music
music

music

Vodafone's Mobile Music Search

Vodafone K.K. announced that on 1 September 2005 it launched a new Music Search service on its mobile internet service Vodafone live!, so customers can find Chaku-Uta, Chaku-Uta Long Version, and Chaku-Uta Full music tracks faster and with greater ease. For the price of communication charges alone, the Music Search service lets customers search Chaku-Uta and Chaku-Uta Full music track content by artist name. After inputting the artist’s name (even partially) in either kanji, hiragana, alphabet letters or numbers, Vodafone live! official artist song content is searched according to a given keyword and links to artist information pages are displayed.

Win-win in a downloading culture

The start of Apple Computer Inc.’s music-downloading service Aug. 4 heralds big changes in the landscape of Japan’s music business and culture. Music lovers can now choose their favorite songs from among 1 million songs offered by iTunes Music Store. With Apple’s entry into the Japanese market, an increasing number of people are expected to start downloading music from Internet sites, using their computers.

ACG Gets Kyocera KX5 Slider

The Associated Carrier Group (ACG) and Kyocera Wireless announced the debut of the Kyocera Slider Remix KX5 wireless phone. The feature-rich, music-enabled handset is exclusively offered for a limited time by the recently united ACG, and is also the first phone offered by the alliance. “By forming the ACG alliance, our members collaborate with manufacturers – like Kyocera – to provide cutting-edge products, quicken market entry and to leverage costs,” said Greg Latour, president of ACG. “It’s proving to be a smart and successful alliance for our member companies, which ultimately benefits our customers. We are pleased to be the first in the U.S. to offer the Slider Remix.”

Sony Announcement Makes Cell Phone Manga News, Again

Sony Announcement Makes Cell Phone Manga News, AgainThanks to the folks over at AP Newswire and BusinessWeek, the recent announcement on Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.’s plans to move into Japan’s mobile manga market is spreading like wildfire [Google] across the Web today. The Sony Corp. unit confirmed they have signed exclusive contracts with 10 popular manga artists, including Shigeru Mizuki, creator of Gegege no Kitaro. The company also stated plans to increase the number of titles now offered to over 300 by next year. That’s more than double the number offered by NTT Solmare and Toppan Publishing combined.

Wireless Watch Japan has been following the ‘Comic Surfing’ story since September 2004 with a video preview of CelSys’s mobile manga technology at Mobidec and again more recently with another video program from KDDI’s EZ Book launch event held in April this year. Sometimes dubbed the crowning jewel of the mobile entertainment content triple-play (games, music, manga), we have been bullish on this sleeping giant since first sight. Wonder how long it will take before Superman launches in the US?

Toshiba to Boost Memory Output

Japan’s Toshiba will invest 200 billion to boost output of flash memory chips used for mobile phones and portable music players to meet soaring global demand, a report says.The Japanese electronics giant will lift production capacity at its domestic chip plant to 150,000 units per month in 2007, up sharply from the current capacity of 10,000 units, the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Sunday.

Disney Branded Cell Phone: A Sign of the Times

Disney Branded Cell Phone: A Sign of the TimesIt’s not the first time that we’ve seen a major brand license a well-known icon to create a designer cell phone. Recently, Ferrari joined the bandwagon with a custom-tailored device by Sharp for Vodafone, available now in Europe and Japan. WWJ thinks many of the usual suspects (cars, sports, fashion, music) are likely to follow suit into the 2005 year-end gift-giving season as well. With music-enabled phones achieving white-hot popularity, perhaps we’ll see boutique handsets dedicated to ABBA, the Beach Boys or even Courtney Love (maybe not since Hilary Duff beat her to it), preloaded with all their ‘greatest hits’ and available just in time for Christmas.

But why stop there? Other global brands (even obscure ones) must be thinking ‘me too’ about now as well; Gucci and Playboy come to mind along with every major league sports team — and don’t forget block-buster movies (a real ‘Bat Phone’ would be very cool). So, what does any of this have to do with Japan you might ask? Plenty.