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Streaming in Japan - statistics & facts

Online streaming services in Japan have increased considerably in popularity in recent years. The market size of paid video streaming services has grown strongly since the mid-2010s, reaching a value of 423 billion Japanese yen for the first time in 2021. The sales revenue of paid music streaming services jumped from just 23.8 billion yen in 2017 to almost 64 billion yen in 2021. Despite a high internet penetration rate, Japan was comparably slow to embrace this new form of content distribution, as Japanese producers tended to rely on traditional distribution channels and physical media longer than their counterparts in other countries. The current shift to online distribution can be seen as a phase of transitioning that can also be observed in other parts of the media industry in Japan.

Video streaming

The high growth rates of subscription-based video and music streaming in recent years stem in part from increased competition in the market. While free streaming services such as YouTube and Nico Nico Douga have been an integral part of the Japanese video streaming landscape since the mid-2000s, subscription-based video streaming initially did not take off to the same degree as it did in Western countries. Although Hulu has been active on the Japanese video-on-demand market since 2011, it was the arrival of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in 2015 that marked the beginning of a more severe competition for local players. Today these include, among others, U-Next, Abema, TVer, Gyao!, NTT Docomo’s dTV and dAnimeStore, Fuji TV’s FOD Premium, and Paravi. Disney entered the market as another strong contender by rolling out its Disney Deluxe service in early 2019, which was rebranded as Disney+ in June 2020. While survey data indicate that Amazon Prime Video is the leading service among paid video streaming users, it was estimated that Netflix holds the highest market share among subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services based on user fees. According to a ranking of the most popular SVOD genres, Japanese consumers show a preference for Japanese and foreign movies ahead of other types of content, such as anime or Japanese television drama series.

Music streaming

The developments in the music streaming market followed a similar pattern. Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Prime Music entered the Japanese music streaming market in 2015, followed by Spotify in 2016 and YouTube Music in 2018. Initially, music streaming services suffered from a limited selection of songs, as many Japanese record labels saw streaming as a threat to highly profitable physical sales. Due to the relatively high fragmentation of the Japanese music market, operators of streaming services also had to negotiate with numerous companies over licensing agreements. The reluctant stance of the labels has been changing in recent years, as a huge but shrinking CD market makes alternative revenue streams necessary. Consequently, streaming revenues increased and overtook downloads for the first time in 2018. As a breakdown of digital music sales by format shows, streaming now accounts for the lion’s share of digital music sales. Domestic players in the Japanese music streaming market include LINE Music, AWA, Uta Pass, d-Hits, and RecMusic, among others.
This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.
Published by Statista Research Department, Jan 19, 2023

Key insights

On-demand video streaming market size
423bn JPY
Leading subscription video-on-demand service based on market share
Netflix
Sales revenue of subscription-based music streaming
63.8bn JPY
Get more insights

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Leading paid video streaming services among users in Japan as of May 2022

Video Streaming

Most commonly used paid video streaming services Japan 2022

Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) market share in Japan in 2022, by service

Video Streaming

SVOD market share Japan 2022, by service

Most popular streaming songs in Japan in 2022, based on number of streamings (in millions)

Music

Leading streaming music Japan 2022, based on number of streamings

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