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  • New Technologies, Industrial Structure, and the Consumption of Music in Japan
  • Noriko Manabe (bio)

Introduction

As discussed by Wallis (2006), Burnett (1996), and others, the music business has had the power to influence what music is heard through collaboration with the media industries and access to marketing channels. Technological changes have often transformed these systems for both consumers and for corporations. The last eight years have brought forth a number of such technologies that have changed the way we hear music, such as Internet downloads, ringtones, and digital audio players (DAPs), including the iPod. While consumers in all developed countries have adopted these technologies, their preferences have differed not only due to variables in the social environment, but also to corporate policies and technological infrastructure in these countries.

One case study examines the differences in adaptation of these recent technologies between Japan and the United States. While Japan, the second-largest music market in the world, has had a similar industrial structure to the American one, with sales concentrated in a few, primarily global recording companies, differences between the two countries in the structure of radio and television broadcasting have affected the consumption of music.

More recently, the increase of mobile phone technologies has been far more rapid in Japan than in most Western countries.1 Since 1999, when NTT Docomo, Japan's largest cell phone carrier, first introduced Internet access over cellular phones, the Japanese have preferred to access the Internet through cellular phones rather than PCs. This situation has been reinforced not only by the mobile, ambulatory nature of Japanese urban society, but also the policies of the telecommunications carriers, which offered heavily subsidized handsets to consumers and low commission rates to content providers, creating a favorable environment for the development of the mobile Internet.

Furthermore, the consumer adoption of 3G, a broadband Internet service on cell phones allowing speeds of up to 2MBps as of 2006, was significantly faster in Japan than in the United States and Europe. Initially rolled out in 2001, 3G was used by two-thirds of Japan's mobile phone subscribers by December 2006, [End Page 81] compared with 8% of subscribers in the United States and 14% in the United Kingdom (Telecommunications Carriers Association 2007; International Federation of the Phonographic Industry 2007, 10). Consequently, 85% of all Japanese mobile users browsed the web over their phones on a daily basis, while only 12% of young Americans and 14% of young Britons had ever done so (Internet Kyokai 2006, 28; M:Metrics 2006). 2

Such an environment was a boon for the distribution of music over mobile phones, which was adopted earlier and more widely in Japan than in most other countries. Musical content served as a driver for 3G diffusion, comprising half of all mobile content revenues before 2005. Mobile downloads have also had a positive impact on the Japanese music industry, where they comprised 15% of sales for the music industry and 90% of total music downloads in 2006 according to Record Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).

Given the scale and breadth of Japan's music business and its global lead in ringtones, a study of consumption patterns and responses from the music industry can provide several insights for scholars and industry representatives in other parts of the world. For example, how might consumer use of music on cell phones in Japan foreshadow their use in the United States or Europe where diffusion of advanced systems is currently not as wide? How have differences in corporate practice or technology affected what music is heard? How have corporate strategies encouraged or inhibited the use of technologies for music? How have corporate policies evolved over time?

The use of mobile phones in accessing the Internet in Japan has inspired collections of essays (Gottlieb and McLelland 2003; Ito, Okabe, and Matsuda 2005). Takeishi and Lee (2006) have compared the role of copyright in spurring the development of the mobile download market in Japan and Korea, while Dolan (2000) has examined the scope of the polyphonic ringtone in the early days of i-mode. Gopinath (2005) has examined the global ringtone phenomenon, while Uimonen (2004) has conducted an ethnography on their usage in Finland. Nonetheless...

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