日本绝非全球CD销售的绿洲

    过去十年间，CD店基本上已在美国本土销声匿迹。淘儿唱片公司（Tower Records）曾在美国各地设有数百家分店。对美国乐迷来说，如果想深入地淘一些自己心爱歌手的唱片，这个连锁唱片店一度就是他们非去不可的圣地。不过到了2006年，该公司申请破产并关掉了美国所有分店，往日的盛况顿时化为过眼云烟。

    但正如《纽约时报》(New York Times）近期刊发的一篇文章所指出的那样，在有些国家，尤其是日本，淘儿唱片不仅没有消亡，而且还经营得相当不错。这篇文章将日本人称为“CD爱好者”，它写道：

    日本可能一直都是全世界最早采用新技术的国家之一，但日本国民对CD持之以恒的热爱却让这个国家成为全球音乐产业中的异数。尽管全球各地（包括日本）的CD销量都在持续下滑，但日本的CD销量还是占据各类音乐总销量约85％的比重，而在瑞典这类流媒体音乐已占据主导地位的国家，CD销量只占音乐总销量的20％。

    该文还提供了其他数据，旨在表明日本人对CD是如何情有独钟。它指出，日本全国仍有85间淘儿唱片连锁店，去年的销售额高达5亿美元。不过，我们当然不能根据这些巨额收入证明音乐产业的健康指数。2005年，也就是淘儿唱片在美国运营的最后一年，它在全美还有89间连锁店，销售额高达4.3亿美元。但到了第二年，淘儿唱片就在美国无影无踪了。

    与此同时，日本的CD销量也一直在以两位数的速度下跌，去年就下跌了17％。日本乐迷的独特之处其实并不在于他们喜欢购买有物理载体的音乐产品，而在于数字音乐，无论是mp3还是流媒体，从来就没有在这个国家真正流行过。这可能主要是由于日本的音乐产业始终固执地拒绝让乐迷轻松方便地购买数字音乐或订阅流媒体音乐。

    iTunes于2005年正式登陆日本，此时距离这个音乐平台在美国亮相已过了整整四年，但直到2012年，日本索尼音乐公司（Sony Music Japan）才允许该公司出品的专辑通过iTunes发售。这意味着，仅仅两年前，日本人还无法在全球最流行的数字音乐商店里购买他们心仪的相当大一部分音乐专辑。与此同时，像Spotify、Deezer和rdio这些全球流媒体音乐巨头始终无法跟日本唱片产业达成协议，从而无法在日本提供服务。一些日本本土流媒体音乐公司现在刚开始冒头——去年日本流媒体音乐销售增长了204％——但由于起步晚，它们还需要加倍努力，才有可能追赶上西方同行。

    与此同时，许多日本人依然保持着租赁CD的习惯。这是因为，与美国不同，日本的版权法允许这一行业合法经营。在这种背景下，乐迷只需花上买张专辑10％的钱就能租到它，再把音乐轻松地存入电脑。当然，跟美国一样，盗版音乐在日本非常普遍。日本唱片业估计，在日本，每合法下载1首歌，就会出现大约10首盗版。由于这种情况过于猖獗，日本于2012年通过了全球最严格的反盗版法，该法规定，盗版者可被判处10年徒刑，罚款约10万美元。

    最后，我们不应忽略一个事实，即日本是全球中位数年龄最大的国家。就算在人口结构年轻得多的美国，绝大多数CD也是被年龄较大的人买去的。一般来说，随着年龄增大，人们在购买决策上更容易墨守成规。由于日本的老龄人口远多于其他国家，它拥有最大的实体音乐市场也就不足为怪了。

    不过不要被这一现象所迷惑，其实日本的音乐产业也和美国一样，正在不断萎缩。网上听音乐实在太方便了，在YouTube上免费下载或直接盗版流媒体音乐也很容易，因此越来越多的日本民众也开始质疑，为何要花钱买CD呢。通过抵制数字音乐销售和流媒体音乐服务，日本的唱片业也许能让CD销量比其他发达国家更高的情况再延续几年，但它无法永远阻挡这一无可逆转的历史潮流。

    In the past 10 years, CD stores have more or less disappeared from the American landscape. Tower Records had hundreds of locations across the U.S., and was once the place for American music fans to go if they wanted a deep selection from their favorite artists. But that all went up in smoke in 2006, when the company filed for bankruptcy and closed all of its U.S. stores.

    But as a recent New York Times article points out, Tower Records is alive and well in some countries, especially Japan. The piece describes the Japanese as “CD loving,” noting:

    Japan may be one of the world’s perennial early adopters of new technologies, but its continuing attachment to the CD puts it sharply at odds with the rest of the global music industry. While CD sales are falling worldwide, including in Japan, they still account for about 85 percent of sales here, compared with as little as 20 percent in some countries, like Sweden, where online streaming is dominant.

    The article offers other statistics that purport to show the Japanese love for CDs, noting that there are still 85 Tower Records stores in the country that pulled in $500 million in business last year. But, of course, large revenue doesn’t say anything about the health of the business. In 2005, the final year that a Tower Records was open in the U.S., it operated 89 stores and did $430 million in sales. The next year, there were no Tower Records in the U.S. whatsoever.

    Meanwhile, CD sales in Japan continue to decline at a double digit pace, falling 17% from last year. What’s unique about Japan is not so much that they like buying their music in physical form, but that buying music digitally, either in mp3 form or through streaming services, never really caught on. That likely has more to do with the Japanese music industry’s stubborn refusal to make buying music or subscribing to streaming services easy.

    iTunes launched in Japan in 2005—four years after its U.S. debut, and Sony Music Japan didn’t allow its titles to be sold via iTunes until 2012. That means until just two years ago, a large section of what the Japanese would want to buy online couldn’t be purchased on the world’s most popular digital music store. Meanwhile, the big, global players in streaming, like Spotify, Deezer and rdio, have all been unable to reach agreements with the Japanese record industry to offer their services there. Some domestic streaming services are now starting to pop up—total streaming service revenue in Japan was up 204% last year—but the streaming industry is still playing catch up with the West because of its late start.

    Meanwhile, the practice of renting CDs is still quite popular in Japan, as copyright law there makes such an industry legal there, unlike in the U.S. This makes it quite easy for listeners to rent an album at 10% of the price of buying it and just rip it to their computer. And, of course, just like in the West, music piracy is very popular in Japan. The Japanese record industry estimates that for every song legally downloaded in the country, 10 are stolen. The problem is so bad that in 2012, Japan passed one of the strictest anti-piracy laws in the world, in which violators can be subject to a 10-year prison sentence and a roughly $100,000 fine.

    And finally, we shouldn’t look past the fact that Japan has the highest median age in the world. Even in much younger America, it’s the older folks who buy most of the CDs. As people age, they tend to become set in their ways when it comes to purchasing decisions. And since Japan has a higher percentage of older people than any other country, it follows that it would have a larger market for physical music.

    But make no mistake about it, Japan’s music industry is shrinking, just like the one in the U.S. The convenience of listening to music online is too great, and with the ease of streaming songs on YouTube for free, or outright stealing it, the Japanese public is increasingly questioning why it should pay for CDs. The Japanese record industry might have helped keep CD sales higher than in other developed nations for a few years longer by resisting digital music sales and streaming services, but it can’t delay the inevitable forever.