Of course, there are plenty of ways to *cough* get Japanese music for free, but here is one legit method I’ve been using for a little over a year now, and it works really well. That being said, I’m not much of a music buff, so I have no idea what I like listening to (usually it’s not Japanese music, to be perfectly honest), but I know there are plenty of you out there jonesing to get your hands on more Japanese music, find new bands, etc., especially since iTunes makes it hard for non-Japanese-living folk to buy Japanese music (and CD prices are just plain outrageous).
The service I use to listen to and get access to new music (or, in my case, lots of really old classical music) is Last.fm. There’s a competing product out there, Pandora, but to be honest, I’m not a fan of their user interface. I like last.fm’s desktop app, and I like how there’s always a ton of information on the song / band that’s playing available at my fingertips. Plus, it’s a lot easier to use, and integrates some nice social elements (which I don’t use).
Last.fm is an “internet radio” service, which means it’s more like an actual radio as opposed to playing whatever you want on iTunes, though there are some things that give you a little more control over what you listen to (and more importantly, what you don’t want to listen to). Although you can’t actually play specific songs in most cases, you can listen to “stations” that you create either based around an artist or tag. So, for example, if I wanted to listen to artists similar to Orange Range, I’d type that in and my Last.fm radio would play songs by artists similar to Orange Range (or songs by Orange Range themselves). Conversely, if I wanted to put in a tag, I could put something like “Japanese” in there to listen to music that’s been tagged with the word “Japanese.” For example, here are the first ten songs I got when using this tag (Japanese):
- How Beautiful by 土岐麻子
- Morning After by Boom Boom Satellites
- Love Forever by 加藤ミリヤ×清水翔太
- 1970 by Boris
- Nabbed by Yoshida Brothers
- Kodou by Dir En Grey
- Funky Town by 安室奈美恵
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni by 島みやえい子
- Molecicco by Boredoms
- Zombie by Versailles
As far as I can tell, this list of songs was pretty random when it comes to styles, etc., and to be completely honest, I wasn’t a fan of at least half of these, but that’s why you have the option of skipping tracks you don’t like, marking them as “hated” so they never show up again, or marking them as “loved” so you can keep track and listen later. Although the tag feature is a great way to find new music in a particular genre, to find stuff you like it’s probably best to play stations based off of artists you already like. That’s gotten me the most luck.
Another thing I like is the ability to see the top artists within a particular tag. For example, the Japanese tag.
I’m a bad music listener, so I don’t know who most of these people are, but I bet you do! Lastly, you can even see local gigs happening in your area by tag. Apparently Utada Hikaru will be coming to SF soon?
Anyways, I hope this helps some of you out there find some great new music to listen to. Of course, if you want to learn what people are singing about, you’ll probably want to learn Japanese.