In an effort to better understand some of the inner-workings of the music business, I’m speaking with distributors, managers and record labels who are working to promote Japanese musicians abroad. There are a whole host of reasons why some bands succeed, some bands fail, and some bands never even get a chance to try. Nathan Reaven was kind enough to offer some very detailed insights into the workings of HearJapan.com and the music business as a whole.
Nathan Reaven is the President of HearJapan, a site that offers digital downloads of Japanese artists to an international audience. HearJapan launched in February 2008 and currently has 2500 different titles available. Nathan counts Qomolangma Tomato, Soutaisei Riron, Michita, sgt., Cro-Magnon and nhhmbase among his favourite bands.
First off, could you tell me a little about yourself?
My name is Nathan Reaven. I grew up in New York and was given the opportunity to go on an exchange program in Japan while I was a high school student. I studied in a small city in northern Japan called Hachinohe. I had always been a huge fan of music growing up, but when I lived in Japan I was exposed to a whole new world of amazing music and also played in a few bands while I was there. When I came back to America, I made it my goal to expose as many people as I could to all of the awesome music I had found in Japan; most of it completely unheard of in the US. This passion to get as many people as I could to listen to the music was what led me to later start up HearJapan.
What are your most successful titles?
When we first started some of our more successful titles were new visual kei releases like D’espairsRay – Brilliant. Recently genres like chiptune and vocaloid have been incredibly popular. We have a recommendation system on HearJapan called Hot Picks which sell quite well. These are releases that the staff of HearJapan liked so much that they wanted others to enjoy the music as well. We don’t let the music companies interfere in our recommendation system so many of the items that we recommend sell consistently well. We keep “Hot Picks” untainted from label influence so that the truly great items get the spotlight shone on them.
Do you rely on a few hit records for most of your income or do you rely on having a large number of records that sell smaller quantities each?
The latter. Japan has such a wide range of diverse music that we get customers from all over the world who are looking for different types of music. Illegal downloads also play a large role in this as mostly popular releases are affected by them. Most of what HearJapan does is introducing new music to exploring music fans. So whatever they find on the site is usually quite random, which is reflected in our sales.
What was your motivation for starting HearJapan?
To let people buy Japanese music without any hassle. I thought the CD import distribution model was flawed in big ways. The price of a Japanese CD is extremely expensive as it is. Then you throw in shipping costs, exchange rate, a long wait, cracked CDs, etc. and it just simply wasn’t worth it.
I, like all fans of Japanese music, wanted to see a Japanese music distribution system that would do the following:
- Get the music to the fans overseas on the same day it is released in Japan.
- Have the music priced at a comparable rate to that of the country in which it is sold.
- Be convenient to locate, purchase and get information about.
- Have absolutely no country or territory restrictions–available to everyone.
- Introduce new artists to people through English information.
Why Japanese music? What is it that drives you to work with Japanese bands in particular, instead of working with American artists or other english-speaking musicians?
I feel there is a lot of great bands here that are completely unrepresented and unknown abroad. I am someone that also supports the underdog. If it’s not a challenge, it isn’t fun.
One of the themes of HearJapan that we are known for in Japan is being the “Kurofune” (or black ships) of the Japanese music industry. Kurofune refers to the ships of Commodore Perry who opened up Japan to the west in the 19th century. Before that Japan had a policy of “Sakoku” or closed off country. I always felt that Japanese music still has a “Sakoku” policy in place. HearJapan is an allegory to the Kurofune. To trans quote one of my favorite DJs, DJ Kentaro, “music is fuckin’ music, not a barrier in the way”.
What kind of challenges have you had convincing major labels to release DRM free music?
It’s the most difficult part of my job. Japan is the only music industry in the world that solely relies a DRM distribution model. In fact, HearJapan is one of the only stores based in Japan that sells DRM free music. The reason for this is most digital sales come from cell phone purchases in Japan. All music on the cell phone is highly restricted and protected. When sales are doing very well with the DRM and very few consumers seem to be complaining there is no reason for the labels to switch. Many companies have a ‘DRM-only’ policy that won’t allow them to sign contracts with companies that have a DRM-free distribution model for any of their content. The labels are not willing to open Pandora’s box just for the comparably smaller international pie. However most of the labels we distribute for only distribute their music in without DRM through us. If the DRM issue didn’t exist there would be a lot more music on HearJapan, but we are making headway every day. We currently have 800 labels signed to the site and that number is always growing.
Do you find many of the artists you release taking further steps towards success outside of Japan? (ie: tours, hiring publicists etc.)
Some do but nothing is ever sustained. Financially speaking, it’s very hard to do continuous activity abroad. Many do go on tours, some hire publicists, but for the most part once they invest money to go abroad, most of the time the return doesn’t come back, so they don’t give it a second try. Sometimes it works out for the band, but besides anime conventions, it almost always ends up running a significant loss.
Recently I’ve seen going abroad as a way to build publicity within Japan. To me this is unfortunate because many of these bands are going for all the wrong reasons. Many bands go over and have a documentary shot about them that shows how they are breaking some sort of cultural barrier which later airs on Japanese TV. I have found some bands do a foreign tour solely for press coverage like that in Japan. For the management, it is a one time investment that they don’t intend to recoup from overseas sales or overseas tour revenue, however their visibility in Japan is greatly increased by this. I see this a lot. We try to help the bands that are going over to try to connect with a foreign fan base and promote themselves overseas for the right reasons. We have also sponsored many bands to go overseas who had trouble doing it on their own.
We financially sponsored Quaff in March of this year when they went to Texas as well as OMODAKA in March and a later tour. We have also done the legwork in getting bands overseas by bridging connections and the like but we did not make any financial donations.
In the future, do you think there will be more bands making a serious effort to break the international market? What do you think the future has in store for fans of Japanese music?
I know for a fact that there are a ton of bands that genuinely want to break into this market. There are just a lot of forces working against them that are complicated and they probably don’t even know exist.
The biggest problem is there is not enough financial support through purchases or grants from the international market to support international touring or promotion outside of the realm of anime conventions, which are usually limited to a one day performance in another country.
In light of this the majority of bands to go over are doing it for PR opportunities or don’t care if they lose a lot of money. This really whittles down the selection of possible bands significantly.
There are also few steady promoters of Japanese music overseas. Many promoters go bankrupt after two years of activity and close shop. Taking on the cost of bringing over a band from Japan can be quite risky. Also the way major labels contracts are arranged in respect to international licensing makes it legally impossible for them to sublicense an album to a label in another country. These are just a few of the issues that come up.
I hope sales through HearJapan can start to fund tours directly and bring over what’s popular with fans overseas.
This is a great and insightful interview! =) Nice job and Nathan is a hero \m/>_<
Nathan is god.