J-pop, a category of made-in-Japan songs so labeled and promoted by the music industry, the rage of 1990s that captured the hearts and minds of the Japanese youths and produced so many million hits, has since splintered into pieces in terms of sales channels as well as consumption patterns so much so that no one knows for sure what J-pop song will be a next hit.

Unlike traditional Japanese pop songs, which usually occupies a nook at CD shops, J-pop is classified into a contemporary song category displayed side by side with imported pop songs.

The record industry has been on the decline after peaking in 1998. Million sellers that studded the pop music top 10?J-pop top 10 for that matter?in 1990s were non-existent on the 2009 chart.

In an ironic twist of events, the record industry stood to benefit from the burst of bubble in around 1989 as youths who could no longer afford to buy a house or car turned to CD for a less costly means of entertainment.

As economy recovered in 2000s, however, CD ceased to sell well. Pundits point out a new web-based distribution such as downloading of ring tones, music and video from the Internet and changing consumer behavior.

Music critic Hiromichi Ugaya noted that J-pop, once entirely controlled by the music industry, is in the hands of consumers who decide the success or failure of every J-pop song. Musician Keiichiro Shibuya said musicians no longer matter either, adding that it is individual pieces of music that matter now.

Moreover, as consumers have found a vastly influential forum of word-of-mouth communication in music blogs and Twitter sites, no one knows for sure what will happen next.

Music critic Ugaya, author of the books “What Is J-pop?Gigantism of the Music Industry” and “The Secret History of Karaoke”, said, “Before, the music industry predetermined which song should be a hit and forced consumers to buy it.” The song which made it was called a J-pop. “As music consumption pattern has been splintered into pieces, it just does not work that way,” he said. Ugaya’s books discuss the implications of songs and music in social, political and economic context.

“What’s happening today is that as a consumer finds a favorable song on the YouTube or MySpace, he or she talks about it on the Twitter or blog, making a hit song in the process on the force of word-of-mouth,” Ugaya said. In short, he said, the major player behind the success of a song shifted from industry to consumers.

Zankyo Co., Ltd., an independent music label with bands like “9mm Parable Bullet” and “people in the box,” is a good example of success. The rock bands are generally considered difficult to understand but every song they release hops up on the chart.

Zankyo representative director Akihiro Kono, who doubles as a guitarist for “te’,” an experimental rock band, said, “I just believed that good songs only if delivered to good listeners will find their way.” True to his word, “people in the box” first became a talk of the town in social networking service “mixi”. Kono is a mixi member and is also a blogger and Twitter user.

Zankyo’s bands also benefitted from music magazine and other mass media coverage on their way to fame. But, rock band “Sotaisei-Riron,” which literally translates as the theory of relativity, is typical of word-of-mouth successes totally independent from the music industry establishment and mass media promotion and sorely dependent on word-of-mouth communication on “YouTube” and “MySpace”.

A self-avowed “maestro of the YouTube era,” “Sotaisei-Riron” limits their media exposure to almost nil, keeps their identity to themselves except at live performances and does not even show their picture on the CD jacket or in promotion video.

But as the band released “Shiffon Shugi” from the MySpace official site in 2008, their popularity spread to various movie sites and blogs. As the new album “Hi-fi Shinsyo (Hi-fi Anatomia)” was released in 2009, it ranked fourth in the popular Oricon daily chart in January 2010 and bestselling album on the iTunes Store.

HMV Co., Ltd.,　that manage 58 stores in Japan after the first store was opened in Shibuya in 1990, recommends “Soutaisei-Riron” as the artist which sold well in 00’s and “Shinsei-Kamattechan” in 2010 on the ground that listeners appreciate their music instead of their look or what’s written about them.

Said an HMV spokesperson, “(Soutaisei-Riron) minimizes their exposure to the media attracting sharp-earned listeners’ attention, instead. Streaming video sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Niko-niko Douga (literally, smile movie) have been instrumental in bringing forth suddenly large audiences for the groups.”

The spokesperson said as with “Soutaisei-Riron” in 2009, “Shinsei-Kamattechan” is attracting attention in 2010 at movie sites such as MySpace and Niko-niko Douga.

