Anyone who does is homework will quickly find out that believe it or not Japan has the 2nd largest music industry in the world after the USA. Yes Japan manage to surpass the UK's music market in size!
But somehow Japanese music has stayed almost entirely domestic. Only a few names like Ringo Sheena, Puffy AmiYumi , and Hironobu Kageyama has gotten any overseas market and even then mostly within Asia and almost entirely in very niche areas as shown in the last name being involved almost exclusively in anime opening and endings and Ringo mostly consumed by rock and metal fans. The only singers that really manage to somewhat penetrate mainstream American culture Puffy AmiYumi and thats because of their cross-promotion with animated TV show with a major network rally advertising them aggressively during the run of the show.
As someone who is a participant of the Hallyu Wave right now along with pop media from the Sinosphere and obviously the Cool Japan movement, the scene is very different with the Korean music industry. You just have to see the huge success of BTS world wide along with tons of other bands (and not to mention the attempts to promote in America by the Korean music industry during the late 2000s) to see a gigantic difference in international sales.
Even outside of the current Korean fad...... Take a look at Chinese artists like Anita Mui and how their stuff manage to remain popular with the Chinese diaspora and other countries outside of China that speaks different languages int he Sinosphere (or in the case of Anita Mui, outside of Hong Kong).
Where as with a lot of the Japanese diaspora, they're stuck listening to music of their own generation if not they completely assimilated to their new country to only listen to local musics. In many cases, its not even the music of their new country (like say current stuff in Germany's scene like Capital Bra) but exclusively English music I witnessed diaspora outside of Anglo countries listen to even living in a non-English speaking place.
So I'm wondering why the J-music industry esp JPop fail to penetrate overseas? And not just that but even current stuff tends not to be consumed by the diaspora including first gen immigrants moving out of Japan who exclusively listens to Japanese artists only (but not the newer stuff)?
But somehow Japanese music has stayed almost entirely domestic. Only a few names like Ringo Sheena, Puffy AmiYumi , and Hironobu Kageyama has gotten any overseas market and even then mostly within Asia and almost entirely in very niche areas as shown in the last name being involved almost exclusively in anime opening and endings and Ringo mostly consumed by rock and metal fans. The only singers that really manage to somewhat penetrate mainstream American culture Puffy AmiYumi and thats because of their cross-promotion with animated TV show with a major network rally advertising them aggressively during the run of the show.
As someone who is a participant of the Hallyu Wave right now along with pop media from the Sinosphere and obviously the Cool Japan movement, the scene is very different with the Korean music industry. You just have to see the huge success of BTS world wide along with tons of other bands (and not to mention the attempts to promote in America by the Korean music industry during the late 2000s) to see a gigantic difference in international sales.
Even outside of the current Korean fad...... Take a look at Chinese artists like Anita Mui and how their stuff manage to remain popular with the Chinese diaspora and other countries outside of China that speaks different languages int he Sinosphere (or in the case of Anita Mui, outside of Hong Kong).
Where as with a lot of the Japanese diaspora, they're stuck listening to music of their own generation if not they completely assimilated to their new country to only listen to local musics. In many cases, its not even the music of their new country (like say current stuff in Germany's scene like Capital Bra) but exclusively English music I witnessed diaspora outside of Anglo countries listen to even living in a non-English speaking place.
So I'm wondering why the J-music industry esp JPop fail to penetrate overseas? And not just that but even current stuff tends not to be consumed by the diaspora including first gen immigrants moving out of Japan who exclusively listens to Japanese artists only (but not the newer stuff)?
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