世論 What Japan Thinks

For a change, this recent survey from iShare into music downloading laws found a significant number willing to admit their thievery.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 8th of January 2010 443 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.7% of the sample were male, 30.7% were in their twenties, 30.7% in their thirties, and 38.6% in their forties.

As I’m not the sort of person who downloads music willy-nilly just for the sake of filling up their iPod, I’ve never downloaded more than just a dodgy track or two. I’m probably also being a fuddy-duddy by saying that the iPod and said illegal downloading just because one can is a behaviour I cannot condone in the slightest, and I’m sure in some way contributes towards the youth of today having the attention span of a goldfish. I used to play just the one CD or tape for about a week or more, but when I last had my hands on a SonyPod, I found myself filling it up with all my CDs then spending more time skipping than listening. Oh, and the software was useless and at least twice wiped its own database.

Anyway, back to the survey. This month the law has changed such that downloading illegally uploaded contents is now illegal.
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Japan does have the image of being a very law-abiding country, and this survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into portable audio players does reinforce that stereotype.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 20th of April 2009 1,056 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.8% in their twenties, 20.9% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties,15.6% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

First of all, let me say that I am not clear on the finer details of Japanese copyright law, but in Q1SQ2 one might claim that copying from CD may be illegal, but assuming given the number of music rental shops that people copy from rented CDs, I believe the law does allow one to make copies, although I did read that it is supposed to be a degraded copy, so ripping to MP3 might be OK. Second of all, downloading other people’s illegally uploaded music is not illegal; it is only the uploading that falls foul of the law, although than might or might not change soon.
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This recent survey from RealWorld RealResearch and reported on by japan.internet.com into earphones and headphones is one I’d like to see the full results for, as I’d like to learn more about why people buy new ‘phones; how much is being forced due to breakage, and how much is due to dissatisfaction with the stock set.

Research results

Over the 18th and 19th of March 2009 1,100 members of the RealWorld RealResearch monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.1% of the sample were male, 8.1% in their teens, 19.2% in their twenties, 25.9% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 9.9% aged sixty or older.

This is yet another survey showing how that digital players are on dominating the market, in both the form of the iPod and friends and as mobile phones with music features.

I don’t own any sort of portable player, so I cannot comment on the survey. However, I do promote earphones, and you can see pictured above Mickey Mouse earbuds, but if that’s not quite your thing, can I interest you in piggy-shaped ones?
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Here’s an interesting survey on portable audio players from iShare showing how sold-state music has muscled out MD players, the leader from just three and a half years ago.

Demographics

Between the 25th of February and the 2nd of March 2009 417 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 40.0% in their twenties, 26.4% in their thirties, and 33.6% in their forties.

I don’t own any portable audio players - well, actually my mobile phone can play music, but I’ve never used the feature. My wife has an MD player lying around that she never uses, but I have a cunning plan for it that doesn’t involve music… Right at the moment I could use a portable player as there is a rather drunk or mentally disturbed guy muttering away to himself as I’m trying to concentrate on translating, but I digress. On to the survey!
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This is a rather interesting set of results from a survey conducted by MyVoice into the matter of music, where music is understood to be the playback of recorded media for personal consumption, as concerts or musicals do not feature in the answers, and background music in shops is also explicitly excluded.

Demographics

Over the first five days of February 2009 15,247 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

My active music listening is limited to musicals, on stage and on screen - I enjoyed Mamma Mia the film, but not as much as the stage. I can forgive Pierce Brosnan’s rather flat singing but he needed a shave, The Winner Takes It All was about twice as long as it needed to be, and the reworking of the stage story just didn’t click with me.

From the survey, putting Q2 and Q6 together one can perhaps conclude that a lot of people are ripping rental CDs to their PC, an activity that is, I believe, actually legal in Japan.
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Although previous surveys have shown that 4% used P2P software at the time of the survey, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Research on the use of audio-visual contents on home computers shows a slightly different picture.

Demographics

Between the 28th of February and the 3rd of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel with a computer at home completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, with 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

Note that Marsh Research are a new-to-me research company.

I don’t bother downloading music myself, but I may or may not have occasionally downloaded a movie or two of dubious provenance, not that I actually ever have time to watch them! Having said that, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is playing in the background as I translate this article.
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I just read an article on IT Media about music sales figures for 2007, published by the RIAJ, the Recording Industry Ass. of Japan.

The total units sold (CD, DVD, VHS, vinyl, etc) for the year were down 8% compared to last year at 318.66 million disks, with revenue down 4% to 391.1 billion yen (over 3.5 billion US dollars), making an average price per disk (or tape, etc) of 1,227 yen, or just over 11 US dollars. Note that this includes both singles and albums. Why the average earnings per disk increased by 4% is not discussed.

Sales of audio-only recordings were down 10% to 266.82 million disks, with a 5% revenue drop to 333.3 billion yen. From that total CD sales were down 10% to 260.34 million disks (representing 97.5% of all sales) and revenue down 5% to 327.2 billion yen. Album sales dropped 11% to 198.65 million disks with revenue down 5% to 280.2 billion yen, making an average price per disk of 1,410 yen or almost US$13 per disk. The biggest loser was Western music, which saw a drop of 23% in unit sales, representing a 17% revenue cut.

On the other hand, music videos were up 6% to 51.85 million disks or tapes with revenue up only 2% to 57.8 billion yen, representing about a 4% drop in price per unit. From that figure, almost all the sales were of DVDs, up 6% to 51.53 million disks with revenue up 3% to 57.4 billion yen.

The sales figures for pay downloads are scheduled to be released towards the end of February.

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into portable digital musics players. Note that this survey is concerned with just hard disk or memory-based specialised music players; CDs and MDs are excluded, as are mobile phones with music playback capabilities, and PDAs.

Demographics

Over the 24th and 25th of October 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor pool who owned a portable digital music player successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample was male, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I don’t really think there is much new in this survey, but I present it just as another data point that ilustrates Apple’s strength in the Japanese marketplace.
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infoPLANT recently released the results of an opinion poll they conducted over three days at the start of September this year into the mobile music marketplace. This survey was conducted amongst members of their internet mointor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. The demographics targeted youth, with 1,000 people chosen to take part. They were split 500 male, 500 female. 250 of each sex were aged between 15 and 29, 250 between 30 and 39. 150 of each age group used only portable music players (not just digital players, but CD or MD, etc players too), 50 used only mobile phone music players, and 50 used both.

This is really a fascinating set of figures. Q1 indicating that people with both types of devices spend as much on pre-recorded media as the other two groups put together, and over double the combined totals on downloads.

Q2 shows the iPod’s image is unmatched in almost every respect, which puts a damper on people who talk about US companies being unable to compete against the local makers.

Q5 shows that in the digital audio world, unsurprisingly hard disk-based players are the most desired, but then devices with built-in memory are twice as popular as memory card-based devices! The reason for this is unclear, although I wonder if this is to do with people wanting iPod Shuffles and Nanos?
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into music habits. They interviewed 300 people from their internet monitor poll; exactly 50% were male, and 20.0% in each of their teens, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

I myself haven’t actually listened to music very actively lately, barring snippets on television or CDs that my wife plays. I’m sure if I were to add up the hours, I’ve probably actually listened to more live music than pre-recorded this year!

Looking at the pie chart, it’s interesting to note that people tend to stick with what they know: impulse purchases or trying new artists seems not too popular, perhaps related to physical sales being so popular when compared to digital downloaded even if the opportunity to listen to a preview is greater online.
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