[Vamp898]

It seems like they don't want your money, i don't know where to start. Lets start with the good, the bad, the ugly, the worst.

The Good:
Some Japanese Artists release their albums outside of Japan, you just buy it and you're done. They are available in CD Quality (16bit/44.1KHz FLAC) or in physical media.

The Bad:
Often these Albums don't contain all songs. Especially Albums that consist of more than 1CD often are stripped down to an 1CD Version lacking some songs.

The Ugly:
If you want the japanese original, you have to buy it, in Japan. If you live overseas, thats where it starts to get ugly.

Your first option is, of course, just buy the physical media. Some retailers ship to foreign countries and you're done. If they don't, you need an forwarding service. Amazon for example does not ship to foreign countries, you _need_ an forwarding service and amazon is most likely the best choice for physical music (when it is sold new).

The Worst:
Digital Downloads. It is just a pain in the ass. But if you don't want to wait sometimes weeks for your CD to ship to your country (which you then still have to rip to FLAC), there is almost no other choice then digital downloads.

Sounds simple and easy, just buy and download right? Its not.

First of all, you have to choices to buy music digitally. Its either MP3/AAC or Hi-Res Audio. There is no CD-Quality. If your artist does not provide Hi-Res Audio, you're stuck with MP3/AAC or you buy the physical media.

If your Artist does provide Hi-Res Audio, you're lucky you think, but you're not.

Because Japanese companies don't want to deal with overseas laws like refund laws, they block you from buying music outside of Japan. If you want to buy it, you need to use an VPN/Proxy. Its not illegal, but a big hassle and extremely annoying.

So if you have an VPN and bought the music (the checkout is the only point where you need VPN/Proxy, after that its no longer needed, so speed doesn't matter), the pain just goes further.

At least all music download portals i know, want you to install an Windows-Only Application on your computer. You don't have that or don't want that? Than you can download the songs one by one and they have random numbers as file names (thanks god ascending).

They have fully working Tags and embedded cover pitcures and so on, so its possible to manage them, but yes, the filename itself is just random numbers.

So if you listen to japanese music and want to buy it legally, you're just screwed

 

[Peter Z]

Try archive.org. That's where I found Maria Takeuchi's Variety in FLAC, legally. I also found some NGE OST in FLAC. Obviously, there's no guarantee, but it's a good resource.

 

[SilverEars]

It seems like they don't want your money, i don't know where to start. Lets start with the good, the bad, the ugly, the worst.

The Good:
Some Japanese Artists release their albums outside of Japan, you just buy it and you're done. They are available in CD Quality (16bit/44.1KHz FLAC) or in physical media.

The Bad:
Often these Albums don't contain all songs. Especially Albums that consist of more than 1CD often are stripped down to an 1CD Version lacking some songs.

The Ugly:
If you want the japanese original, you have to buy it, in Japan. If you live overseas, thats where it starts to get ugly.

Your first option is, of course, just buy the physical media. Some retailers ship to foreign countries and you're done. If they don't, you need an forwarding service. Amazon for example does not ship to foreign countries, you _need_ an forwarding service and amazon is most likely the best choice for physical music (when it is sold new).

The Worst:
Digital Downloads. It is just a pain in the ass. But if you don't want to wait sometimes weeks for your CD to ship to your country (which you then still have to rip to FLAC), there is almost no other choice then digital downloads.

Sounds simple and easy, just buy and download right? Its not.

First of all, you have to choices to buy music digitally. Its either MP3/AAC or Hi-Res Audio. There is no CD-Quality. If your artist does not provide Hi-Res Audio, you're stuck with MP3/AAC or you buy the physical media.

If your Artist does provide Hi-Res Audio, you're lucky you think, but you're not.

Because Japanese companies don't want to deal with overseas laws like refund laws, they block you from buying music outside of Japan. If you want to buy it, you need to use an VPN/Proxy. Its not illegal, but a big hassle and extremely annoying.

So if you have an VPN and bought the music (the checkout is the only point where you need VPN/Proxy, after that its no longer needed, so speed doesn't matter), the pain just goes further.

At least all music download portals i know, want you to install an Windows-Only Application on your computer. You don't have that or don't want that? Than you can download the songs one by one and they have random numbers as file names (thanks god ascending).

They have fully working Tags and embedded cover pitcures and so on, so its possible to manage them, but yes, the filename itself is just random numbers.

So if you listen to japanese music and want to buy it legally, you're just screwed

I feel you pain. I recentlly ran into some interesting 90's music from Japan and interested in obtaining the actual music files for my library than streaming off of crappy Youtube every time. I can't find it, maybe you can help me out. I'm looking for albums by a duo group called Manish.

Just a really odd situation Japanese labels has created. It's not surprise why Kpop is more globally exposed given how the Japanese labels refrain for exposure. Kpop is known to market heavily (social media, etc..). There's a lot of good Japanese musicians that should known by the world, and they are just handling this wrongly.

