Japanese, are quite surprisingly conservative, despite their reputation as unique and outlandish,. While they embrace advancements, they aren’t quick to embrace change and this aspect is clearly reflected in many facets of their society and culture. One especially egregious example is their music industry. The music industry in Japan is quite the juggernaut not just within the country, but globally, consistently ranking among the top two largest music markets worldwide, rivalling even the US.
While this might not be especially surprising considering the absolute phenomenon that Japanese culture has become in the world, what is remarkable is that digital sales, which one would typically consider to be the primary contributor to numbers that high, only account for less than 30% of their overall music market. Bizarrely for a nation so famous for its technological advancements, Japan and its people much prefer physical records, like CDs, over the modern alternative, digital. Where the US has the percentages to be around 75% for digital to 15% physical sales, in Japan it’s practically the complete opposite, with their numbers averaging around 21% to 72% respectively with close to 6,000 physical musical stores.
The reasons for this are quite unique to Japan’s very specific conditions and history. Befitting its reputation of tech savviness, Japan was quick to adapt to tech such as email and 3G but clung to them far longer due to their cultural inclination not to change easily. The biggest misstep was their reluctance to give up flip phones in favour of smartphones. This meant a lot for the development of the digital age of Japan. Websites were developed for tiny primitive phone screens and didn’t lend themselves well to online streaming. This meant that digital records for music took longer to take root. Japan is a nation with only about 2% non-Japanese, so most of the country has little to no English literacy, making streaming sites that already exist unpopular as they find the largely English websites difficult to navigate. Licensing issues make sites that can be navigated scarce in content and even the most popular global streaming sites like Spotify end up being relatively unused. Digital is piracy is also not much of an option as the Japanese, as a society, are quite serious about what they consider bad or illegal.
Unlike in the west, where record companies had to abandon physical records at the risk of going bankrupt, Japan’s industry profits quite well from them thanks to the Saihan System which is a law that allows owners of a copyrighted material to set a mandatory minimum price point which meant resale at a bargain was actually illegal. This minimum price point can be about 25$ and though cheap rental services do exist, Japan’s infamous collector culture means the average fan would be more likely to buy an expensive CD to own it than just listen to it.
The surge of idol groups and boy bands have allowed record companies to profit greatly off fans who treat CDs as merchandise. To maximize profits, it’s still common for artists to release singles on CD, an industry practice that died off in the west a long while back. In addition, CDs would be released in multiple limited-edition versions, each providing a tiny difference like changed cover art or different B-Sides. To take things even further, record companies would partner with idol management companies to promote each industry in a sort of symbiotic relationship. CDs would be packaged with tickets to handshake events to meet your idol, special concerts and most egregiously, voting cards that determine the popularity of a certain idol. This meant that rabid fans who want nothing more than to support their idol would buy dozens upon dozens of copies of the same CD in order to get their favourite to the top. As long as Idols thrived, as they have been doing for decades now, CDs will as well, and vice versa.
As a nation with an exceptionally old population, it isn’t surprising how massively popular physical records have been. The country is slowly but surely moving towards the digital era as it is inevitable; however, Japan’s unique culture might mean they’ll never completely let go of their CDs.