NEWS

MUMBAI: The Record Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) has officially released the RIAJ Yearbook 2008 of its annual roundup of sales, figures, statistics and trends from the previous year.

Total music sales for 2007 in Japan came to JPY 466 billion (US $4.66 billion). While CD/DVD sales declined four per cent from the previous year, digital downloads jumped up 41 per cent to JPY 75.5 billion (US $755 million), comprising 16 per cent of all music sold in Japan. Mobile downloads accounted for JPY 68 billion (US $680 million), more than 90 per cent of the total figure for digital sales. Within the mobile sector, full-track downloads showed the strongest growth, rising 91 per cent over the previous year.

The strengths and weaknesses of the market were revealed which showed that CD sales continue to decrease for the ninth straight year. However, total recorded music sales are up for the third year running which revealed a strong growth from the mobile sector and still accounts for the bulk of digital music sales in Japan. As expected, mobile digital downloads in Japan still continue to thoroughly dominate the market despite the popularity of the iPod and iTunes Music Store.

Mobile is still the fastest and most natural way for the Japanese youth to find new music content. Additionally, the mobile sites run by Label Mobile (a joint venture of major record labels) have a far more complete catalog of J-Pop music and encourage users to make spontaneous purchases, instead of waiting to download content from peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

The RIAJ estimates despite such initiatives mobile-based piracy is increasingly becoming a problem for the Japanese biz.According to calculations more than 400 million mobile tracks were illegally downloaded in Japan last year, mostly from anonymous BBS-type mobile sites.

RIAJ has recently embarked on a series of TV ad campaigns featuring major Japanese artists warning their fans not to use illegal mobile sites for downloading music.