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Given the extraordinary success of iTunes around the world, you’d think that Japanese record companies would be falling over themselves to make their repertoire available on the local version of Apple Computer’s popular music-download service.
T’ain’t necessarily so. Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) – the country’s biggest record company - BMG Japan, Warner Music Japan and Victor Entertainment have yet to reach deals with iTunes Japan.
Why? Well, there are all sorts of reasons. The main one is that Sony doesn’t like the idea of Apple moving onto its home turf. Already stung by the runaway success of Apple’s iPod music players in Japan and other countries, Sony views iTunes as a threat to the “Mora” download service, which is backed by several major Japanese labels and which uses the Sony-supported ATRAC file-compression format.
Sony and the other three holdout record companies say they are talking to Apple about the possibility of signing up with iTunes. Price is a key issue. By charging an average of 150 yen per song, iTunes Japan undercut download services like Mora, which lowered its prices an average of 15% to 200 yen per track after iTunes Japan’s Aug. 4 launch. Other Japanese download services also cut their prices to meet the iTunes challenge.
Some 1 million titles are available via iTunes Japan, while Mora has some 200,000 titles. The only sales data that Apple will release for iTunes Japan is 1 million tracks sold in the service’s first four days of operation – a claim that some people in the Japanese music biz find hard to believe.
It’s worth noting that digital music downloads have just started in Japan, and the music industry here is taking a cautious attitude towards this new business, especially when it comes to issues like burning copies of downloaded tracks.
Many people think that in Japan’s keitai (mobile-phone) culture, mobile-based music downloads are the way to go, not personal computer-based services. Leading telecom company KDDI’s “Chaku-uta Full” mobile-based full-song download service racked up 10 million song downloads between its November 2004 launch and June 2005, for example. (Chaku-uta Full charges between 100 and 400 yen per track.)
Further complicating the situation is that unlike the rest of the world, where Sony Music and BMG have successfully merged into the new (and unimaginatively named) Sony BMG Music Entertainment structure, Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) and BMG Japan remain separate entities in Japan, for reasons that don’t concern us here. It’s quite possible that SMEJ and BMG will put off joining iTunes Japan until they’ve merged or come to some other mutually satisfactory arrangement.
Meanwhile, Japanese iTunes users aren’t able to download tracks by artists signed to Sony, BMG, Warner and Victor. To keep those fans happy, some Japanese artists have found ways of going around the labels and supplying their music directly to iTunes.
For example, Kazufumi Miyazawa, lead vocalist and songwriter for rock band The Boom, has recorded a new version of his signature tune, “Shima Uta (Island Song),” exclusively for iTunes. The original version of the song was recorded in 1993 when The Boom was signed to Sony, and thus is not available on iTunes Japan.
Singer/songwriter Motoharu Sano has been drawing media attention by complaining about how his back catalog, which dates from when he was signed to Sony, isn’t available on iTunes Japan. On his website (http://www.moto.co.jp/) Sano bemoans the fact that fans face limited choices in listening to music because of music-biz politics, and says his goal is to make his entire catalog available for easy downloading in Japan and in other countries.
Sano is boosting his profile on iTunes Japan by supplying some of his music directly to the download service. On Aug. 17 Sano released a mini-album titled “The Sun Studio Edition,” comprising four new versions of tracks previously released on his own Daisy record label and two unreleased songs, exclusively on iTunes Japan. The album entered the iTunes Japan chart at No. 1.
Rock band the Ulfuls, who are signed to Toshiba-EMI (which is cooperating with iTunes Japan), have released an album titled “iTunes Originals,” available exclusively on Apple’s download service.
Female vocalist Bonnie Pink, meanwhile, finds herself in the strange position of having some of her songs available on iTunes in territories outside Japan but not in her home country, since she is signed to Warner Music Japan.
This kind of publicity, along with all the other hype surrounding iTunes, means it’s probably just a matter of time until Sony and the other labels get on the iTunes Japan bandwagon.
“The opening of iTunes in Japan has opened a new age for the Japanese music industry, as evident from the sudden changes happening after its launch, and I hope that this movement will lead to a positive result,” comments Shaun Iwase, director of international relations at Tokyo-based company Rightsscale, which supplies music to iTunes Japan by serving as a content aggregator.
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