Japan may be the second-biggest music market in the world, but the industry is vastly different as it is still compact discs that account for more than half of their music sales. The country’s largest social network, LINE, will now aim to go where others have not gone before (at least in Japan): digital music streaming services. LINE Music is now available for a monthly subscription, offering unlimited access to millions of songs in their library.
Digital music has been on a surprising decline in the past years, but LINE is brave enough to go into this side of the business because they believe it is still “virtually untapped” and still has a lot of potential for the industry. For a monthly subscription, those in Japan will be able to browse through the catalog of more than 1.5 million songs, but for the first two months, they will be able to access it for free.
While there are a lot of rights issues that have prevented foreign companies from going into the music streaming business in the country, LINE is jointly owned by Avex Digital, Sony Music Entertainment and Line Corp, so they have managed to overcome one hurdle in that aspect. And with Universal Music Group also rumored to be investing in LINE, then that will mean more artists and albums to be added to the catalog. They are aiming to have 5 million songs by the end of the year, including Taylor Swift’s and Sam Smith’s catalog and then 30 million by next year. They’re looking at both domestic and international artists to be featured in the library.
After the first two months free are over, LINE Music will charge a monthly fee of 1,000 yen ($8.13) for unlimited access and half of that for 20 hours of access every month. Now as to whether the Japanese market will take to this music streaming thing is still something left to be seen, given that 80% of their music sales come from physical music, meaning compact discs which offer a lot of bonus content that fans go crazy over.
VIA: Reuters
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1. CD’s are still popular because the corrupt, protectionist government and media companies have stopped any competition. This means that they don’t have to invest in innovation or reducing their prices. Japanese often just rent CD’s from “Tsutaya” (the Japanese equivalent of “Blockbusters”) and copy the songs to their devices).
2. The “bonus” content on most CDs is usually B-Sides to singles already available on foreign artists’ singles. Locally produced versions of most foreign media is actually MORE EXPENSIVE than the import versions. This is also why the Japanese media and software companies have colluded with the government to ban cheaper imports of Japanese media from Korea, China and the USA.
3. The laws governing streaming media are so corrupt and strict, then it was only recently that the (itself politically corrupt) national TV broadcaster, NHK, was allowed to stream it’s own “catch up” video streaming service on its own website. Japanese media companies will often remove music videos of j-pop from YouTube, so even their own fans can’t enjoy anything from them online unless they pay THROUGH THE NOSE.
4. ANY music that does get on this new service will be very restricted. “Major”, ahem, “artists”, line Taylor Swift MIGHT get new stuff on it, but most music will be decently limited to old, mainstream content. Don’t expect the latest major artists’ tunes, especially if they are on a rival Japanese label (Janny’s), or from extremely world famous artists if they’re not usually promoted in Japan.
In essence, this is in no way useful or relevant to most people. Carry on with bit torrent and vpns…