"The Japanese music industry has fought hard to limit growth of the digital-music business in order to protect the CD format, and has succeeded to the degree that Japan is now the largest seller of CDs in the world," notes an industry source who requested anonymity. "And it has one of the smallest digital businesses among major territories. (The industry) has succeeded in getting the digital market here to decrease in each of the last two years, while most other territories are increasing."
Some of the biggest Japanese groups don't even sell digital in order to protect CD sales.
and if you think SOPA is harsh. How about 2 years in prison for downloading a song illegally? and 10 years if you upload it.
Quote:
The stick comes in the form of the government's recent introduction of penalties of up to two years in prison or a fine of up to ¥2 million on anyone who knowingly downloads music and video files without rights-holders' permission. They come into effect Oct. 1
Unauthorized uploading of content is currently punishable by imprisonment of up to 10 years or a fine of up to ¥10 million.
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But why do they care so much about protecting CD format?
It's cool and all, but at the end of the day you'll just have to copy the cd on your computer and then transfer to ipods/iphones etc and never touch the cd again.
The stick comes in the form of the government's recent introduction of penalties of up to two years in prison or a fine of up to ¥2 million on anyone who knowingly downloads music and video files without rights-holders' permission. They come into effect Oct. 1
Unauthorized uploading of content is currently punishable by imprisonment of up to 10 years or a fine of up to ¥10 million.
its interesting cos personally i dont see the CD format surviving another 5 years. i didn't realise some markets were so fiercely trying to preserve it. its a natural progression to move from one format to another, only certain groups of people buy music on records nowadays and in the same way the CD generation is dying out.
i don't see the problem in embracing digital sales
I barely play the CD's I have and the last ones I bought was in December (Adele's CD + DVD) so I don't understand why they keep such an archaic ideas.
Well collecting CD/DVD's/boxsets in Japan is really popular because they come bundled with a lot of extra stuff like posters, collectables etc. Like for AKB-48, which is this massive girl group who has record breaking 1 million+ sale weeks every time they release a single, part of it is because they bundle tickets with the singles for meet and greet events.
its interesting cos personally i dont see the CD format surviving another 5 years. i didn't realise some markets were so fiercely trying to preserve it. its a natural progression to move from one format to another, only certain groups of people buy music on records nowadays and in the same way the CD generation is dying out.
i don't see the problem in embracing digital sales
Considering how large Japan's music market is and how CDs are dominating it, I'm not surprise that the CD manufacturers (and people involving in it) would feel such insecure when digitals are growing.
Considering how large Japan's music market is and how CDs are dominating it, I'm not surprise that the CD manufacturers (and people involving in it) would feel such insecure when digitals are growing.
Even so, Oricon doesn't count digital downloads, and probably won't for years to come.
Well collecting CD/DVD's/boxsets in Japan is really popular because they come bundled with a lot of extra stuff like posters, collectables etc. Like for AKB-48, which is this massive girl group who has record breaking 1 million+ sale weeks every time they release a single, part of it is because they bundle tickets with the singles for meet and greet events.
Wow, that's awesome, if they could only do that in America
I understand that... normally every single getting released here in germany is also sold in the physical form but slowly they're stopping that too.
Which IMO is very sad, cause I liked collection everything from my faves.
I had to buy a promo cd of dark side, just to keep everything on track
And I'm gonna move to Japan. 
I want to so badly.
physical > digital anyway
