“One of the biggest headaches for music industry executives is how to strike the right balance when pricing downloads,” The Asahi Shimbun reports. “While a single download costs 99 cents (about 110 yen) at Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store site, which is not yet available in Japan, domestic services typically charge at least 200 yen per song. That’s more expensive than renting a CD single, priced at about 100 yen.”
“‘If we go lower than that, CD sales will suffer. If we go higher than that we wouldn’t beat CD rental shops,’ said an official of a major record company. Another issue that needs addressing is the introduction of measures to prevent illegal copying of digital music, most of which impose limitations on how the music is shared, annoying consumers,” The Asahi Shimbun reports. “Unlike Apple’s iTunes service, whose downloads can be burned onto CD-Rs, most downloads from the Japanese sites are copy-protected and cannot be copied onto CD-Rs. In addition, the different Japanese services offer different file formats, each requiring specific devices to play them.”
The Asahi Shimbun reports, “A Japanese version of Apple’s iTunes has been unable to get started due to opposition from the local recording industry, which deems its copy protection measures to be inadequate and has refused to offer its music catalog. Yoshiaki Sakito, Apple’s vice president in charge of marketing, says the popularity of the company’s iPod digital audio player will eventually help pry the market open. ‘The record companies won’t be able to swim against the tide forever,’ he said.”
Full article here.
1st post!!!
2nd
An interesting angle: “However, a selection of small digital music operators (many involving Japan’s Sony recording label) have begun to appear.”
Can we say: “conflict of interests”?
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=9586
It’s odd that the recoding industry is so reluctant to sell music through an online download system without strong DRM technology, but you can still buy the CD, rip to a non-DRM format (in your bitrate of choice, nonetheless) – and if you really wanted to share that file illegally, you could.
If the current Japanese DRM format doesn’t allow CD-R burns, why even bother? Just buy the physical CD and be done with it.
How can they say one format isn’t restrictive enough, yet sell another without ANY restrictions?I guess they’d rather you buy CDs.
I wouldn’t call that inadequate DRM.. Apple developed Fairplay so as to be morelax for customers, giving them almost as much Freedom, and only punishing them when they do oddly enterprising things with their music (10+ burns of the same CD? you would never do that…unless you were trying to sell the music)
Japans CD prices suck.. Apple will fight hard for a music store and if it ever materializes, it will be a resounding frenzy of a success.
Sony is dreading it.
Could anything be more idiotic than comparing the price of BUYING a song with that of RENTING an album? Is the rental price they compared per listening, or per month, or per year? I’ll bet that over tenyears of listening every day, the album costs WAY MORE than buying that one song. But who cares?
Two words: Moe. Rons.
Just send another A-Bomb to Japan and nuke ’em.
If the Jap Government won’t let mighty America sell their records, do what we did to Iraq and blow the country out of the water.
The local recording industry deems the DRM on iTunes inadequate, but they are also worried that pricing doesn’t compete with CD rental companies.
They are worried about piracy, but haven’t been able to bring themselves to price the ‘ownership’ of music cheaply enough to compete with rental companies.
I wonder how many CD rentals lead to de facto ‘ownership?’
They should open the iTunes Music Store without the local record companies, I am sure sales would still be quite substantial and consumer demand would force the local record companies to sign up.
We would permit iTMS access to Japanese markets, but since we did not first originate the online music market we cannot in good conscience allow others to sell online in Japan.
Please do not confuse our obfuscation with intelligent reasoning or our devoted customer service philosophy. We are so deeply sorry for any inconvenience that our decision may place on iTMS or our citizens.
Please accept our most humble apologies for acting in such a despicable manner, but recognize that we made this decision in your best interests alone and in no way is linked to the illegal CD distribution of our Yakuza affiliates.
Japan’s compact disc pricing is extortionistic.
Here’s an example–there was a Japanese conductor named Asahina who, rumor had it, was an excellent conductor of romantic and late-romantic works, such Beethoven then Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, etc. His CDs appeared in America for only a very short period of time, and then were quickly withdrawn, never to be seen again. The reason? Because even when being sold in U.S. stores for $24 as Japanese imports for a single disc, it was still cheaper for Japanese buyers to mail order the CD’s from the USA than it was for them to buy the CD at a local store. Yes, a CD made in Japan, shipped to the US, sold as a high priced import, and then shipped back to Japan still involved less than buying the CD where it was manufactured.
So you can see where 99 cents and track and 9.99 for an album would be heavily resisted.
Stoopid Yanks:
War is not the solution, it is only the beginning.
War is not the answer, it is unquestionable.
War is not forgiveable, it is inevitable.
Conquer or be conquered, get it?
The Japanese can be terminally unique and make things much more difficult than they need to be sometimes. Traditionally it takes a very long time for a change to occur as a period of consensus building passes. Then when all the pieces are in place the chance will seem to happen over night and be pretty much all pervasive. In other words the change will take a long time to finally happen but then will happen “all at once”.
You can be sure though that local interests will be looked after and Sony may be allowed to gain a strong foothold before competition is allowed in. Something like this happened with cell phones. Motorola had a much better product and was kept out of Japan for 8 months while local manufacturers scrambled to produce something comparable. By the time the USA got around to complaining strongly enough, the Japanese just apologized and let motorola in but the damage had already been done. The local manufacturers had gotten the precious time needed to catch up and prevent dominance by a foreign maker.
Apple should just ignore the record labels who refuse to sell under Apple’s term and start iTune store with the record labels and independents who are willing to sell under their term.
These record labels are like old cities and town that refuse to let the interstate highway and/or train to run through their town. The businesses (or musicians in this case) moved closer to interstate (bypass).
okay..now the itunes ads work on this emac.. in safari.. amazing
Pathetic. Overpriced. Overpirated. Once again, Japan shows us an industry badly in need of what they call “restora” — restructuring. This is a country where billions are spent by consumers trying to learn English — all wasted by a special alphabet for foreign words that cannot handle foreign sounds. So drink your biiru or burandei on za rokusu — who cares!
Japan is a very closed market.
It’s also very culturally different.
I think apple should just let it go. It’s their choice and they chose not to take it. What is it with american companies trying to force their products onto the rest of the world?
Oh and another point. Japan is a very proud nation and are a little scepticle of foreign companies selling their products over there. This is the main reason why the Xbox failed there. Which is why I was surprised that the ipod and ipod mini are selling so well over there.
Opiniated Jerk. Great post. Others are catching the unique market/culture of Japan. It is different.
To the war mongers. Watch it, peace will always defeat war. You just got one act of freedom, keep it up and another will be coming your way.
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