Considering that Japan has one of the most vibrant music industries in the world, it was a little bit weird that they still did not have Spotify. But now that weirdness finally ends. Sort of. Spotify has announced that they are finally bringing their on-demand music service to Japan, and it even comes with an added bonus of karaoke lyrics, since of course, it is the land of karaoke. However, it’s still not open to everyone and you’d have to request for an invite to join.
For one reason or another, Spotify chose not to be in the Japanese market despite having a lion’s share in the global market in terms of music subscription. But now, they are going into the land of J-pop and J-rock, offering two options for music lovers. You have the free, ad-supported service wherein you get a limited number of skips and of course some ads in between some songs. But for the more serious music listeners with a bit of cash to spare, you can subscribe to the ad free service at 980 yen (around $9.70) per month.
One thing that’s different from Spotify Japan is that there’s a new feature that shows the lyrics of the track you’re listening to. This is of course due to the fact that Japanese are very fond of karaoke and so they might want to sing along to the song as well. The lyrics feature will probably be launched globally later on, but for now it’s only available in Japan.
Having the music streaming service in Japan will be challenging since it is a unique market. Music lovers there still prefer CDs and other physical media and digital music has been in a challenging situation the past years. If you want to try it out, you’d have to go to spotify.com and request for an invite to join.
VIA: Bloomberg
