[indent]JAPAN was the most expensive place to buy a DVD in 2008, according to Screen Digest, a consulting firm. But if time is also money, then workers in Mexico, who had to work an extra two hours to buy the same DVD, would probably feel aggrieved. Based on data from UBS, an average worker in Japan needs to toil for around 155 minutes to buy a DVD, whereas Mexicans must put their noses to the grindstone for about 280 minutes. China's workers are best off, on the job for just over half and hour and paying a mere $1.60 for a DVD. As the average film is around 100 minutes long, workers in Brazil, Hong Kong, France and India spend around the same time working to purchase a DVD as they spend watching it.[/indent]
Last edited by sadude on Sun Dec 06, 2009 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I assume it's the most expensive because of the way Japanese business works on the old boy network. We all know CDs and DVDs are way too expensive, but the simple answer for "why" is "because they can". I remember in the early 2000s (I can say that now, right?) there was some class-action lawsuit against major American record labels, and anyone who bought a CD in a certain time period could sign up to get a part of a $100 million settlement. I can't remember, but I think I got a tiny check or maybe a gift card or something. Of course the labels got off easy, but certainly even worse price-fixing is happening all over the industry in Japan.
What's the first thing you do when you return home after a concert?
LinLin: "I stop thinking and stare into nothingness."
[quote name='EmEl' post='72666' date='Dec 6 2009, 02:19 PM']I assume it's the most expensive because of the way Japanese business works on the old boy network. We all know CDs and DVDs are way too expensive, but the simple answer for "why" is "because they can".[/quote]
The only semi-legitimate reason I ever heard regarding Japanese CD/DVD prices was that it allows all the "niche" market things like anime & game soundtracks, etc to be made. Of course, this only really makes sense if you subscribe to the sort of logic movie studios use to show that blockbuster movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy never made any profit, but that's because they shuffle those profits to cover the overhead on all those other movies that tank.
[quote name='CO2 Blasted Idols' post='91599' date='Jan 12 2011, 06:50 PM']Also, this is MM-BBS, the BBS that hates the H!P fans in almost all other forums.[/quote]
[quote name='Koolmon93' post='72665' date='Dec 6 2009, 02:08 PM']My question is why it's so expensive. Media in Japan seems to be the most expensive thing they sell while food is relatively cheap.[/quote]
what?!
See, I am under the impression that everything is expensive in Japan -- especially food. I've never seen such exorbitant prices for basics in my life before living in Tokyo.
See, I am under the impression that everything is expensive in Japan -- especially food. I've never seen such exorbitant prices for basics in my life before living in Tokyo.[/quote]
I was also under the impression that you can get by rather cheap there. But I can only compare it to Austria, where everything is rather expensive.
Since I can only remember one exact price, I'm just going to say this:
Hamburger at McDonald's in Europe: 1€
Hamburger at McDonald's in Japan: 100 Yen
1€ = 133 Yen
Other than that I can't remember any exact prizes.
However fruits and meat in restaurants is very expensive.
There's actually a much more logical reason why things (especially entertainment-related things) cost more in Japan. If you look at the population and size of Japan, and in turn, the size of their business markets for certain things, you can very easily figure out that they have a lot less people interested in buying certain things than other markets like the US or Europe. Therefore, using smart business sense, you know you don't need to produce very many copies of most products you make because you know your market very well. In manufacturing, even if you don't have to produce a lot of something, you still have to put the effort and money into getting a company to produce so many copies of your product on their manufacturing lines, since most companies in the entertainment business don't have an in-house manufacturing division. This, coupled with the cost of production of the content itself (game development, music production, movie production, DVD authoring,) marketing, as well as international licensing costs, in the case that this is an American movie or music CD, etc. can add up to a pretty large amount, and if your market is only going to buy so many copies, you have to find some way to recuperate some of the money you put into the whole project, so the prices do need to be premium to some extent. It doesn't make any sense to try and factor in how many people from overseas might import some copies, because there isn't nearly enough certainty to estimate that with any level of accuracy, so they only factor for domestic sales.
