Leading streaming songs Japan 2023, based on number of streams

"Idol" by Yoasobi was the most popular streaming song in Japan in 2023. The opening song for the popular anime series "Oshi no Ko" was streamed more than 527 million times from November 2022 to November 2023. It was followed by Official Hige Dandism's "Subtitle" and Vaundy's "Kaiju no hanauta."

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 music sales revenue by format shows that streaming is now one of the largest segments of the market. Due to this development, streaming consumption is also becoming an important factor for measuring the popularity of songs in addition to CD sales.