Paid video streaming market size Japan 2018-2023
The Japanese video streaming market
Japan was comparably slow to embrace paid streaming services, both in the case of video and music streams. Hulu, which was founded as a joint venture between 21st Century Fox, Disney, and Comcast, established its operations in Japan in September 2011, but its Japan business was eventually sold to Nippon Television in 2014. The service initially suffered from high pricing and a neglect of local content that could have appealed to Japanese audiences. Amazon started Amazon Instant Video in November 2013, which was then followed by Amazon Prime Video in 2015 as Netflix also started its operations in Japan. Both companies today rank among the leading SVOD services in Japan, next to services such as U-Next, DAZN, and Disney+.
Market prospects
The paid video streaming market is several times larger than the subscription-based music streaming market, which reached a value of about 85 billion yen in 2023. While real-time television broadcasting continues to be the most popular form of video consumption in Japan, the share of people who use paid online video streaming services steadily increased in recent years and is expected to grow further.