“Soutaisei-Riron,” which made a big debut with the “Shiffon Shugi” album in January 2010, released “Our Music,” a single collaborated with a musician Keiichiro Shibuya, widely known for avant-garde electronic music and sound installation.

Shibuya explained their seemingly unusual collaboration by saying, “My working on pop music may have surprised someone but it’s been since 1900’s that there was a clear division of work between pop and academic music. So, it’s odd that there is such a division today.

“Before 1900s,” said Shibuya, who has experimented with computer and other sciences to push the envelope of music, “one wrote both opera and string quartet, opera being as natural as pop music, everybody did it, and string quartet was not done by many and, for that reason, was good for self-satisfaction and training.”

Asked about “Soutaisei-Riron” making hits without exposure to the mass media, Shibuya said, “I would rather not to see writer’s name on music. As music is splintered into pieces as it is, I think that’s what’s going to happen.”

He noted that despite the fact that CD sales decreased, sales from live performances increased. “It shows that pop songs per se are not attractive. I don’t like that one has to share the context of a song in order to enjoy it,” Shibuya said

Musician Born on the Net

It was in 2000s that amateurs began to upload self-made music on “YouTube” and “Niko-niko Douga”. Hatsune-Miku, a voice synthesis software shown on the PC screen in the shape of an animated virtual teenage idol, was introduced by Crypton Future Media, Inc. in 1997. Miku was employed by a number of music writers who uploaded their songs on “Niko-niko Douga” and other movie sites and soon became a smashing success, unheard-of for desktop music software.

A Crypton spokesperson said, “We believe that "YouTube" and "Niko-niko Douga" play a major role in introducing newly-written music and exchanging views on them.” Without the sites, he said, new music would never have exploded as they did.

Tsunehiro Uno, an expert on subculture who authored the book “The Creativity of the 2000 Generation,” explained a low state of music in 2000s by saying that the music industry failed to cash in on the potential of the emerging Internet.

“The music industry was not paying any attention as high-quality musicians including "Soutaisei-Riron" and "Shinsei-Kamattechan" appeared on "YouTube" and "Niko-niko Douga,” said Uno whose books discuss the transition of creativity as shown in works of fiction.

Uno said, as the music industry has been traditionally hostile to the Internet, including YouTube and Niko-niko Douga, a swollen source of copyright infringements, it simply failed to take advantage of the net. The music industry has ignored the net to the extent that the industry did not have a clue to make money from it, he said.

However, Universal Music LLC, one of the major record companies, runs a successful music site from which “Ai-uta” (love song) by “GReeeN” was downloaded over 6 million times.

Producer of "Universal Music" Susumu Machida, who has produced a highly successful straight-from-record-company web site to download ring tones and full ring tones for mobile phone users, said there are two distinct groups?one being people in their 30s and 40s who buy music packaged in CD and other is teenagers downloading music.

Machida said rock music that is essentially political in nature was previously purchased in a view of the writer’s inclination. On the contrary, he said, as youngsters today are first exposed to music in the form of ring tones downloaded from mobile sites, they purchase J-pop music they like without bothering to know who wrote it. Later they may check the writer and biography.

In other word, music comes first and writer follows, he said. No matter how famous a writer may be, his name won’t sell a bad song.

“GReeeN” fits into the time like that, producer Machida said. “GReeeN” members, who are students of an undisclosed dental school in the northern Japan, agreed to perform under a contract to remain anonymous while studying. Their songs happen to be of a moralistic nature and music smooth, projecting a “good boy” image and winning moms with schoolchildren over to their side.

Machida next targeted “GReeeN” at elementary school children themselves, promoting the group at mobile sites frequented by the children and leading them to the “GReeeN” download site. He said the group also took advantage of the then booming “zero yen” mobile phones as well as straight-from-record-company sites. The 6 million downloads registered by the group still remain an unbroken record.

The record company producer acknowledged dwindling CD sales but added that coupled with increasing sales of ring tones and others, the total sales amount remains unchanged.