逆数字音乐大潮 日本乐迷对CD痴心不改

TOKYO — Around the world, the music business has shifted toward downloads and streaming. But in Japan, the compact disc is still king.

东京——音乐市场在世界各地普遍都转向下载和流媒体播放。但在日本，CD却仍然大行其道。

On a drizzly Sunday afternoon recently, Tower Records’ nine-level flagship store here was packed with customers like Kimiaki Koinuma. A 23-year-old engineer in a Dee Dee Ramone T-shirt, Mr. Koinuma said that, unlike most men his age around the world, he spends little time with digitAl services and prefers his music on disc.

在下着毛毛雨的一个周日下午，淘儿唱片(Tower Records)的旗舰店里挤满了顾客，身穿迪·迪·雷蒙(Dee Dee Ramone)T恤的鲤沼公明(Kimiaki Koinuma)就是其中一位。这个23岁的工程师表示，他很少使用数字音乐服务，更喜欢CD音乐。这有别于全球各地的大多数同龄男性。

“I buy around three CDs a month,” he said, showing off a haul of six new albums, including the Rolling Stones’ classic “Exile on Main St.” and an assortment of the latest Japanese pop hits.

“我一个月买3张CD左右，”他说道，并展示了他的六张新唱片，包括滚石乐队(Rolling Stones)的经典专辑《主街流放》(Exile on Main St.)和一些最新的日本流行金曲。

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.

日本在新技术方面一直都属于热衷尝鲜的那一类地方，但它对于CD的痴迷则让它跟流媒体服务风靡的各国大相径庭。CD销量在世界各地都呈下降趋势，包括日本，但它们在日本的音乐销售额占比仍然高达85%左右。相比之下，一些国家的这一比例低至只有20%，如在线流媒体服务当道的瑞典。

“Japan is utterly, totally unique,” said Lucian Grainge, the chairman of the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music conglomerate.

“日本市场真的很独特，”全球头号音乐巨头环球音乐集团(Universal Music Group)董事长卢西恩·格兰奇(Lucian Grainge)说道。

That uniqueness has the rest of the music business worried. Despite its robust CD market, sales in Japan — the world’s second-largest music market, after the United States — have been sliding for a decade, and last year they dropped 17 percent, dragging worldwide results down 3.9 percent.

那种独特性令整个音乐行业相当担忧。尽管日本的CD销售表现强劲，但这个仅次于美国的全球第二大音乐市场十年来一直在下滑，去年更是下跌17%，致使全球销售额下降3.9%。

Digital sales — rising in every other top market — are quickly eroding in Japan, going from almost $1 billion in 2009 to just $400 million last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan.

根据日本唱片产业协会的数据，在其它主要市场均呈现增长的数字销售额在日本却快速下降，去年从2009年的近10亿美元下滑至只有4亿美元。

Turning Japan around has become a priority for the global music business, which has struggled to regain its footing after losing about half its value since 2000, when digital technology began to disrupt the album-based business model.

扭转日本市场的运营成为了全球音乐行业的重中之重。自2000年数字技术开始颠覆基于唱片的商业模式以来，该行业已经缩水了接近一半，一直无力挽回失地。

But accomplishing change has been difficult, according to analysts and music executives in Japan and the West, in part because of a protectionist business climate in Japan that still views the digital business with suspicion.

然而，在日本和西方国家的分析师和音乐高管看来，寻求变化并非易事，部分因为日本的保护主义商业环境，该国仍对数字业务表示怀疑。

Streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio, widely seen as the industry’s best new hope for new revenue, have stalled in efforts to enter Japan. Spotify, the biggest such player, has been stuck for two years in licensing negotiations with music companies in Japan, where homegrown pop idols by far outsell Western acts.

Spotify、Rdio等被行业寄予厚望的流媒体音乐服务均迟迟未能进入日本市场。该领域最大的服务商Spotify陷入了与日本音乐公司的已有两年的版权谈判拉锯战当中。在该国，本土流行乐明星的唱片销量远超西方歌手。

Ken Parks, Spotify’s chief content officer, said he was optimistic about his company’s prospects, and noted that the negotiating process was slow wherever it went. Spotify, which has more than 10 million customers in 57 markets around the world, negotiated with labels for almost two years before it arrived in the United States in 2011, for example.

