世論 What Japan Thinks

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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goo Research recently published the results of some detailed investigation into the use of portable music players. Over four days at the end of March they interviewd by means of a private internet questionnaire 2,183 members of their monitor group. The respondents were 48.2% male, with 19.1% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 19.7% in their thirties, 21.2% in their forties, 16.6% in their fifties, 4.8% in their sixties, and 1.2% seventy years old or more.

Note that MP3 player refers to either memory based or hard-disk based players only like iPods or D-Snaps, not CD players that support MP3 file formats. I am not sure under what category phones with music playback support are recorded; perhaps they are “Other”?

I’ve recently been testing a Sony NW-A3000 but I couldn’t really recommend it to anyone. The 20 Gb hard disk is nice, of course, but the PC-based software is unwieldy to say the least, as is the player software. Pet hates include that random shuffle seems not as random as it should be, doing Pause then Play will result in a one-second or so skip, and recharging the player resets the player back to the first track. I’ve heard that the iPod balances out the volume, but the Sony doesn’t, so I have to keep fiddling with the sound levels. On the other hand, I did manage to find an almost complete archive of Just A Minute, but on the downside I perhaps scare the other train passengers as I try to stifle laughs during my commute.
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