Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Popular Are Anime Songs In Japan? [2019-05-29]
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Aca Vuksa
Posts: 643 Location: Nis, Serbia |
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I still think J-Pop music isn't getting popular and do not know if they are popular around the world nor they are domestically. Hence, western artists and K-pop artists have all entered the music market in Japan and released their songs to Japan and have gained fanbases there.
They do know if they are popular or not, i am not sure these J-pop artists will get popular n country or not. It all depends on how much music taste can be. |
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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40 albums reached number 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2018 how many can you name? then you have the 500+ songs between them and that's just number 1's of a single year.
Lets do a comparison in how many albums reached number 1 by decade 1968 - 12 1978 - 9 1988 - 11 1998 - 17 2008 - 38 2018 - 40 The days of even the biggest songs of the year having unanimous recognition are over because everyone now has easy access to music of their taste thanks to digital distribution. Sure no one in your family or who you go to school or work with may recognise what you listen too but that artist/album/song still has a larger global audience than ever before in history. |
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AkumaChef
Posts: 821 |
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I've been a fan of Japanese music for a long time (not just Anime-related). It's honestly difficult to get into as a foreigner because it's inaccessible. Japanese music acts rarely travel outside Japan. Their official websites, as well as those covering reviews and fan gossip, etc, are rarely available in anything other than Japanese. So it's honestly hard for a foreign fan to learn more about a Japanese act. In my case I'd end up hearing a given performer (usually due to anime songs), look up who they were from the credits, then either hope I can find their music online to check it out, or start buying albums at random and hope that they are up to the standard of what I happened across accidentally. Justin has mentioned multiple times that Japanese music acts often end up doing poorly in foreign markets simply because they don't promote themselves well enough. The Japanese agents feel that if they're going to sell records in foreign countries that's only possible with a big, formal, super-debut with lots of press coverage, etc. Of course nobody wants to pay for that sort of thing up front, so the result is that overseas promotion never happens. They refuse to take small marketing steps, instead hoping for one big break which never actually happens. I suspect that is a cultural thing. You can see the same basic idea with IJN Naval strategy in WWII: a refusal to commit forces, hoping to keep them in reserve for the big final battle which never came. I suspect the reason why many foreign music acts are so successful in Japan is that they are willing to take small marketing steps to become known there, whereas Japan's "all or nothing" strategy doesn't work so well. |
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#821235
Posts: 30 |
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Well shoot. I wonder where that leaves classic songs like Ai Wo Torimodose and the theme song of Lupin III.
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RegSuzaku
Posts: 273 Location: Ikebukuro |
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How does the questioner claim to be able to recognize a song from an anime that they've never seen as "anison"?
Also, if you're wondering what's "mainstream" in Japan? Here. That's all. (In terms of sales, Uta no Prince-sama and Hypnosis Mic are way more popular than other anison, but like... people rarely venture outside of their own genre here... See also the New Years Kohaku thing, though? I mean, not only anime song artists (like Yonezu) are on it, but they even had TouMyu this past year. And didn't they have Sarah Brightman singing a song from Attack on Titan...? |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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Masayuki Suzuki, of all people, had his first anime theme song this year, the OP to Kaguya-sama. Imagine someone with a career both group and solo akin to Lionel Richie, still touring but mostly on the basis of past hits, to imagine what this was like. Suzuki, AKA Martin, is old enough to have been in a enormously popular doo wop group that would be incredibly controversial outside Japan due to performing in blackface, then went on to be a chart topping soul and R&B singer. Japanese anime fans couldn't believe it when he sung the song.
SMAP got their start doing anime songs, for Hime-chan's Ribbon. L'arc en Ciel is another popular band to have had their (already popular) songs used for a number of anime. |
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pagan poor
Posts: 11 |
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Japan is the second largest music consumption country in the world. J-pop management doesn't seem to need to go outside of its borders to make the money they care to make.
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Aca Vuksa
Posts: 643 Location: Nis, Serbia |
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@AkumaChef
Yeah, this is because Japan music artists and record label don't cater their songs to an international audience. This is why J-Pop viewership on YT is small, and that on the news on AramaJapan and JPopasia are taking a too long to update its news announcement. This is compared to K-Pop, where news articles dedicated to K-Pop (AllKpop, Soompi, Koreaboo, etc) updates its articles news on every daily basis. In case for MV on YT, J-Pop record labels tend to upload simply short MVs and some MVs ended getting geoblocked because of the piracy concern as well. K-Pop, on the other hand, they make it music video more accessible to the international fans and even started to upload its old MV on its 4thK channel as well. Yes, i know that J-Pop doesn't tour internationally as much as K-Pop are. I know one thing is that when these J-pop artists do a concert tour internationally, they aren't crowded as much as K-Pop concerts are, which are more crowded. Also, an international fanbase of J-Pop is in minor decline, whose K-Pop international fanbases is growing. There are also some fans that we're once J-Pop fans before they switched to K-Pop after noticing their number of international presence as much as J-Pop don't to international presence. And if you like their J-Pop, try and use this site: https://natalie.mu/music P.S. I am hoping ANN can cover up more about K-Pop and K-Drama and turn ANN into an East Asian stuff (Chinese animation like Donghua, C-Drama, C-Pop/Mandopop) more like an asian news like V-Pop, Thai Pop, Q-Pop etc. 
(sorry for my poor English) |
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non8noninfinite
Posts: 21 |
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I’ve been in Japan for a wewk in November 2018.
When I went for lunch to a ramen shop on the radio I could hear Kimi no sei by the peggies (ButaYarou OP) It’s such a catchy tune I expected nothing less from it. Not sure how it ranked though. I must mention that the charts of most sung songs at karaoke could be the closer report of what is popular in Japan. I hear that Kana Nishino (appears on billboards), ikimonogakari are favorite. |
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Doc
 Posts: 86 Location: United States |
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NHK World TV app runs a show called, Songs of Tokyo which showcases popular artists and each year at New Years they have the traditional music shows played on Japanese stations which highlight popular artists of the year. The app is free.
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omiya
 Posts: 1838 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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The most popular karaoke songs include a lot of anime songs. If you have friends in Japan who sing karaoke semi-seriously you can find people who do very good covers of artists like Nana Mizuki, GranRodeo, May'n... |
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FukuchiChiisaia
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That's barely even Japanese otaku culture anymore, there are a ton of site that have them. There's no need to clutter ANN with them. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Oh. That kind of makes me sad. I was under the impression that there were a lot more crossover between mainstream Japanese pop and anime-related Japanese pop, at least in terms of OP/ED artists...
What about bands/artists like Bump of Chicken, Hyde and Aimer? Aren't they popular outside otaku circles? |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2589 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I'd imagine that anime theme songs were more popular with the "mainstream" crowd back during the 90s, as the idea of using mainstream "pop" music for anime themes didn't start until the mid-to-late 80s, but didn't become a major thing until the 90s, and late-night time slots didn't really become the primary way anime is aired until roughly 2003/2004. Therefore, most anime in the 90s aired on more "traditional" time slots, like morning or prime time, while at the same time a lot of anime OPs & EDs were simply new songs from big names or up-&-comers.
T.M. Revolution's rise to stardom, for example, is often attributed to "Heart of Sword Yoake Mae", which was used as an ED theme for Rurouni Kenshin, while Fence of Defence's "Haruka ~Sailing for My Dream~", which was the OP theme to B't X, was apparently a giant hit, and I'm sure having it be heard on a weekly program that aired on a "normal" time slot for half a year kept it relevant in people's minds. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1117 Location: Puget Sound |
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No, thank you. |
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