Namie Amuro's Whole Discography on AM June 16

[Ryusei 61,025]

It's all there now   I'm living. 

[Nero 860]

4 minutes ago, Ryusei said:

It's all there now   I'm living. 

I'm very surprised that they didn't put her SUITE CHIC era up but I'm glad international fans can listen to her music

[Grace 354]

On 6/14/2019 at 7:17 PM, Evan Peters said:

there's so many Japanese artists who don't have their discography on any streaming services. anyone know the reason why? 

The physical market, while declining, is still huge there.  And their record labels keep driving the physical market with gimmicks like multiple versions of releases, ect.  They also have their own local digital markets (eg. avex's mu-mo for cellphones iirc) that are extremely popular as well.  I think streaming is slowly starting to creep in, but it's not the phenomenon it is here in the west and Japanese record labels try to keep it that way.  

Despite being the second largest music market in the world, they run super differently from the US market its kinda fascinating.

[Ryusei 61,025]

13 hours ago, Brian Ryan said:

Still, think she was too young to retire, but I love _GENIC and Girl Talk and some others.

one of the reasons was that her vocal chords were deteriorating and I guess she didn't wanna be not able to sing some of her own songs and ended it on a high note while having a good image. 

[RAMROD 108,369]

Very good. I never understand why many of Japanese artists, or their labels, are always not keen with spreading their music worldwide, to the point of only uploads short version of their MV on YouTube, instead of the full song, aside from select few and most of the indies acts. Perhaps they think their local fans can sustain their career, but it will much better if they got even bigger influence beyond. I wish J-Pop could be much bigger, if only they were open to do what K-Pop industry did to their artists.

So I am very much supporting this kind of moves from Japanese artists, the more the merrier!

[RAMROD 108,369]

13 hours ago, Brian Ryan said:

Still, think she was too young to retire, but I love _GENIC and Girl Talk and some others.

 

3 minutes ago, Ryusei said:

one of the reasons was that her vocal chords were deteriorating and I guess she didn't wanna be not able to sing some of her own songs and ended it on a high note while having a good image. 

That is actually smart tbh, retire while you are still on top of the game, and not getting the stuffs that happened to Ayumi Hamasaki. Which is quite sad honestly.

[Ryusei 61,025]

7 minutes ago, RAMROD said:

 

That is actually smart tbh, retire while you are still on top of the game, and not getting the stuffs that happened to Ayumi Hamasaki. Which is quite sad honestly.

Ayu will not retire until she is fully deaf. She is that kind of person. Somehow admirable, somehow tragic. And with one of the greatest discographies in all of J-Pop.  But yeah it would have been smart of her to retire after the A cirque de minuit tour, it was truly great and got positive reception + miraculously good vocals for that point in her career.

About the distribution stuff, Japan is still the second-largest music industry and a lot of changes happened within the last like 5 years. SO many more acts have full music videos on youtube, it's honestly a minority at this point that doesnt. But I guess companies like Johnny's and all the 48/46 group stuff is that CDs are quite pricey tbh and selling like 300k physical singles that each cost about 15$ (in case of a popular johnny's group e.g.) that is gonna be WAY more money than when a lot of these fans would just stream instead. So I think thats mainly why some of the big idol people are hesitant about streaming and even digital downloads.. BUT as I said there has been a lot of development and I hope other big companies like SONY will be following suit. Nishino Kana and Kato Miliyah are 2 of my  absolute favorite singers  but only fractions of their discographies are on streaming... The change is slow but it is happening. A lot of people in their teens in japan now use streaming services like LINE Music and i suppose also Apple Music and Spotify.