In France, Japan, and all things Japanese are hugely popular and growing in popularity daily! I will get to that in a minute! Read on!
People who knows me well or read this blog often will know that I am a devout advocate of specialization. It doesn't matter what you do, I believe that you must specialize or die.
The examples of this abound all around us.
Take my oft sited example of family restaurants; sure Denny's has everything, but nothing is especially delicious. If, in your town, there was a Denny's (and four or five others like Denny's around it) but there was also a delicious sushi shop, Chinese restaurant, French, Italian, great Steak-house, Starbucks, Mexican, etc., etc., would you go to the Denny's?
I don't think most people would.
That's why our economy and the world are changing so very radically today; the Long Tail has been born (all hail the Internet) and specialization is quickly becoming the king!
Now, I'd like to introduce a site to you that is operating in Japan that is definitely niche marketing (but, in my opinion, will have to become more and more focused as time goes on!) I want to do this today because, from my radar, because of things like Hatsune Miku (the singing android) and other hard-to-pinpoint-factors, it seems that Japanese pop music is getting hugely popular in, get this, France!
Yes, yes... I didn't believe it at first, either... But some friends just came back from France and confirmed this for me: In France, Japan and everything Japanese is exploding in popularity! They even have a Japan Expo in Paris every year!
That site is called Music Japan Plus and gets my highest rating for a site totally dedicated to Japanese music. The site is also in Japanese and English and several other languages.
Music Japan Plus has information mostly focused on J-Pop, J-Rock and "visual-kei" artists. It also has an online shopping E-commerce component, articles, and artist database, forums and prizes! They also have their own Youtube, Myspace and Facebook.
So, if you're really into niche music and Japanese Rock (or the Plastic Trees) is your thing, then you need to check out Music Japan Plus. Click here to go directly to Music Japan Plus (English site).
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Keywords:
Music Japan Plus, Mike Rogers, Marketing Japan, Vamps, Plastic Trees, J-Pop, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, J-Rock, Visual-kei, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook
Sadly, a large percentage of Americans would select Denny's instead of a specialty place every time. Some of my friends and family members would be amongst those going to Denny's and they would probably order the same thing every time they go. If Americans didn't have the preference for plain food, the chain places would never have grown so much. My question is whether the typical Japanese would eat/slurp at an ordinary Ramen soup restaurant or would they try the speciality foods like Mexican, French or Italian?
ReplyDeleteHi Andy!
ReplyDeleteIn the big cities in Japan, the specialty restaurants do great. But, you do have a good point, in the country-side the ethnic food (Italian, Mexican, etc) are few and far between... Many of the big chain restaurants, though, have gone bankrupt in japan these last few years...
Don't make a mistake, though, even though, say, McDonald7s is a chain, it is still a specialty shop!
Thanks for writing Andy!