Spotify首席内容官肯·帕克斯(Ken Parks)指出，他对公司的前景感到乐观，事实上，版权谈判以往在其它国家也并不顺利，进展缓慢。例如，2011年进入美国市场之前，它也跟唱片公司谈判了近两年时间。Spotify目前拥有超过1000万用户，覆盖全球57个市场。

“When the decision makers finally feel that the heat is intense enough that they have to do something different, they will,” Mr. Parks said. “I think we are approaching that moment in Japan.”

“当决策者终于觉得坐不住了，必须要实施一些变化时，他们就会采取行动，”帕克斯说道。“我觉得我们在日本市场快要迎来那个时刻了。”

Others have doubts, pointing to the Japanese market’s devotion to the CD, which remains a primary source of revenue for record labels in the country, and an indispensable promotional tool.

其他人则心存怀疑，指出了日本市场对于CD的热爱。在该国，CD仍然是唱片公司的主要收入来源，而且还是不可或缺的营销工具。

Peculiarities of Japan’s business climate have shaped its attachment to the CD, but cultural factors may also be at play, like Japanese consumers’ love for collectible goods. Greatest hits albums, for example, do particularly well in Japan, perhaps because of the elaborate, artist-focused packaging. The hugely popular girl group AKB48 pioneered the sale of CDs containing tickets that can be redeemed for access to live events — a strategy credited with propping up CD sales, because it can lead the biggest fans to buy multiple copies of an album.

日本独特的商业环境造就了人们对CD的痴迷，不过文化因素可能也在起作用，比如日本消费者对于收藏品很热衷。例如，精选辑在日本卖得特别火，这可能是得益于唱片专注于歌手的精致包装。热门的日本女子偶像组合AKB48开创了买CD送演唱会门票的先河。这一策略提高了CD的销量，因为它能够吸引狂热的粉丝购买多张唱片。

Tower Records closed its 89 American outlets in 2006, but the Japanese branch of the chain — controlled by NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest phone carrier — still has 85 outlets, doing $500 million in business a year.

Tower Records在2006年关闭了89家美国门店，但该连锁店的日本分公司(现由日本最大的电信运营商NTT DoCoMo控股)仍有85家门店，年销售额达到5亿美元。

At Tower’s flagship store, in the heart of the skyscraper-lined shopping district of Shibuya, a group of preteen girls called Kokepiyo performed for fans and autographed CDs one afternoon last month, while their mother-managers watched protectively. Outside, an 18-year-old student who gave her name as Yuria had come to Tower to see her favorite band, the Lotus. She carried a bag full of merchandise she had bought at the store, and said that she frequently buys multiple collectible copies of CDs.

上个月的一个下午，在Tower Records位于涩谷摩天大厦林立的商业区的旗舰店，少女组合Kokepiyo在为粉丝表演和签售CD，她们的母亲和经济人则守护在一旁。外面，一位叫Yuria的18岁的女生来到Tower Records看她最喜欢的乐队Lotus。她在该店买了满满一袋东西，她说自己经常一次性购买多张收藏CD。

“Each store has its own freebies to give away to sell more CDs,” Yuria said. “So it all depends on how good they are.”

“每家店都提供自己的赠品来刺激CD销售，”Yuria说，“所以全要看它们有多好。”

In the United States, digital sales have long since overtaken physical ones. But CDs still account for 41 percent of the $15 billion recorded music market worldwide, and, in addition to Japan, some big markets like Germany remain reliant on CD sales. That attachment worries some analysts, who contend that if those countries do not embrace online music, an inevitable decline in CD sales will further damage the industry.

在美国，数字音乐销售早已超过实体唱片销售。然而，CD在规模为150亿美元的全球唱片音乐市场的份额仍达到41%，除了日本之外，包括德国在内的一些大市场仍依赖CD销售。消费者对CD的这种痴迷令一些分析师感到担忧。在他们看来，如果那些国家不积极拥抱在线音乐，CD市场无可避免的下滑将会对音乐行业造成进一步的损害。

“If Japan sneezes and Germany catches a cold, that’s it — we’re done,” said Alice Enders, a media analyst with Enders Analysis in London.

