Leading streaming music Japan 2022, based on number of streamings

"W/X/Y" by Tani Yuuki was the most popular streaming song in Japan in 2022, with more than 328 million streamings recorded from November 2021 to November 2022. It was followed by Yuuri's "Betelgeuse" and Saucy Dog's "Cinderella Boy."

Music streaming in Japan

Music streaming has become more and more popular among Japanese consumers in recent years. Survey data show that YouTube is now the most commonly used method of listening to music in Japan. At the same time, the increasing adoption of on-demand music streaming services has led to considerable growth of subscription-based music streaming sales revenue. The competition in the market increased noticeably with the entry of several foreign competitors since the mid-2010s. Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Amazon Prime Music all started offering their services in 2015, the same year that the major domestic services LINE Music and AWA were introduced to the market. Spotify followed in 2016, and YouTube Music in 2018.

Streaming and the Japanese music market

The increasing popularity of music streaming is reshaping the Japanese music industry, which relied strongly on CD sales for a long time. Japanese music companies were initially reluctant to embrace streaming because of the high profitability of physical sales, which were propped up with the help of tie-ins, such as tickets for meet-and-greet events. A breakdown of the music sales revenue by format shows that streams now comprise a considerable proportion of the market. Due to this development, streaming consumption is becoming an additional factor for measuring the popularity of songs next to CD sales.