Japan is being blamed for a drop in global music sales after sales tanked 16.7%, with such a huge drop in sales in the world’s second largest music market causing the world music market to shrink 3.9%.
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry statistics ding Japan for causing an overall decline in global music, so catastrophic were their losses.
Meanwhile in Europe sales actually grew, and even in the US digital sales increased 3.4%, whilst if Japan is excluded from the figures global sales actually increased by 0.1%.
Japan and South Korea are reportedly the only countries in 2013 to have had top 10 album charts entirely dominated by “local artists” (if AKB48 and company can be called this) – and needless to say, most of these are idol groups controlled by a handful of mega-players.
Even the IFPI blames its local cohorts in Japan for completely failing to embrace “digital transition” (although it might be more accurate to say the industry has desperately failed to stifle a digital transition whilst shifting to a handshaking event business model).
In Japan the music industry’s main effort to embrace technological change and the demand for new ways of accessing music has been to blame it all on piracy and use its remaining influence to have the government fully criminalise the downloading of copyrighted material – although much to the delight of all but the record company stooges the drop in sales only accelerated after downloading was banned.
This coupled with blanket domination of Japan’s mass media by AKB48 and a few other idol groups seems only to have precipitated the collapse in sales – as has the collapse in credibility the bundling of handshaking event tickets with CDs has inflicted on music charts and CD sales figures, now largely regarded as risible by all but the mass media themselves.
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Boo hoo music industry, cry some fucking more. So some CEO's and megacorps lost some of their billions of dollars. Oh woe is them.
How about you stop charging abhorrent fucking prices for a single goddamn album in Japan. It's no fucking wonder people pirate your shit when you expect them to pay $30 for ten fucking songs. Suck a cock.
$30 is actually really cheap for a full album in Japan. Usually it's $40 and up. I've paid $30 for a single before. :/
maaaa~
/sheeple
How much do game OSTs usually go for? As I seem to get them for around $35 pre-shipping.
Ugh, it's true. Most of the top charting stuff is 3990ish. Some almost twice that.
http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/ja/d/2014-03-18/
That's why I buy doujin! COMIKET AND M3 for the win.
Yes I do actually buy them
Levo Lution has been releasing some of his albums on his website as of late.
<3 Levo Lution's stuff.
I wish musicians would give a generalized fuck you to the music industry and go all independent or formed alliances among themselves.
You don't need a huge corporation anymore to produce CDs or sell mp3s ang grab most of the profit leaving you with crumbles.
You do if you've got no talent, like all those performers who are competing for the most youtube views of all time right now.
Except tons of them are more talented than any of those idol groups.
It's the opposite, you don't need a huge corporation to promote you if you're actually good.
Pity there are so many shit indy musicians out there.
Just like there are a lot of shit artists out there.
They both scream: "It's my style!" or "Stop blocking my creativity!" when offered constructive criticism.
@7:50 Well, of course the people giving "constructive criticism" aren't exactly doing a great job of that, either. In fact, I'd say that most people who just up and fling their "constructive" criticism at an artist unasked don't actually know how the fuck to criticize effectively.
Besides, what the fuck does it matter if there's shitty artists out there making bad art? Don't fucking look at it or listen to it or whatever. Getting uptight because someone doesn't choose to heed your enormous wisdom is kinda dickish.
How much do they actually make from sales anyway? Don't they make most of their money from publishing?
Everything in Japan is expensive. Its all because of Middlemen. You take them out, you will get back to decent prices.
>implying big business gives discounts for cutting out the middleman
toppest of kek!!!
boy are you clueless!
No no. Most of their CD's are charged 30 dollars for a single song on a cd. That's what's absurd.
bullshit.
Most japanese singles cost 1500-1600 yen and have 3 or 4 songs along with the off-vocal versions of each song. Plus they normally come bundled with a dvd and a photo or photocard.
The DVD bundled ones are the special edition ones and they cost around 2,600 - 3,000 yen.
Well technically it's usually two songs with two "off-vocal" versions, so a total of 4 songs per CD....but then again, noone really gives a rats ass about the off-vocal that much.
What an irony indeed.
