Unspoken agreement, unknown facts: displays at record shops

I always wonder if being secretive creates anything good and worth. In general, Japanese people tend to keep anything bad secret to keep the society work peacefully. Whatever happens behind - even if it's very ugly - if it looks great on the surface then it's fine. You don't want to know what is happening behind that. It's unspoken agreement. It's everywhere in the Japanese society. The Guardian's "Turning Japanese"(www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/11/turning-japanese-music-moguls) describes it "As is often unfortunately the case in Japanese society, people will simply find it easier to turn a blind eye" - yes, that's true.

The other day, I found on twitter that a record shop guy criticising that labels provide financial support to big record shop chains. You might not get what I am talking about. There are big record shop chains in Japan such as Tower Records, HMV and Tsutaya. Unlike record shops in the UK, there are a lot of POPs, recommendation notes and listening spots in these record shops in Japan as you can see below:

 
At the first glance, it looks really DIY made by staff members of the record shop. However, in some cases, record labels pay for obtaining display spaces like the one above. Or record chains offer "a package" of such (e.g. a set of display spaces + listening spots). Please note this isn't applied to all cases. This sort of display can often be done without any money when a record buyer of a shop really want to recommend and sell a certain record. In particular, no money seems to be involved in the process of selecting records for general listening spots as far as I'm concerned. It simply depends on what records buyers want to put on.

Back to the story of the man on twitter, some told me that the fact that record labels pay for such thing isn't necessarily known by general music fans. It's like "Why the man tweeted about that?". I would say "maybe no it isn't necessarily". However, to me there are also no reason why the people shouldn't be informed about it apart from the speculation that labels and shops want these displays look like very DIY and no "bad things(=money)" involved in.

This blog-wise, I'll try to write about and thing of what I know about the music biz in Japan as much as I could. There are too many unknown facts about it. I believe the Japanese music industry goes to nowhere unless people are well informed about how the industry works. It was the primary aim of starting the blog. I've already got a Japanese music business blog (Green Sound from Glasgow: anno69.blog16.fc2.com/) for the Japanese so this blog is for people overseas.

I'll keep you posted.

Snoop Dogg: who could know about that?

Snoop Dogg was supposed to come to Japan at this weekend and do several live performances across the country. However, now it's cancelled due to performance fee unpaid. Snoop explains in the video beneath that all payment to him should be done before all the Japan dates but the promoter Positive Production didn't make it.

So here is the brilliant video:


It seems that his Japanese DJ friend @dj2high put Japanese subtitles on and uploaded the video to youtube on behalf of Snoop (great work!).

This thing is brilliant. In this sort of case, how a promoter explains the reason of an artist's cancellation is "due to unforeseen circumstance...". This is what Positive Production did as you can read here. However, the video was uploaded and the real reason was revealed. What happened to Snoop and what he has then brilliantly done should be openly discussed as it's a rare that such matter is revealed. Nevertheless, the most of the Japanese music media and music journalists haven't mentioned it as the promoter hasn't revealed it. They just don't want to get in trouble. Japanese music journalism is dying really. So I hope music fans who watched the video all understand it's a business matter and when a promoter says "due to unforeseen circumstance", it means something.

From a label point of view, the video is also nice as he explains that it's a promoter - booking agency matter. Mechanism of booking an artist for a gig is unique here in Japan (I'll explain if I have a chance to do so). Partly because of that I think many Japanese music fans believe that artist's record label in Japan is heavily involved in a concert deal but it's not. That's why his Japanese label EMI surprisingly put the youtube link on Snoop's feature webpage here, which no music online media did! To me it feels like EMI gets angry about the promoter's failure so that put the link...


I hope Snoop will find a better promoter and come to Japan in the near future.

*edit (10/10)
Here is a response from Positive Production:

Source: www.positiveproduction.com/cansel.html
Well, it seems a problem between the promoter and Snoop's agent. Is it going to court? Nobody knows...

Turning Japanese (from guardian.co.uk)

A number of goers came to see Jonsi at Summer Sonic 2010.

Have you ever read a string of articles called "Turning Japanese" on a British broadsheet The Guardian's website? It finished a year ago but it's still available on the website. Here is the link to: www.guardian.co.uk/music/series/turningjapanese

Some of the articles cut into the heart of problems that the Japanese music scene faces. However, as far as I read, the author of this Alex Hoban seemed to slightly misunderstand what the music scene is like and what people there think about...

Anyway,  the beneath is my favourite one from the Turning Japanese series:

 - Turning Japanese: The dark side of touring - The Guardian (21/1/2010)

All bands, who I worked with, seemed to enjoy their stay in Japan really but Late of the Pier reportedly was not the case. Tight schedule and strict time keeping. Unfortunate accident happened. Tiredness from a long-lasting world tour. Oh, poor them...

With contributions from people who are involved in the Japanese live music scene, this article sums up the things that people who want to tour in Japan have to go through:

• High cost of touring in Japan (currency rate + bands are charged high fees by venues)
• difficulties in booking (booking managers are not interested in overseas bands who don't speak Japanese. I think they don't need them as the Japanese live scene thrives enough without international acts)
• Cultural differences

They're all true as far as I'm concerned. Although I'd disagree with some opinions mentioned in the string of articles, Turning Japanese is a good introduction of the Japanese music industry (but just an introduction)..

I will look at the live music a bit more deeper next time.

Carl Barat: what we can learn from his stay in Japan?

This week was mad. Carl Barat of The Libertines came to Japan for promo and special acoustic performance for Topshop/Topman opening party in Shinjuku. These two events themselves were not something important here now. But the fact that he added a very intimate in-store live performance in Tower Shinjuku to his tight schedule WAS a big thing. It's fair to say that his forthcoming solo album won't be as popular as The Libertines' records. However, it was very after the band's reunion gigs at Reading/Leeds Festival in England. 80,000 festival goers appeared to watch the special performance but now he'd be to play in front of only 300-ish people in Shinjuku. So many of the band's devotees in Japan now paid attention to him.

What happened then? The 7th floor of Tower Shinjuku was jam-packed...looked crazy in a good way. Please watch this:


I was there and remember this young man singing along with a big smile. To me, it was great to know that there are still these crazed music fans here in the international music sciene in Japan.

Carl was great as an artist as well as as a person. As far as I saw as one of his fans, he always took care his fans and wanted to play live for them. That attitude is what all artists should have. This story clearly represents his attitude: after performing at the closed Topshop party, he brought his acoustic guitar with him, left the party and played 4 songs for his devotees who were waiting for him outside of the shop. That's was genuinely amazing. As watching him playing there, I was thinking why such an exciting thing never happens in Japan. One said to me that this sort of thing was too risky so that we should get him stop doing it. Although I get the point, I believe it was not that risky and dangerous in this one of the most safe country in the world...

Anyway, here the video of Carl playing in the street after the party is. Hope you enjoy it:.