Japanese Music

[Acr1m]

There is a vast amount of music that seems to only be available in Japan. The only way for Americans to obtain any of this music is through YouTube (which is a pretty lame way to stream music and very limited selection at that) to order the albums over sea (needless to say this gets ridiculous expensive) or to download it illegally.

My notion to the Spotify staff members is to break down the boundaries of America's and Japan's music industries and to allow us to listen to even recorded music from other countries across the world! 

Does anyone else feel the same way as I do?

[Iolita]

For a few years now I had placed my blame on Spotify but they themselves are not the problem. Japanese music licensing has to be one of the most complex and complicated things in this world, so much so that current streaming services in Japan fail to serve. The country stays pridefully in the physical realm of music (CDs) and the labels and artist have such contracts that make accessibility so difficult I've began to lose hope in seeing a wide variety of Japanese artist on a streaming app legally.
All we can do is cross our fingers really

[zidanesg1]

I do.. I want to listen to the Utada hikaru and all I can do i play the 2 american english releases... thats so stupid... when is this world going to be united as one?

[shuten]

I use Spotify as my music encyclopedia. All international genres, bands and artists on same app and quality audio for my audio system. It is perfect for me to sort, explore and discover music without limits. As I'm premium for 2 years and thinking on continuing. Japanese music is so important to me as I don't want to change to youtube to play low quality and ads when playing jap hits. I know by japanese friends there is a huge amount of japanese artists on Spotify, but limited to their market. Xjapan, Dir en grey, L'arc en ciel, Joe Hisaishi.., also anime tracks, have some material avaliable but far from being completed. I think there should be some formula, at least for premium, to access full library of japanese music

[shuten]

Otherwise itunes seems to have opener anime collection

[yesimcemek]

I'm from Turkey and I wish the same thing. I'm a huge fan of Japanese music but the number of songs that we have access to is so limited. I want to listen the original music not the covers. If the Spotify staff members could give an informative reply about the current progress or whether they can do something about it or not, it would be great.

[13van113]

I think the situation started to improve with Spotify entering the Japanese market in September. However, the availability of the music is entirely up to publishers.

As it was already stated in this thread, Japanese publishers are very slow in adapting the digital distribution, streaming services and opening to the West.

[Lawliet_bvb_lov]

I agree very much. I love so many diferent music types and I'm an anime lover so I find a lot of cool music through anime so I go to Spotify to add it to my endless amount of music to find it's not on Spotify. I instead must download a cover that's not as good. I wish they could have more foreign music on Spotify

[jjfrenchfry]

I am currently in Japan, had a free spotify account from Canada. It stopped working, and told me I needed to change my region. So I did and gained access to all this Japanese and Korean music. Life was great. Then I upgraded using my Canadian Visa... lost it all QQ I thought upgrading was supposed to give you more, not take away

[Kewlgrl1]

Definately.

It's REALLY unfair that I have to settle with only using Youtube. I love Japanese music and anime intros, BUT I don't like the English lyric translations it doesn't really always fit in with the beat.

And just saying no harm meant to the people who tanslate it and put it on Spotify for us to hear, I apreciate your effort in recreating it in english.

[himynameisfox]

---

@SAEQ wrote:

Maybe United Nations should force all music producers to sell their music to all distributors no matter what, without any agreement/contracts and let UN have the power to set a resonable price/compensation.

Or do someone have a better suggestion? It clearly dossent work well in several ways, as it is now. The end user want it distrubuted in an effective way at the lowest possible price with adjustable quality. The producers want to produce and get paid. The distributors want to get access to as much material as possible to distribute.

Whats the problem? Bad organisation and no higher power that can force, instead its the market economy that decide and the market economy isnt intelligent enough to organise this in a good way.

---

Whoah whoah whoah steady on cowboy, the United Nations is a global organisation that was created to avoid future world wars / conflicts. The only organ of the UN that can create binding resolutions is the security council, which deals with the world's greatest issues, the topic of music is the last thing you'd find in a discussion there.
In addition to this, the UN is supposed to stand up for peace and individual rights, under no circumstances would they attack label companies or even artists's copyright or means of distribution.

I do agree that it sucks that we can't get our favortie japanese songs on Spotify, but come on it's not a world crisis x)

[ToG9]

I like traditional Japanese music.

[ScytheMassakur]

I agree with this. Also, is there a way to get licenses with music when the artist died? For example: Inner Universe, the singer, Oliga, died in...05, I think. Also, how would you go about notifying artists that their music is wanted on Spotify? You canna exactly call them. 

[kokolico]

So - it works the same way for the music in the US, which cannot be listened in Japan?  I am traveling to Japan and want to listen my spotify there.  But, I wonder if I cannot listen any music via Spotify in Japan as I regiestered it in the US?

[jjfrenchfry]

You can if you have spotify premium. You will just continue to listen to your US spotify. If you want to listen to Japan spotify, you need to create a new account for Japanese Spotify.

[kokolico]

Thank you for your answer.  Yes.  I have Spotify premium.  Great.  So, I will enjoy listening the music without any disruption in Japan.

[hacuraven]

Here is new Japanese Music Video
https://youtu.be/JN7E0wDc_rY

mezcolanza is very cool band!

[MusicOfPain]

• I think they should do that also. I don’t know any Japanese but I love anime and some of my favorite songs in Japan can’t be accessed in the Unitited States of America which sucks. It is still the same art apparently they have anime songs sung by voice actors rather than bands like DOES and etc. They only have the more popular bands in the USA like Flow, Ikimonogakari, Grandrodeo, SPYAIR, THE ORAL CIGARETTES, KANA-BOON, etc

[steveritter2003]

Hi 

I stumbled upon some Japanese Jazz labels that relate to:  "Cafe Music Healing Jazz" and "Chill Out Jazz Cafe".  The names of the CDs and the tracks are all in Japanese, so it's tricky to find similar material.  E.g. I haven't found a way to Cut and Paste the CD or track names and enter them in Spotify.

 I have managed to extract links such as https://open.spotify.com/track/7qOXZIsvA4Kgp2VUA8qUep

Any ideas?  Steve