I ran into Reddit, somebody posted about how the industry doesn't have the confidence to expose Japanese music to the world. There will always be people interested all types of music. You don't know unless you put the content out there. There's all kinds of stuff people eat up these days if we look at Youtube. I mean just look at BTS. Music is always results of mixture of cultural creations, there is no wrongs (maybe bad tastes though. lol or tastes not always align). It's good to have variety whether goods or bad tastes in the mix, or world would be boring. This is what I like about music, varieties. Experimentations results in the varieties, and chances of innovations is much higher.

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/60igth/why_is_japanese_music_so_inaccessible_outside_of/

 

[Vamp898]

The issue got worse btw. レコチョク uses a new provider for payments who no longer accepts credit cards issued outside of japan. So i had to made an account at an portal called recruit which i use as an payment provider like paypal.

I highly doubt that this is related to music that hard, i have the exact same issue with Video Games.

I recently got my first game for the Nintendo Switch, a japanese game. So i needed an Japenese Nintendo account and guess what, Nintendo of Japan also only accepts credit cards issued in japan.

So i had to create a seconds, Japanese, Paypal account (all via VPN of course, they block every access from outside countries) with a second credit card and use that as payment provider for my japanese Nintendo Account.

All Japanese games i own (including ~30-40 PS4 games) say "Only for Japan" on their back. Most consoles these days no longer have region lock but with Windows its still a hussle because some games even don't start at all if you dont have a Japanese Windows. And some even then say "Hey, we noticed your timezone is not set to Japan, please keep in mind that it is not allowed to play this game outside of Japan" and things like that.

But those borders are, funnily enough, very easy to overcome. Its like "Don't play this outside of Japan" and you say "I'm not" and everything is okay, nobody cares.

I have a Japanese company that says in their policy "No Shopping outside of Japan!" and guess who is one of their best customers and even get special treats other customers doesn't due to the high amount of money he spends there...

Japanese companies do that because they don't want to get in conflict with law and they only do the bare minimum to protect themself but seem to make sure to leave a backdoor open always for those who are willing to do it anyway.

 

[SilverEars]

I've been into 90's retro J-pop lately, and realizing how badly compressed the music was back then. Mastering was just terrible looking back.

Recording quality is a big deal to me to hear the most out of my gear, and the mastering quality does hamper my enjoyment of the content to the fullest. Mainstream 90's recordings in general was just bad.

Also the music videos had really horrendous quality to them. Resolution was so damn fuzzy with low dynamic range. It's interesting we can notice thst now, but not back then.

 

[SilverEars]

Just out of curiosity, anybody have a list of good quality Japanese recording?

 

[Vamp898]

From the 90s? No, sadly not. I mostly have modern music but those all have excellent sound quality.

 

[SilverEars]

From the 90s? No, sadly not. I mostly have modern music but those all have excellent sound quality.

I don't mean just 90's. Please list them as I'm curious how the good quality ones sound.

 

[Vamp898]

Phew thats not an easy task, i have like thousands of Songs

The last ones i bought is an Piano Arrangement of the Little Busters Soundtrack, but that is very specific.

The last "Normal" Album i bought is ボイコット from amazarashi. One of the Songs is on YouTube but that, of course, does not represent the actual sound quality.



The last normal Album before that was.... i think... Mondo Grosso

 

[Gazny]

I personally am a fan of Tatsuro Yamashita, Ei-tetsu Hayashi(drummer),Shinn-ichi Kino-shita (Shamisen)

 

[Vamp898]

I also listen to a lot electronical music and vocaloids too like this one here



But thats a whole different story

 

[SilverEars]

I was into 90's anime, and I believe it has influences in the types of Japanese music I tend to prefer. I was into 90's anime like DBZ, SlamDunk, etc.. and they had really interesting intros and outtros that made the sound-tracks memorable and stick to your head. They were all main stream rock music like groups, but with emphasis on vocals. I believe that type of music was quite popular in Japan back in the days, and often selected for anime music due to the high energy of the tracks.

The groups from this era that I've been fond of are ZARD, Manish, WANDS. I find ZARD and Manish to have higher number of fun sounding vs not. This post and onwards are the tracks I've been running into lately.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/asian-music-chinese-japanese-korean.561434/page-192#post-15573795

And this is ZARD. Perhaps, you guys have heard these tracks.

 

[Gazny]

My personal favorite ost is the Neon Genisis evangelion OST.
Near impossible to get anything from japan atm too.


Another track I have been listening to as I break into more genres is Alie Alien

 

[koven]

jpopsuki (private torrent) has the largest selection of Asian FLAC I have ever seen. Would suggest trying to get on.

 

[SilverEars]

My personal favorite ost is the Neon Genisis evangelion OST.
Near impossible to get anything from japan atm too.


Another track I have been listening to as I break into more genres is Alie Alien

I like the intro. I liked the mecha design and concept, but wasn't a fan of the character design however. Was a radically different mecha concept I wasn't used to when it first came out It's too bad mecha stuff started dying after this.