Japan: leading on-demand music streaming services

According to an online survey conducted in October 2020 among users of subscription music streaming services, the most used service was Amazon Prime Music with 569 respondents. Amazon Prime Music was followed by Spotify and Apple Music.

Increasing adoption of streaming services

Music streaming services have become increasingly adopted by Japanese consumers in recent years, as the entry of several foreign companies into the Japanese market in the mid-2010s has spurred on the competition between service providers. Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Amazon Prime Music were all released in 2015. During the same year, LINE Corporation, the operator of Japan’s most widely used instant messenger, started to offer LINE Music, and AWA Co. Ltd., an internet company that is part of the media business of CyberAgent, Inc., released its AWA streaming service. Spotify then followed in 2016 and YouTube Music in 2018. As a result of these developments, the subscription-based streaming sales revenue of online music has shown strong growth rates in recent years.

Music spending of Japanese consumers

Survey data show that subscription-based music streaming services have become one of the most commonly used methods of listening to music among Japanese consumers. At the same time, many people use YouTube and other freely available sources in order to listen to songs. While the Japanese music market is one of the largest in the world, the willingness to spend money on music is not distributed equally throughout the population. As one survey shows, the share of people who spend money on music is considerably higher among people in their 20s than among older age cohorts. A breakdown of average consumer expenditures on music shows that CDs and other physical goods constitute the largest categories when it comes to individual expenditures. One reason for this can be found in marketing strategies that are related to Japan’s idol culture, which tend to sell CDs with included tickets that allow people to vote in contests or to interact with their favorite artists at events.