I've been a collector of Japanese produced Classical recordings for almost
30 years. Be it LP, CD, or other media types, they excel at producing a
quality product.
My chief complaint/displeasure though with both Japaness and Korean CM
productions is the heavy emphasis on orchestral and instrumental music.
Chamber Music is not as well served, but there's at least some market
there. But vocal music, be it opera, choral, lieder, or other similar
genres are vastly under represented. Hence the absence of opera recordings
form most of the Japanese and Korean produced artist compilations, such as
the Karajan DG recordings, Solti (only 1 volume so far), and several
others.
Additionally, the Japanese and Korean markets seem to have an insatiable
appetite for the same old music over and over. Every month sees hoards and
hoards of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and so on.
On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 5:31 AM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/business/media/cd-
> loving-japan-resists-move-to-digital-music-.html
>
> I can say from some experiences with classical reissues that the Japanese
> market is definitely unique, as stated by several people in the article.
> When you put something out that they like, it's a very lucrative market and
> Japanese executives and consumers are wonderfully enthusiastic about the
> product. The trick is figuring out exactly what they like.
>
> I can also understand why downloads don't resonate with Japanese. For one
> thing, many Japanese are serious music listeners and probably don't like
> the bad quality of lossy sound. For another, Japanese culture celebrates
> physical objects, especially beautiful ones. CD packaging can be very
> appealing. And, Japanese consumers like to have a lot of textual
> information with their music purchases, and downloads usually include NO
> documentation (a minority include a PDF of liner notes).
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
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