[asaqe]

Recently a user by the name of mdo7 have posted an article detailing the decline of JPOP's influence and how it could hurt the industry in the long term, this was the article in question.

I have to say that Japan's music market may not be self-sustain as everybody thought. The population decline in Japan could be fatal for the music market, also as some people said the physical sales have decline for the last few years. Also digital sales is not increasing and not only that, Japan doesn't embrace the internet unlike Korea and Taiwan, that's why both Korea and Taiwan do a lot research into IT/ICT, you don't see Japan getting involved in IT/ICT research and development. Korea and Taiwan have a lot of free wi-fi hotspots, while in Japan, wi-fi hotspots are hard to find.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/201.../#.UnPTNPmshcY

http://neojaponisme.com/2009/05/19/t...-the-internet/

Also Japan doesn't seem to imbrace Itune the same way most of the world does, here's an interesting article from ANN Answerman regarding that:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2013-10-11

I'm going quote this from the article:

You can find anime cover songs on iTunes pretty easily (and even some theme songs, albeit completely divorced from their anime of origin), but why are so few actual anime soundtracks on there? They're not even on the Japanese iTunes store, I checked.

If there's one place where Japanese and American media are completely divergent, it's music. Japan's music industry is a bizarre, frustrating collection of old-school publishers, talent agencies, yakuza, talent agencies that act like yakuza, and all sorts of other characters that often don't play nice with each other, let alone foreign companies. They move slowly, don't adapt to internet culture well (or at all), and attach themselves onto inane rules that seem to have no basis in reality, and won't bend for anyone. It's one of many reasons why so few Japanese musical acts have ever hit outside of Asia.

That little consumer revolution didn't really happen in Japan the same way it did here. Japan has had its issues with piracy, but it never completely took over the market like it did here. Japanese publishers relied more on collectors than casual music consumers, and simply didn't need a savior.

And so, things haven't changed over there nearly as much. People still buy a LOT of CDs, and as evidence, there are still quite a few CD stores, including chains like Tower Records and HMV that have long since died out on this side of the Pacific. Japanese record labels and talent agencies still hold tightly onto business practices and rules that seem to ignore the very existence of the internet.

So yes, that's why J-pop never got the same global breakout which is a shame because many of the J-pop artists/groups can rival their K-pop counterpart on global scale. I don't know if Japan know this but Europe seem to have more money for foreign artists more then US and Japan itself:

http://www.dkpopnews.net/2011/05/new...in-europe.html
I'm going to quote this part from the article:
When asked what he thinks K-pop can gain with a launch into the European market, Kim Youngmin proudly said that the European market is estimated to be worth 7 trillion Won. This basically means it's larger than the US (6 trillion), Japan (4 trillion), and China (1 trillion). He also mentioned that it's not their main goal to get into the charts and sell enormous amounts of CD's, as they're planning to attract people's attention to the Asian music market through the expanding popularity of K-pop music.
I don't know how much 7 trillion Won is worth in Yen, but if there is more money for J-pop artists, then I suggest Japan should expand J-pop beyond Asia because K-pop is getting more mainstream in Europe, what's going to happen if SNSD, 2NE1, 4minute, U-KISS, 2PM, and other K-pop group that want to debut in Europe top the UK music charts and other European music charts, Japan should take it seriously if that was to happen. Because I read an article saying that Japan's music is declining even after the new download law has passed:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...sales-stagnate
One year after a stricter law against music and video downloads went into effect in Japan on October 1 of last year, there is no significant recovery in music sales. Instead, a decrease in music sales was recorded in the last eight months, as well as an earlier sharp decrease in digital music distribution.

According to the Association of Copyright for Computer Software, the number of personal computers on the Japanese file-sharing services Winny and Share has decreased by 40% since last year. While music sales during the October 2012-June 2013 period increased 5%, sales during the January-August 2013 period decreased by 7% (compared to the same periods in the previous years). In addition, legal digital music distribution during October 2012-June 2013 dropped 24%.

So Japan's music market is not even safe because of not only population decline because the CDs are expensive, and that draconian digital download law is not helping the music market in Japan, so the music industry in Japan will have to expand J-pop outside of Japan and Asia. So it's inevitable, also there's probably a lot of J-pop artists that are getting jealous their Korean counterpart are getting more famous worldwide then they are. I got another bad news for Japan and J-pop, it seems another Asian country is sharing a similar ambition to Korea, that would be Taiwan:

http://www.cepd.gov.tw/encontent/m1.aspx?sNo=0013976

http://www.billboard.com/biz/article...-chinese-music

I think Taiwan may try to replicate a similar Asian pop music wave like K-pop did. I'm seeing some new emerging artists/groups from Taiwan that could probably rival K-pop. If Japan doesn't take this seriously, they're going to be falling way behind.

That said, I have been reluctant to post the article on other sites since the potential responses would be outright hostile and calling for the moderators to delete the topic in pure xenophobia or because they don't feel the topic is relevant to the board in question. With the recent fact that JPOP wasn't even nominated at the Youtube Video Awards makes me question the future of the industry in an age where digital is nearly everything. The fact no fan of JPOP had managed to make a proper response to the question is quite depressing to know the fans are not noticing the situation.