Spotify just announced today, September 29, that opens its music streaming system in Japan, the largest music market apart from the United States of America. We recognize the reasons for such a great delay, we imagine that legal problems and those of the economic protectionist culture, speaking of the inhabitants of the country of the rising sun. It's been 18 months since Spotify opened its first offices in Japan, and today it unleashes the streaming music system with the most users on the planet, with a European signature. Let's take a look at the market for streaming and digital music in general in Japan.
During all this time, according to TechCrunch, Spotify has been locked in negotiations with the companies and owners of the music rights, with the intention of offering what they considered a fair deal. Howeveror, the great rival is Apple Music, which came first, in a country where Apple has a good niche of loyal users.
Music sales in Japan generate around $ 3.000 billion annually, the second most powerful music market outside the United States of America. However, the main obstacle in Japan is that they generally still prefer to buy digital music and create their own copies on CD, over choosing a streaming service continuously connected to the internet. That is why this arrival of Spotify aims to change the way the Japanese understand music.
On the other hand, Spotify will become the only free streaming music offering in Japan, we already know that Apple Music does not offer free subscription, for example. All this comes just when Spotify announces that it has more than 40 million paying users, while Apple Music is stuck at 17 million. In short, Spotify has 175 million users per month, a hard obstacle for apple music.