“如果日本打喷嚏，而德国又感冒，那音乐行业就完了，”Enders Analysis媒体分析师艾丽斯·恩德斯(Alice Enders)称。

A distinctive business ecosystem in Japan has kept CD sales lucrative for music companies. Pricing restrictions on retailers keep the cost of most new CDs at more than $20. In the mid-2000s, a nascent download service, Recochoku, was tethered to Japan’s expansive cellphone market, but that system collapsed once the country moved on to smartphones like the iPhone.

日本独特的商业生态系统，让音乐公司仍可以从CD销售获得不俗的收益。对零售商的定价限制使得大多数新CD的售价都超过20美元。00年代中期，新兴的下载服务Recochoku植入了日本广大的手机市场，但随着该国转向iPhone等智能手机，这一体系土崩瓦解。

Part of the problem, executives say, is the complex array of companies that control rights to the most popular music in Japan, which have been very slow to license new services.

行业高管们认为，该问题一定程度上是因为日本流行音乐版权分散在各家公司手上，而它们在向新服务授予版权时行动缓慢。

Sony’s Music Unlimited, for example, is the largest available streaming service in Japan, but it lacks the most popular hits there. (Sony declines to say how many subscribers it has to Music Unlimited, in Japan or elsewhere.) Apple’s iTunes store arrived in Japan in 2005, but only in 2012 did it begin to sell the Japanese music titles of its hardware rival Sony.

例如，索尼的Music Unlimited服务虽然是日本最大的流媒体音乐服务，但它的音乐库却没有该国最流行的那些音乐。(索尼拒绝透露Music Unlimited在日本和其它市场的订户数量。)苹果的iTunes商店于2005年进入日本市场，但直到2012年才能开始出售其硬件产品竞争对手索尼手握的日本音乐。

Executives in Japan and the West blame an overly cautious Japanese music industry for not adapting, and serious worries remain about Japan’s ability to recover from its losses last year.

日本和西方行业高管都指责过度谨慎的日本音乐行业没有去适应大趋势，日本能否从去年的亏损中恢复过来也存在很大的疑问。

“A substantial amount of senior management is worried about what happens on their watch, but not necessarily worried about what happens after that,” Shigeo Maruyama, the former president of Sony Music Entertainment Japan, said in an interview.

“很多高管担心的是，在自己任内会发生什么，但对此后怎么样则不一定那么关心，”日本索尼音乐娱乐株式会社前负责人丸山茂雄(Shigeo Maruyama)在一次采访中表示。

This year, things in Japan are looking slightly better. In 2013, there were no million-selling albums, but this year there have been two: a Japanese version of Disney’s “Frozen” soundtrack and the latest release by AKB48. Yet in the first half of the year sales were still down an additional 3 percent compared with a year earlier.

今年，日本市场的情况略有改善。2013年它连一张销量破百万的唱片都没有，而今年则已经有两张：迪士尼《冰雪奇缘》原声专辑日本版和AKB48的最新专辑。不过，今年上半年的销售额跌幅相比去年扩大了3个百分点。

“The Japanese record companies’ hope is to maintain the current size of the physical market, and to try to make the digital market grow again by licensing new digital services,” said Yoichiro Hata a director of the Recording Industry Association of Japan.

“日本唱片公司的希望是，能够维持实体市场当前的规模，同时尝试通过向新数字服务出售版权来使得数字市场恢复增长，”日本唱片产业协会的一位负责人羽田阳一郎(Yoichiro Hata)指出。

For the rest of the struggling global recording industry, that growth cannot come soon enough.

对于陷入困境的全球唱片行业来说，那种增长当然来得越早越好。

“It’s inevitable that this market comes back to growth,” said Mr. Grainge, of Universal. “What I’m not going to predict is when.”

“这个市场必定会恢复增长，”环球音乐的格兰奇说，“什么时候发生就不好说了。”