Hi Tom-san,
I believe it's sort of "fetishism", crazy love for physical medium.
This might apply to both generation - young ones who loves AKB48,
the other elders who loves "original" format.
Recently hi-reso download is becoming popular among people in Japan,
while collectors (like people in Europe and in the States) stick with
original pressings.
On the other hand, ordinary people in Japan gave up the heyday of physical
medium,
while CDs still sells extremely well these days, especially AKB48s, not
because the music is
quite high quality, but because the CD includes "handshake" ticket with
"idols" or
"election/vote" ticket.
On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 9:31 PM, 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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