On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Benjamin Joffe wrote:
> And as foreign music is less than 25% of music sales (according to
> Japanese Record Association figures), the current iTunes catalog is
> probably not a satisfactory offer for Japanese consumers.
It depends on what that is 25% of. If it's 25% of CDs sold, sure,
foreign music is not so popular here. But I suspect, given how much
foreign music you hear at nightclubs and in shops here, that 25% is 25%
of gross yen sales, which is a completely different figure.
A CD imported from the US normally sells for about 1500-1800 yen here. A
domestic Japanese CD invariably sells for 3000-3200 yen. (I have never,
ever seen a new, non-delete domestic CD on sale for less than the price
put on it by the manufacturer.) So if import CDs are generating 25% of
gross sales, they're somewhere between 36% and 43% of the music market.
> Unfortunately, I tend to think that Japan may "swim against the tide"
> until they come up with a satisfactory DRM system for PC download.
Probably. But this is likely as much about maintaining the current
price-fixing in the domestic music market as anything else.
cjs
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Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
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Received on Wed Oct 20 05:49:27 2004