdio and what didn't happen in 2013
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 ...
One Direction takes the J-pop path to success
By the group's standards, it was a low-key finale. When One Direction completed its eight-month Take Me Home Tour at the second of two Makuhari Messe shows last Sunday in Chiba, it was in front of a relatively compact audience of 12,000 Japanese fans, ...
Hostess exists rather happily on the edge
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 ...
Girl-group fans help push Japan music sales past U.S.
Ritsuhiko Tajima has about 100 CDs by his favorite band, girl group AKB48, many of them copies of the same disc. The attraction? The CDs often include tickets to events where he can briefly meet his idols. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of them," the ...
Japan's festival industry is stuck in a fine kettle of fish
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 ...
Been down so long, it looks like up
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) ...
Japanese acts play music ambassadors at Canadian Music Week
After rock group Jake Stone Garage hit the final chord of one of their powerful guitar-heavy songs, the crowd let out a few hoots and applauded politely. For a Western band this may have seemed a bit unreceptive, but luckily Jake Stone Garage are from ...
