Japan may have been late to the music-streaming party, but it’s been making up for lost time judging by the latest figures from the RIAJ. The post Japan’s music streaming revenues grew by 25% in 2022 to $674m appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Surf Music has been operating for three years: running in “quasi-stealth” mode in Japan and South Korea. Now it’s ready to go global. The post Songs marketplace Surf Music expands beyond Japan and South Korea appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Although it’s still the second biggest recorded music market in the world, Japan was famously one of the slowest to adopt streaming. The post Japan’s music streaming revenues have grown by 24% in 2022 so far appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Chinese streaming service NetEase Cloud Music [NCM] sees even more potential for J-Pop (Japanese pop music) to grow in China. The post NetEase Cloud Music extends its deal with Japanese label Avex appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We know MQA for its hi-res audio technology that has been adopted by a range of digital music services, hardware firms and broadcasters. The post MQA gains approval for new MQair wireless audio tech appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

If K-Pop can take over the global music world, what price J-Pop achieving similar success? It’s not happened yet, but Deezer sees an international appetite for Japanese music, and the streaming service is launching a new channel to test it. Called ‘Japanese Music‘, it will offer a range of playlists, from J-Pop, City Pop and […]

Long before Riot Games started creating virtual artists like K/DA and Seraphine, Japanese avatar star Hatsune Miku was playing stadium gigs. Now her creators are working on a big virtual concert based on her ‘Miku Expo’ tours. It’s called Hatsune Miku Expo 2021 Online, and will be a free show with at least 10 songs. […]

With Apple Music hosting livestream events with artists and Amazon Music forging ever-closer links with sister company Twitch, the integration of livestreaming and audio streaming is a trend we’re keeping an eye on. Now look to Japan, where Spotify is hosting a livestreamed concert on 26 November based on its ‘Tokyo Super Hits’ playlist. The […]

Japan’s recorded music market lost 19% of value in the first half of 2020, despite an increase in digital revenue of 11% – but it was a drop that was expected, given the impact of COVID-19. The post Country Profile – Japan 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The Covid-19 pandemic may be encouraging the Japanese music industry to look outwards more, according to Tatsuya Nomura, president of the Federation of Music Producers Japan (FMPJ). Speaking at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit Global online conference today, he described how the pandemic came at a sensitive moment in Japan’s transition from a recorded music market […]

China has become an important market for Japanese artists and labels in recent years. Now streaming service NetEase Cloud Music is staking its claim to be the “platform of choice for fans of Japanese music” in China. It’s wielding a report published by research firm Small Antlers Think Tank as its proof: a survey of […]

It’s important that the industry (us included) starts to move away from talking about the ‘live concerts shutdown’ as a global trend, now that a growing number of countries are tentatively opening up their live industries again. In Japan, for example, the government has further relaxed its restrictions on mass gatherings. Having previously capped indoor events […]

If you’re a regular reader of Music Ally, you may have spotted that we have some Animal Crossing fans on the team. We’ve seen a couple of music marketing campaigns make use of the latest version of the game, Nintendo Switch title Animal Crossing: New Horizons – pop artist Alice Chater turning her music video […]

More Japanese people are willing to engage with music via streaming during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey of Japan’s music industry conducted by Music Ally. Music Ally Japan surveyed labels, managers, producers and other industry figures in the months of April and May, asking them about the impact that Covid-19 has had […]

Spinnup is one of Universal Music Group’s distribution services for independent artists, which originally launched in Sweden in 2013 before expanding to other countries. Artists can use it to upload their music to digital services, with the additional hope of being spotted by UMG’s A&R teams – more than 80 Spinnup-distributed artists have been signed by […]

Classical music streaming service Idagio is launching in Japan later this month, tying in with its live video stream of a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra on 21 June. The Japan launch will include Idagio’s catalogue of more than 2m tracks, and its ‘Global Concert Hall’ series of livestreams. There’s certainly an audience to […]

The Music Ally Japan Digital Summit in association with Linkfire and the Orchard and supported by MQA will take place at the Future 7 venue in Tokyo on Wednesday 22nd April.This one-day event, part of Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit series of events, will focus on digital strategy and digital marketing. With sessions including how to […]

Sony Music Entertainment Japan has launched its Mora Qualitas hi-res streaming service, working with Rhapsody International (through its ‘Powered by Napster’ B2B business). Plans for the service were actually announced in December 2018, but it’s taken 10 months for the ‘formal’ launch of the service to happen. Mora Qualitas is offering FLAC-quality streaming, with Sony Music’s hi-res […]

Two prominent music distributors are announcing their latest globetrotting plans. For The Orchard, that means opening an office in Tokyo to fully establish The Orchard Japan. It’ll be led by former Amazon Music exec Yuuki Kaneko, who’s The Orchard’s VP, Japan. The new division will focus on offering its distribution and other services to Japanese […]

Apple under fire for the way it runs its App Store? But this time, it’s nothing to do with Spotify. A group of Japanese music-industry bodies representing labels, publishers and producers have written to Apple expressing concerns about ‘unauthorised’ (i.e. unlicensed) music-streaming apps that are available through its App Store in Japan. “The recent torrent […]

SyncPower is the Japanese company whose business includes providing ‘synced lyrics’ content, as well as (through its status as status as the agent in Japan for ACRCloud) music-recognition technology. The first part of that business is growing well. “Currently, we have about 2.7m lyrics content, which we provide to 30 services which are run by […]

Japanese music-streaming service Line Music has just celebrated its fourth anniversary, and it’s promising some significant new features over the coming months. The service, run by social-media firm Line, now has 11 million monthly active users, with more than 32 million downloads of its app so far. Anyway, those new features include the introduction of a freemium […]

Almost 20m people in Japan subscribed to a music streaming service at the end of 2018 – with both free and paid subscriber numbers set to rise further over the next few years as streaming revenues remain healthy The post Country Profile – Japan 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

There’s a new startup hoping to make an impact on the Japanese concert-ticketing market. Zaiko has just raised its first round of seed funding according to IQ, and is rolling out its white-label service, which will help promoters, venues and artists to sell tickets directly to fans. The funding came from investors including VC firm North Base Media […]

Lead: Tighter regulations around retargeting have made the job of digital marketing much trickier to navigate. What this has meant is that marketers have to get smarter. We speak to those working around these rules about why – if they put the work in – this can be more blessing than curse. Campaigns: Billie Eilish […]

Japan was set to introduce a new law cracking down on illegal downloading of copyrighted content, but the government is now going back to the drawing board, after complaints from both sides of the debate around online piracy. “We have yet to eliminate the worries of both copyright holders and users. We should work on […]

Japan may be the world’s second-largest recorded-music market, but in terms of music-streaming, it is still early days for a country where CD is still the prime format. Midia Research has raised some concerns about the rate of streaming growth in Japan: “Up 30% in 2018, which puts it on a par with US for […]