[/floatl]Masao Morita, the son of the late Sony co-founder Akio Morita, is currently the head of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan). In that capacity, he attended MIDEM, the big music industry conference which took place in Cannes over the weekend. MIDEM attracts many of the major names in the business, including performers, label bosses, artist managers, retailers, promoters and broadcasters. A number of discussions which took place over the four days are up on the website. Some of the hot topics included the rise of Spotify and other streaming services, the fall of the record label, the importance of social networks etc. Morita spoke on the 25th and his half-hour interview with Steve McClure is also available on the website. It's not a very compelling discussion, both men complaining about jetlag, but there are some interesting nuggets. In 2009, Sony was the leading label in Japan but Morita revealed that total CD sales in the local market fell by 27% compared to the previous year, one of the largest falls on record. He also suggested that Amazon Japan had become the leading CD retailer in the country, outpacing the likes of Shinseido.
He denied that overseas music was declining in popularity, pointing out that it had always been around 20-25% of the market but sales had obviously fallen as the market contracted. Morita confirmed that Japanese consumers download music to their mobile phones much more than they download to PCs which is notably different to trends elsewhere in the world. He claimed that Japanese labels had taken pains to ensure that consumers were "educated" to pay for music, which was important for the artists, and contrasted this with markets in the west where music. Many of the other discussions at MIDEM in fact took it for granted that music was increasingly seen as a "free" good and were focused on how to capture revenues elsewhere. A guy from Amazon Japan asked Morita whether Sony would consider offering DRM-free music to download to which he replied "Never". He understood that people wanted the freedom to play downloads on several platforms but said that there was no way to limit the number of copies someone could make without DRM. He complained that, although Japan has now introduced legislation which outlaws illegal downloading, the laws carry no penalties and Sony was lobbying for their introduction as well as pressing the police for greater enforcement. The response from most at the conference was that if Japanese labels thought they could keep consumers paying for music then all power to them. The feeling was, however, that the fight had already been lost and Morita was just hoping to delay the inevitable. As an aside, the Sony man mentioned that his daughter uses an iPod rather than a player from his own company.
