Dear McClure's Asia Music News subscriber,

I hope this finds you well after the hot and humid summer (at least for those of us in Japan). I’d like to thank you for your continued support of my newsletter/website venture, which is slowly but surely gaining traction.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind you that my overview of the Japanese music market is available for purchase via the McClure's Asia Music News website (www.mccluremusic.com). Please find a sample of the text below.

Music-industry professionals who want to do business in Japan – the world’s second-biggest music market – need accurate information and informed analysis. And that’s why this definitive overview of the Japanese market is an essential resource for both Japanese music-biz insiders and overseas executives.

The 19-page, 10,000-word report reflects my intimate knowledge of the Japanese music industry, based on my many years of covering the world’s No. 2 music market for Billboard and now for McClure's Asia Music News.

This comprehensive introduction to the Japanese music market contains data and analysis covering the following sectors:

•    Key market statistics
•    Digital Japan
•    The changing copyright environment
•    Record labels
•    Publishers
•    Karaoke
•    Rental
•    Music-industry organizations
•    Production companies
•    Retail
•    Music media
•    Charts
•    Touring
•    Cracking the Japanese market

Click on the “Japanese music-business overview” hypertext on the left-hand side of this page to order your copy now!

Keep on rockin'!

Steve McClure
Executive Editor
McClure's Asia Music News
steve@mccluremusic.com

PS: Here's a sample of the report's text:

RECORD LABELS

One of the key distinguishing factors in the Japanese music market is the relative lack of consolidation in terms of labels; the market is divided up between more players than in other territories.

Here are SoundScan Japan’s sales-based label rankings for calendar 2008 (previous year’s position in parentheses):

1. Avex Marketing 16.1% (1)
2. Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) 13.9% (1)
2. Universal Music K.K 13.9% (3)
4. Warner Music Japan 6.2% (5)
5. EMI Music Japan 6% (4)
6. Victor Entertainment 4.7% (6)
7. Toy’s Factory 3.7% (8)
8. BMG Japan 3.1% (7)
10. Pony Canyon 2.8% (10)
10. Being 2.8% (N/A)

Avex has confounded the naysayers who said the label, which started out by importing European dance compilations in the late ’80s, wouldn’t be able to maintain the extraordinary success it enjoyed in the mid-’90s with a series of megahits produced by now-disgraced producer/songwriter Tetsuya Komuro. (In 2009 Komuro was found guilty of trying to sell copyrights he no longer owned in order to pay off the massive debts he’d accumulated as a result of his profligate lifestyle.) Under the direction of Masato “Max” Matsuura, who ousted Tom Yoda as Avex CEO in a 2004 boardroom coup, Avex has developed a solid stable of hitmaking domestic acts such as female vocalists Namie Amuro, Ayumi Hamasaki, Kumi Koda and BoA.

Like Sony, Avex has its fingers in many pies, with music-publishing, artist-management, animation and film-production operations. Avex has been paying a lot of attention to neighboring Asian markets: it has a reciprocal licensing agreement with major South Korean label/management company S.M. Entertainment, and in 2006 became the first Japanese record company to set up a subsidiary in mainland China. Unlike other major Japanese labels, Avex (whose stock is publically traded) is not part of a larger corporate group, and is thus technically an independent label. And while Yoda had (and has) a very visible public profile, Matsuura is much more of a backroom player, preferring protegees like Koda and Hamasaki to be in the limelight.

The SoundScan Japan 2008 data confirms that Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), which traces its origins to joint venture CBS/Sony (established in 1968), has lost its position as Japan’s unquestioned market leader to Avex. SMEJ still wields enormous influence and power in the Japanese music market as the core company of the Sony Music Group of companies, whose activities include music publishing, artist management, physical distribution, magazine publishing, digital-content aggregation and distribution, a music-TV channel and live-music venues. Alone among major and midranking Japanese labels, SMEJ refuses to license product to iTunes Japan, presumably because of parent company Sony Corp.’s rivalry with iTunes parent Apple Computer.

That is apparently the source of some tension between SMEJ and Sony Corp., which will be one of the challenges facing Masao Morita (son of Sony’s late co-founder, Akio Morita), who was transferred from the parent company to take over as SMEJ chairman in June 2009. While the position of chairman is often largely a powerless one at Japanese companies, Morita will likely seek to make his mark on SMEJ (of which he was CEO in 2003-04).

While SMEJ CEO Naoki Kitagawa is a genuine music fan, the company he heads is sometimes criticized for being excessively bureaucratic and slow to pick up on international music trends – a charge that is often leveled at other Japanese labels. Sony’s international roster, meanwhile, has been boosted by its takeover of BMG Japan following Sony’s global buyout of BMG.