Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus H.
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2014/...-in-japan.html
Closest thing to what you wanted is in the linked article. Holy shit, Japan really is an alien place in comparison when it comes to deal with merch. I mean, a minimum price limit of 2500 yen for a CD? WTF? And a lot of the market rent and rip the latest albums?
This is all fucking weird to me.
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Even if they drop the price of a Japanese CD to say, 1500 yen (or less on special), people will rent and rip.
Why? Two major reasons, I'd say: first, you can borrow a new release for 300 yen for a day. That market doesn't seem to be going away. In fact, there are sometimes special rental-only discs.
Your Lie in April had some (and believe me, I am frustrated that I will probably never see the extras on those discs), and I've actually borrowed some rental-only radio show CDs because I was lucky enough to be in Japan when they were available.
And second--the more important reason IMO--people just do not have space. Japanese houses are tiny, so the average person wouldn't buy stuff that they'd have to take to a second-hand store sooner or later. So the bare-bones entry-priced CD or BD/DVD just wouldn't sell. There's simply no point. As
relentlessflame pointed out, the Japanese market is a lot more like a luxury goods market, and I suspect that the premium on space is one of the main reasons why.
As for digital media to own: I'm not as familiar with it. I do know that getting Japanese iTunes cards from overseas and using them is a bit of a pain, but I have been grateful to find some of the songs I've looked for on Spotify.
I did also look up Aniplex's viewcast once, and learned that they have plans to extend it overseas, but I haven't been keeping tabs on that, since I'm a collector anyway.
But again, all of this is about '
owning' media. My own experiences in Japan and interacting with Japanese fans of anything suggests that fandom there is more about the
experience of being a fan.
At the end of the day, it's a different market. And we simply cannot expect most companies to cater directly to the few of us overseas who would buy their products because of
how complicated and expensive shipping, licenses etc would be.
So overseas fans have two choices, really. Become like the Japanese fans and put down the extra cash. Or wait until overseas licensing companies bring it to you at (hopefully) lower prices.