chosaq

The New York Times on Japan’s iPod levy

An article in last week’s New York Times covers the Japanese music industry’s recent push for a levy on iPods and other HDD based music players. The article is pretty good – three quotes with some analysis:

In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple’s success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan’s music industry has a different idea: putting a fee on iPods.

This isn’t really correct: in Japan, the price per iTunes download is 150¥ or 200¥, which is definitely higher than the 0.99$ charged in the US. Needless to say, the lobbying of the Japanese record labels is the reason for this price difference (and for the late introduction of the iTunes music store to the Japanese market). So one could say the Japanese music industry is fighting for its share of the iTunes model on two different fronts.

[...] [I]n Japan, the proposed fee has also touched off an unusual public battle over the influence that industry groups here still wield over the government and economy.

[...]

The current fight in Japan has particular political significance because it is taking place in a government advisory committee, which helps the powerful bureaucracies set policy. These committees are usually tame panels that reflect vested interests because they are packed with insiders from the industries being regulated.

(!!) Why don’t we see this kind of commentary in Japanese newspapers?

The Japanese recording industry complains that the sudden rise of the portable digital players is robbing it of the revenue that used to come from the fees on CD and MD recorders. Earnings from fees have fallen last year to 2.2 billion yen ($20 million) from 3.8 billion yen in 2000, according to [JASRAC].

These numbers look very similar to those in an ITmedia article of a while ago, but there’s a one digit difference. According to ITmedia, the earnings from fees were 384,400,000 yen in 2000, and 222,140,000 yen in 2003, while the New York Times talks about 3,800,000,000 Yen in 2000 and 2,200,000,000 Yen in 2004. Which one is right?

I poked around a bit, but couldn’t find anything else but this table (scroll down on the page), which has yet other numbers and is only until 2001.

Furthermore, the numeric data I used in a previous entry seem to be incorrect too: comparing the materials JASRAC recently submitted to the Ministry of Education (on which I based my entry) with the table I found yesterday, it seems like JASRAC mixed up the data of audio recording equipment levies with those of video recording equipment levies. (!?) Also here: what is correct? (And how is this possible?)

Somebody having a clue which data set is correct?