In a sense, it partially is "because they can" like EmEl says, but not really just because of greed or to screw people over, but if they didn't think these things through this way, the companies would be throwing money out the window and would go out of business pretty quickly. Also, in the case of certain niche products (like H!P) they already know a certain set of dedicated fans will buy the product anyway, and are already used to the premium prices. It makes plenty of sense within the Japanese market to produce too few and sell out of them than it does to produce too many and then worry about liquidating them later. You can always go back and produce more if you know the demand is there. This also has a lot to do with why there are so many "limited edition" products in Japan; it's more of a smart business decision than it is a marketing trick like it is in America.
I need to read through the article more thoroughly when I get home, but this is an interesting topic that comes up for me in conversation for me pretty often because people ask me why I'm so acceepting of paying the prices for import video games and DVDs and I try to explain it all the time, but it's hard to explain it very concisely. I'll probably think of more to add to this later, but hopefully people have some conversation points about it.
Last edited by AEUGNewtype on Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
[quote name='Ap2000' post='72699' date='Dec 7 2009, 04:56 AM']I was also under the impression that you can get by rather cheap there. But I can only compare it to Austria, where everything is rather expensive.
Since I can only remember one exact price, I'm just going to say this:
Hamburger at McDonald's in Europe: 1€
Hamburger at McDonald's in Japan: 100 Yen
1€ = 133 Yen[/quote]
Ah that is true. I live in southern California where food is incredibly cheap as much of the produce comes from central California. A hamburger size might vary though. Arguably, a hamburger here is only about $1 but it is just small enough to fit in your palm and cannot be a meal in itself.
In terms of AEUG's argument, I also wonder. I've often heard that the Japanese music industry is the second largest market in the world! However, this "market" might include Asian consumers that Japanese producers aren't thinking about. So indeed, they might only be producing a small amount (relative) for an imagined domestic audience. However, wouldn't this dvd market also include foreign dvds? In that case, how applicable is this argument if it is international distributors releasing Japanese-subtitled dvds and not domestic producers trying to recoup costs?
Last edited by eri on Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
[quote name='mEri' post='72717' date='Dec 7 2009, 05:16 PM']In terms of AEUG's argument, I also wonder. I've often heard that the Japanese music industry is the second largest market in the world! However, this "market" might include Asian consumers that Japanese producers aren't thinking about. So indeed, they might only be producing a small amount (relative) for an imagined domestic audience. However, wouldn't this dvd market also include foreign dvds? In that case, how applicable is this argument if it is international distributors releasing Japanese-subtitled dvds and not domestic producers trying to recoup costs?[/quote]
I also remember reading an article in some TV Guide/Entertainment magazine lately about how several different artists did this year in terms of CD sales (in the U.S. market), and I noticed that the sales figures of artists like Lady GaGa (in the 300,000's for her latest album) are actually fairly close, if not slightly lower than the top selling singles in Japan this year (according to oricon - does oricon include sales of Korean and Chinese editions?). Of course, Lady GaGa's album only had one edition while some of the top selling Japanese singles had two or more, but it was still a surprise to me.
As for foreign DVDs sold in Japan - that's a good question. I guess it's kind of like when Japanese companies release their products abroad - they're sold by some foreign branch or company that has a license to reproduce the CD or DVD. If a foreign DVD is released in Japan, it has to be subtitled, encoded in a different region format, packaged with Japanese language materials, etc. Maybe some Japan-based branch handles all of that, so they would still need to recoup costs?
[quote name='mEri' post='72717' date='Dec 7 2009, 05:16 PM']In terms of AEUG's argument, I also wonder. I've often heard that the Japanese music industry is the second largest market in the world! However, this "market" might include Asian consumers that Japanese producers aren't thinking about. So indeed, they might only be producing a small amount (relative) for an imagined domestic audience. However, wouldn't this dvd market also include foreign dvds? In that case, how applicable is this argument if it is international distributors releasing Japanese-subtitled dvds and not domestic producers trying to recoup costs?[/quote]
I'm just kind of curious where you hear things like that, do you remember any specific instances of where you heard or read that they were the second largest market in the world? I'd be kinda curious to look through some info like that. In any case, even if this is true, although we can't be 100% sure that this is the way the data was gathered, but if they're counting the "market" as all music sold on the Japanese commerce market, keep in mind this includes probably at least 50%-60% American music released on the Japanese market, not just domestic Japanese artists, which I think is more in turn what our side of the issue is about is the actual Japanese artists. Another factor in calling it the "biggest" market may mean the most revenue generated, and again, considering that an average CD album there is 3 times more expensive, then even if they sold 1/3 as much volume as the American market did, the revenue amounts could look pretty similar.
