Driving the content
| Pop Culture -- Driving the Content Industry |
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Expectations are high within the government in Japan that pop culture will become a growth industry. The government is putting their weight behind the industry, according to a recent Nikkei Shimbun article. The government-sponsored "Strategic Council on Intellectual Property" states that "The development of contents businesses will be a pillar of our national strategy." To foster content development, in May of 2004, the Content Promotion Law was enacted to promote the creation, protection, and use of contents.
However, over the past years, growth in the content industry has not kept pace with overseas developments. Japan's output of all types of media, including popular culture, and traditional arts is over 12 trillion yen, or about 2% of Japan's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is below the global average of 3% of GDP. The United States' figure is 5% of GDP. The contents market grew just 6% in Japan during the 7 years from 1995 to 2002.
With the downturn in the sales and creation of music CDs, publications, and games, Japan runs a trade deficit in content industry with the West. Even worse, Japan sales captured only 3% of the foreign market in 2000, compared to 17% for the United States.
However, recently, there have been signs of life in the digital content creation world: in 2003, sales exceeded 2.1 trillion yen. Contents distributed via digital communications and digital broadcasting are showing striking growth.
In particular, businesses have popped up that offer images and music delivered via the Internet or mobile phones. At the end of 2003, there were 15 million broadband Internet subscribers, while the value of online shopping, e-mail newsletters, and other contents distributed via the Internet reach 330 billion yen. Even though it only became available 5 years ago, there are already 70 million mobile Internet subscribers. With related web sites reaching into the tens of thousands and the size of the content market estimated at nearly 240 billion yen. Some predict that an entirely new market is developing.
In the international market, anime and games are making a good showing. Some 60% of animated program televised worldwide come from Japan. Game software is a powerful export industry as well. For Japan, with overall content imports exceeding exports, only pop culture is proving to be competitive. The framework of the Japanese contents industry is undergoing change, from analog to digital, and from packaged goods distribution to network distribution.
| Digital Contents Market (Units: Yen 100 billion / US$ 1 million) |
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| Source: Digital Contents White Book 2004, Digital Contents Association. |
