For those not in the know, Spotify is an amazing service which allows you to stream music through the net for free, in exchange for listening to a 30 second advert every 30 mins or so. It’s a fantastic program which is pretty much flawless, and it’s allowed me to discover and enjoy new music a lot quicker than navigating horrible band Myspace pages to listen to a grainy 30 second sample. But why is there no Japanese music on it?
Not only that, but the program has a huge database of music – in it’s most recent update at time of writing,
nearly 69,000 tracks were added. I keep testing it with more obscure bands, and so far it hasn’t failed to impress me. Ok, you’re going to be disappointed if you’re looking for electro-death-hip-trance-core from the Bermuda Triangle.
The Spotify Client
But something the system is sorely lacking in is Japanese music. Now I know I’ve made jokes about Japanese music before, but it’s a real shame people can’t really get hold of it via Spotify. I did a search using Last.FM’s top listed Japanese artists to see who was or wasn’t represented. The results weren’t great;
Dir En Grey – Two most recent albums, most recent single. Good!
Asian Kung-Fu Generation – Nothing
L’Arc~En~Ciel – Most recent album.
Ayumi Hamasaki – Nothing
The Pillows – Nothing
Gackt – Nothing
Hikaru Utada – 6+ Albums & Singles! Hurrah!
BoA – Nothing
Namie Amuro – Nothing
YUI – Nothing
Ok, so maybe it’s not as bad as I made out, but you can see we’re still missing a huge amount of music – so my plea to the Spotify team is to solve whatever record label issues are going on and get these bands onto the system. As I said before, I am totally and utterly impressed with everything – but my joy will triple if I can finally listen to screeching j-Pop. Wait, what?!
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If they add more Japanese music it would be awesome! I would definitely start paying for it if they did. I mostly use Spotify when I’m not connected to my external hard drive where my library is located and to preview full songs instead of 30 seconds on the iTunes Store. But if they were to add more Japanese music and get rid of the regional blocks I’d definitely pay for it. But I don’t see that happening any time soon, Apple would have done that ages ago if they could.
Spotify definetly needs more mainstream japanese music. It’s a shame there isn’t more.
yonasu: I believe some of the problem is that Spotify doesn’t have a branch in Asia yet. Everything is done from their two centres in Europe and America. I’m guessing a Chinese or possibly Japanese center is probably on it’s way, hopefully it’s easier to get legality to stream music from Asia when you have a base there.
ラウリ: Yeah, I was honestly quite suprised at how little music there was, even the hugely popular stuff.
I think there are too few people who listen to Japanese music and the majority of us are native Japanese people who rarely use foreign sites like this. Sad, really.
Beena: You’re probably right, but I know Spotify are trying to launch globally, so I imagine スポチファイ or something will appear one day :D
Actually, Dearest by Ayumi Hamasaki is on there, it’s just that the artist is in japanese and is under “love you! project” because it’s from an anime..
Rachel: Wasn’t aware of that. Still, her name is in the database but none of her music has been linked to it, so people who want to just listen to her music can’t.
As far as Japanese music that was also released overseas goes, there are albums by Pizzicato Five, Cornelius and Polysics on there. I know that Spotify isn’t available in Japan yet (if ever) so that doesn’t help, but it would be almost too amazing to have all my favourite Japanese music on international streaming.
Gareth: Yeah, it’s a shame. I can see it working in Japan though, if they can crack the big labels. Time to check out Pizzicato Five, Cornelius and Polysics for me :D
Yeah i love the concept of spotify, one of my friends introduced me, and i thought ill download that see what its like, however im a known listener to much japanese music and to my disppear everything i tried was just “no results” i was like..huh? its how i ended up here cause you all obviously have this same problem i do.
So yeah i would also like to say it is a shame there isnt much japanese music on, and would be so much greater with some.
:)
Dave: I agree. Spotify is actually not available in Japan yet so I guess they need to do a lot of legal work to get the service over there, but I imagine if they succeed there, a lot more music will become available.
No big loss, Ive lived in Japan for 4 years and have not heard one band I would remotely be interested in.
Im hoping I will hear at least an average band one day.
Max: What sort of music are you into?
You can now upload music and share it by going to spotify playlists. You can type that into Google. Not sure if there are any of those copyright infringement.
Right guys, back again. I found a site that might well be the answer to our prayers – Grooveshark. It’s a web-based alternative to Spotify, but here’s the kicker… they’ve got Japanese music. Oodles of it. So far I’ve found Yellow Magic Orchestra, Gackt, Morning Musume, Aya Matsuura, X Japan…. LOADS. I can’t believe it. Check it out NOW!!!