AKB48, the top seller in Japan right now (what a shame...) sells millions of CDs, around 6 million total per year, if we count only the singles. And Im not counting the other COPY40 groups.
And now we have this news about a dropping in sales for worldwide music industry because of Japan numbers.
Now... the other irony its that we are supposed to talk about music here, but the top CD seller in Japan actually sells paper (handshake tickets, photos, election tickets),the last important thing in AKB48 CD are the music CD.
Well done Japan Idol Industry... well done.
Eat my pussy.
They can increase sales again by having idols shake whatever the customer wants.
Sounds like the logical next step. They're pretty much prostitutes anyway.
Itsumo kansha!
考えない！
compensated album sales; sounds reasonable
Yeah that's how i see it to
Hit it right on the nail, anon.
I would ask them but they clearly don't have much to shake... it's ok, they can still use their hands to shake something.
Hands, for example.
maracas!
If they have inplants...
IMplants, and who was the last idol you can recall having any?
implants don't really shake very well
You just reminded me about that recently translated Askray's doujin.
I can't figure out the connection...
Idols there have much to shake, that's the relation.
Give all the flat idols boob jobs, make em wear low cut tops that reveal a lot of cleavage = profit
Chihaya Kisaragi may or may not approve.
A flat chest is a status symbol! Extremely rare and valuable!
Your reasoning is absurd!
Has anime taught you nothing? Watch some Manyuu Hikenchou or any anime where a loli rubs her chest while staring sadly at one that has been blissfully endowed.
Those were the most disturbingly shaped boobs I had seen since forever.
I wouldn't expect most people here to be able to appreciate such delicious oppai.
@11:46
Yes, anime taught me things! Things like this! http://youtu.be/kzqJzvfi6H0
Yeah but Konata is insane. She's the only one who would say that.
@14:07 I don't see Taiga or Yutori complaining about their delicious flat chest.
Also Konata was quoting another character so she is not the first to say that.
Worst thing is, we "have" to buy the CDs in order to get the handshake tickets. We don't WANT all these fucking CDs, most people drop them in the garbage, I have a box of the fucking things in my room, but international shipping is so expensive it's not feasible to 2nd-hand sell them to foreign fans who might want them. I tried giving them to my Japanese friends but they don't even OWN CD players -_-
wow these friends are really poor then. they don't have a fuckin' PC or a Playstation to play the cds?
I don't have so big issue with receiving garbage (the duplicate cds) since I'm actually paying for the tickets, so... it's just a little more time that I have to spend after, dismantling the cds to put in the trash.
though, it would be cool if other groups made like BiS, that sells music cards in the same system as the cds. these are actually pretty nice to collect.
pretty sure nobody owns/uses a cd player anymore, with the exception of cars and PC's (and trust me i haven't used an audio CD in a decade even though i own ways of playing them)
My PC does not have a disc drive. My old one didn't have one either.
My MP3 player broke so I have to resort to CDs and radio! I'm like a god damn cave man.
I get special edition music CDs with quite a few games so I do still use the car's CD player or a CD walkman with rechargable batteries so I can give those CDs some use. Definitely better quality than ripping their mp3s to an iphone.
Why does everyone here think that listening to their music in a higher quality is behind the times?
Well I like to change songs constantly. With over 60 GB of music my moods vary a lot. I'm fine with 256k because it sounds fine to me. Also because it tones down the bass (which I hate) and my car's stereo doesn't let me turn down my bass.
also there is lossless and lossless MP3 players.
@12:38
if you cared about audio quality, you wouldn't be buying cds anyway. bluray dts-hdma ftw
Confucius say use ebay. Amerifat & Eurotrash weaboo pay top dollar for bad music.
If that were the case Chinese pop-stars would be celebrated in the west given how universally terrible their karaoke warbling tends to be.
Also don't listen to dead people opining on modern culture they've never experienced. It will make you socially awkward.
@02:02
The weaboos at shrinemaiden consuming EVERYTHING from Japan imaginable say otherwise.
Just have the people pay for the shipping. Like sell them on eBay. Sure you wont make your money back, but you'll make some of it back. A lot of weaboos are willing to pay extreme prices.
CDs are the new vinyl, if you want to hear how music actually sounds you just have to shell out for it, otherwise just shove fast food in your ears