世論 What Japan Thinks

Following on from Disneyland, another big summer event is attending a festival. This ranking survey from goo Ranking looked at what sorts of things tend to happen at music festivals.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 9th of July 2013 1,096 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were female, 24.4% in their teens, 25.2% in their twenties, 24.8% in their thirties, and 25.6% in their forties; there was no-one older than 49 in this sample. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Here’s a bunch of Santa Clauses playing with balls from about the only Japan music festival I can name, Summersonic:

I’ve never been to a music festival either in Japan or elsewhere, so I cannot comment much; all I know is that Glastonbury usually ends up as a mud bath.
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Here’s a quick filler survey from iShare, looking at wind instruments.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 27th of July 2010 474 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.2% of the sample were male, 33.1% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, and 36.5% in their forties.

I always thought the clarinet was a cool instrument for women, but for me, there was no real wind instrument I wanted to learn, although the shape of a French horn was and still is alluring!

Not surprisingly, the sax comes out tops in attractiveness for women, but men prefer the flute. I wonder if that figure includes women who are good with the shakuhachi (Japanese flute)? I’ll leave you to Google that one.
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I’ve never heard the term music SNS before, although now that I read what it is I understand what they are referring to. The survey on this subject was from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

On the 14th of June 2010 300 members of the iBridge research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.7% of the sample were male, 10.3% in their twenties, 34.3% in their thirties, 34.7% in their forties, 15.0% in their fifties, and 5.7% in their sixties.

I like music, but I’ve just fallen out of the habit of listening to it, so music SNSs are even less appealing than straightforward SNSs! The last time I listened to music off my own bat was this rather entertaining number:

Research results

First of all, seven people disliked music to some degree, so they were eliminated and the remaining 293 asked the following.

Q1A: Do you like listening, singing, or performing music? (Sample size=293)

Listening only	57.0%
Singing only	3.8%
Performing only	1.7%
Both listening and singing	26.6%
Both listening and performing	2.7%
Both singing and performing	0.7%
Listening, singing and performing	7.5%

Another way of looking at the data is this:

Q1B: Do you like listening, singing, or performing music? (Sample size=300)

	Votes	Percentage
Listening	275	91.7%
Singing	113	37.7%
Performing	37	12.3%
None of them	7	2.3%

Q2A: Do you participate in a music SNS? (Sample size=293)

Yes (to SQ)	1.7%
No	51.5%
Don’t know what it is	46.8%

Adding in the music haters from above we get:

Q2B: Do you participate in a music SNS? (Sample size=300)

Yes (to SQ)	1.7%
No	50.3%
Don’t know what it is	45.7%
Don’t like music	2.3%

Q2SQ: Which music SNSs do you participate in? (Sample size=5, multiple answer)

MySpace	4
Uta-uga	1
Uta-suki	1
last.fm	0
Natalie	0
Jamming Music Station	0
MenboScape	0
Gosnavi	0
syncl	0
yanpon.com	0
AngesParty	0
Other	1

The sample size above is too small to make percentages meaningful.

Last year I barely saw any surveys regarding music consumption, but this year there seems to have been a decent number of them, with the latest offering being from goo Research via japan.internet.com looking at how people obtain music.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 14th of May 2010 1,088 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample were male, 17.7% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 15.6% in their forties, 15.3% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

The question Q1SQ1 is a bit difficult to interpret, especially the first answer that talks about using a specialised tool – I don’t think many of the commercial services offer free downloads in any significant quantity, so I wonder if the figure includes people unwittingly using P2P software?
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As I read mostly English-language web sites and having heard stories such as 40% of US purchases being bigital, when I came across this survey from Media Interactive, reported on by japan.internet.com, into music, I was quite surprised to see the data for Japan, especially since this is an internet-based sample that would be expected to have a bias towards online shopping.

Demographics

Over the 1st and 2nd of March 2010 exactly 1,000 regular music listeners completed an internet-based questionnaire. 50.6% of the sample were male, 0.3% in their teens, 15.8% in their twenties, 30.7% in their thirties, 28.9% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 8.1% in their sixties.

In Q3 I’m quite surprised that radio is grouped into the “other” category, and although streaming sites seem to be popular in the UK and the USA, they don’t get a mention here – do they in fact exist in Japan? Additionally, the number of freetards seems comparatively rather low.
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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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