And on the front of international releasing of stuff, TnB kinda beat me to part of what I was going to say, but I'll further clarify a little bit.
[quote name='TnB' post='72722' date='Dec 7 2009, 07:37 PM']As for foreign DVDs sold in Japan - that's a good question. I guess it's kind of like when Japanese companies release their products abroad - they're sold by some foreign branch or company that has a license to reproduce the CD or DVD. If a foreign DVD is released in Japan, it has to be subtitled, encoded in a different region format, packaged with Japanese language materials, etc. Maybe some Japan-based branch handles all of that, so they would still need to recoup costs?[/quote]
This is very true; international or "foreign" versions of entertainment media don't just happen, there's a ton of work and localization that needs to go into it and the company who does most of the work from one country to the next is usually never the same. Like I mentioned earlier how entertainment companies don't usually have their own in-house manufacturing division (though some like Bandai may have an in-house localization, etc. if they do enough volume in this sense, but most don't,) they also often can't use the same people who produced all the marketing, DVD authoring, and manufacturing in one country and just have them do the same work for another country. And sometimes this is not because they can't but more because it wouldn't make business sense to do so, when you get into the cost it would take to export something that was manufactured in one country and get it shipped en masse to another country in a timely and cost-effective manner, it usually doesn't really work out. The companies have certain contractors or sub-companies that do work specifically for that country. Like TnB said, there's a lot of extra, specific work that has to be done before something gets released in another country, its not just like "hey, lets throw this in a package that has a different language on it and ship it overseas."
As a relevant example, look at the anime markets. Anime is by and large a Japanese thing by its nature, but we (most of us) know that it also gets released in America under a very different context and as a very different product. Some may argue they're "over-doing" it in these cases, but it may be also argued adversely about some American products being released over there as well. But anyway, lets take an anime for instance. Its made in Japan, gets aired in Japan, and gets released on DVD in Japan by Toho or some other Japanese production company. Toho licenses the DVD product to be manufactured, marketed, and sold in Japan by a certain set of companies. When it comes time for them to think about releasing it in America, they'll usually need to look for a localization team, an American marketing team, and American manufacturing company, and an American distribution company, take a company like ADV, Anime Works, Funimation, etc. for example. The original animation and soundtrack is licensed out to one of these companies who will proceed to make new packaging for it, decide the formats they're going to release it on, decide how much to sell it for, decide how to market it to a different audience, make grammatically correct English subtitles for it, usually make an English dubbed audio track, sometimes make a new set of extras for the American DVD that is more relevant to the market they're releaing it in, etc. etc. This same thing also happens when American products go to Japan as well.
And to get back to why this relates to the issue, lets say you're in charge of a team of Japanese people who are licensed to release the DVD of the movie "Watchmen" in Japan and Warner Bros. studios tells you to have the license they have certain things they want you to do like make Japanese subtitles, create a Japanese dubbed audio track, author a DVD that runs on Japanese DVD players, amass a collection of extras that relate to more what Japanese audiences want or expect out of special features on a DVD, translate those extras, find a way to market it to the Japanese audience so that it will sell fairly well, etc. This DVD that you would be making is a very separate thing than the DVD that was released in the US for many reasons and therefore needs to be treated as such, so back to my original ideas, you'd also have to try to figure out how big of an audience the movie would really have on DVD, which is a whole separate thing of its own, like looking at how it did in Japanese theaters, looking at the average sales rates of DVDs in Japan compared to the ticket sales in the theater, etc. If your market research in those areas tells you that it would make sense to produce 500,000 copies of that DVD (and lets say, comparatively that Warner Bros. DVD division made 2,000,000 copies for the US distribution run,) otherwise you'd be over-producing and wasting a lot of money, this is the route you would take, and because of this, since your product is much more limited and exclusive, to regain some of what you put into the project since you know you're not going to have a ton of sales volume, you charge a premium price point.
