Forum - View topic

Answerman - Why is it so tough to buy Japanese digital media downloads?

That said, even if they suddenly "open up" and let their music be available all over, what makes you think they'd suddenly get popular overseas? Sad to say, but J-POP doesn't really jive with international mainstream tastes. μ's? AKB48? Momoiro Clover Z? Forget about it. Even Arashi or Exile will struggle because they have to compete with K-POP groups that have already established base abroad. Maybe along the lines of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, but it's still a tough sell.

There are some anime OP/ED/OSTs on Itunes, but you got to look real hard since the songs usually listed with the artist individually and not by anime it comes from.

Noticed on Chiaki Ishikawa's twitter:

As an example, Flying Dog listed at least some of the anime tie-in information for the HouKo ChroniCle best-of album by Houko Kuwashima: http://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/flyingdog/-/Artist/A015870.html (she sang the Martian Successor Nadesico ending song, a Noir insert song and a Gundam Seed Destiny insert song).

Kind of have a weird workaround to this; I have a JP 3DS, and (assuming nothing's changed recently?) you can use US credit cards on the Japanese Nintendo e-store. There's a 3DS app called "Recochoku" that works like iTunes (except I think it might be a bit more expensive per song...), and so I can buy stuff through my 3DS and later download it off of my Recochoku account onto my computer and iTunes/iPod/etc.

Well, if you've seen Japanese television live music shows (e.g. clips shown on youtube), they not only list title and artist, but also anime that it's from, plus the lyricist and composer. Even though it's in kanji, it's the right idea in my opinion because one can then search for other material by the same artist, from the same anime, or same lyricist or composer.

Leaving out any of that information when listing music for sale (either as physical CD's or digital downloads) makes it harder for someone to find music that they might like.

My question that I've been meaning to write in to Answerman is what anime music podcasts and/or internet radio stations are legally available in the US. I know about Japan Top 10 an excellent English language podcast that counts down the top 10 hits in Japan (playing the full songs) about every other week. They have specials, including anime music specials, but mostly they play current mainstream Japanese hits. Anyone know of any others?

All interesting reading. Been wondering why it was so hard for me to find anything to listen to before I decided if its worth getting. I wonder if the FTA, assuming it passes, would help with this problem but I doubt it.