The Strategy of Music Download Business in Japan

• Main Authors: Wei-Hsiang Chang, 張為翔
• Other Authors: 蔡錫勲
• Format: Others
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/70687009924926896017

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 日本研究所碩士班 === 95 === In Japan, where its market of music is only second to USA, the sales of the physical goods has reached its peak in 1998 by 607.5 billion Yen, followed by a steady down fall. On the other hand, although the scale of music download service haven’t reach one eighth of the sales of physical goods, it grows in an amazingly pace steadily. Under such circumstances, early Japanese record companies took a negative attitude since the music download service didn’t go well, and also in the fear of the sale of intangible goods may affect the sale of physical goods. When entering growth stage, the lack of numbers of goods, higher price and inconvenience comparing with the Western market, had limited the development of Japanese companies. There are several particularities of Japanese market of music download service. First of all, due to the early popularity of mobile Internet and improvement of mobile phone’s capability, downloading music by mobile phone had become the mainstream of the market. Secondly, most company offer only download by track before Napster entered the market, and finally, because of the complexity of copyright’s consignment, its digital right management is more rigid than its counter part in the west. In the mean time, when Western companies fought their way into the Japanese market, the key point of Japanese company is to raise their service quality, make good use of their own core competitively, and more over, to combine their software and hardware and make it their own advantage. This study is to explicate the overview of Japanese market of music download service, and to discuss the music download business in Japan by analyze current companies strategy by Strategies for Business System Design.