420!
Do you guys like the 21st century? Music delivered through the air instead of on compact media!
Are you upset about the iTunes store’s low price of $.99 (or 150 yen) for a song? Do you want to pay much, much more? Maybe even 4x as much??
Then I recommend au’s LISMO service, currently charging ¥420 to download a single song. Maybe the Japanese just value pop music way more than philistine Americans. I mean, Americans also give “critical reviews” to album releases! How rude to the record companies!
July 29, 2008 at 3:50 pm
God, when I saw this on Itai News I was just laughing my head off and crying for the poor idiots behind this who don’t seem to be doing it as a joke.
I was really dumbfounded for a few minutes there. I’m still new to this.
July 30, 2008 at 9:41 am
No weed joke? really?
July 30, 2008 at 10:31 am
FYI my friends, verizon wireless (a US mobile provider) charges $2.00 per song. Just to restore some balance to this discussion.
July 30, 2008 at 10:34 am
So, Verizon is 50% the au price. Still makes au look crazy.
July 30, 2008 at 11:01 am
hlem: The prices are hiiiigh, myan.
Oh well, Japanese are used expensive music.
July 30, 2008 at 11:02 am
No weed joke?
This site is cached, man.
July 30, 2008 at 11:50 am
Just think, you could have your favorite 18 songs for the low low price of 7560 yen!
Itai news is great because you can predict people’s reactions just from the headline and maybe the picture.
Since you mentioned the supposedly healthy public discourse in the US, I have to take this opportunity to wonder if your beliefs about the US as a good taste safe haven may be on shaky ground:
1) Stuff White People Like has probably done irreparable long-term damage to notions of white person coolness. Now that each irrational preference has been singled out for ridicule, I see an entire generation ready to reject the Rolling Stone mindset. And without a solid footing of objective taste standards with popular support, how long is it before we descend into the same payola morass as the video game journalism industry?
2) The firewall between pop singles and TV ads has come down with Chris Brown’s “Forever” in a Double Mint spot… even the chorus croons “you only have one night to double you pleasure / double your fun”!! I mean, Chris Brown has always been a Kimutaku type of star, but back in the day the New Kids could never have gotten away with this.
July 30, 2008 at 1:40 pm
“video game journalism industry?”
Not that this excuses the lack of Japanese music reviews (come to think of it, what would be the point of handing out bad reviews to 99/100 albums?) but did anyone notice that Rottentomatoes took their video game review measure off the front page? Every single game was getting 100%….