In comparison, most American DVD companies now just grossly overshoot their needed amounts of DVDs because they know they're going to sell an absurd amount of copies for a popular movie when it comes out on DVD (DVD sales nowadays are leaps and bounds more than theater ticket sales, that's also why they usually rush movies to DVD release shortly after theatrical release) and therefore they can sell most of them for very cheap. And even if it comes down to having to liquidate a lot of overstock later, they're not as worried about it because they know there is also a huge segment of the American audience who whose buying decisions are almost entirely based on pricing. For instance, lets say someone sees something they're somewhat interested in but didn't want to pay an early-to-market price for it, they might find it in a $5 bin at Wal-Mart a year later and buy it just because it is so cheap. I worked in the DVD retail industry for almost 2 years and communicated very directly with manufacturers and distributors, so I'm pretty familiar with the way they do things.
And also, as far as releasing Japanese artists' music in other Asian countries, the process is somewhat similar to other overseas product distribution, except that since they usually assume most other Asian countries are already fairly accepting of the Japanese language and marketing already, they don't do quite as much work as say if you wanted to release and market an Aya Matsuura CD in the US. They mostly just do a slight repackaging, insert some translated lyric sheets, produce a whole bunch of copies with cheap materials for dirt cheap, and sell them for a similarly dirt cheap price. Companies like Zetima and UFA license the right to produce and sell these products to countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Korea with very little restriction on the quality of the release, and this is why some inferior quality versions of things show up in the other Asian markets sometimes.
That's a really long explanation, but I'm trying to account for the whole process.
And to bring a few different examples from a different segment of the Japanese entertainment market, I've recently got a lot more into importing video games as well, and as a bit of a testament to my ideas about how the market works, recently, the head of the Japanese game company CAVE announced that their most recent release, Mushihimesama Futari, would be released on Xbox 360 only to be sold in Japan, but it contains no region coding on the game, so if you wanted to play it on a European or American system, you could, you would just have to import it from Japan. This was done because the company had caught word from many overseas fans that they really want to play these CAVE games that have been coming out for Xbox 360 the last few years, but it didn't make sense for them to buy a Japanese Xbox 360 just to do so. The head of the company said they did this as a test to see if it really would increase the overseas sales, because if it did, they would further consider producing more copies of their games in the future and making them all region-free. This is another issue with the Japanese game market, because it seems their retail price for new games is very much based on how many copies are produced, and how many copies are produced seems very relative to how niche of a game it is. For instance, some of the more obscure shooter games like Shooting Love 20XX had a relatively low amount of copies produced because shmup games like it have a very specific target audience that they are going for, so the price is actually at about an $80 price point, as is another game called Record of Agarest War, which is a fairly under-the-radar strategy RPG that was purposely made as a limited run because they figured the audience would not be all that wide on a system like Xbox which is mostly known in Japan for intense action and shooting games. This is in contrast to many other games which more often than not range from around the $65-$75 range. They assess how many copies they really think will sell, and whatever products they think they will need less of, they charge more for. Supply and demand, when you really get down to it.
The other last tangent I had before I got carried away was another similar market I used to deal in a lot, which is Asian movies. As a more specific reference, I used to collect a lot of Korean DVDs for movies that had fairly recently came out in the era between 2003-2006ish. When you would go to buy a Korean-made movie, you usually had a few options like choosing from the actual Korean DVD release, which was made only with the domestic Korean audience in mind, and was therefore very limited and higher-priced (South Korea is literally about the size of Massachusetts..,) or you could often opt for a Hong Kong version for dirt cheap, but often with worse English subtitles, shoddy packaging, shoddy picture quality, and a heck of a lot more copies produced because of it. There are also some instances that work similarly because I own a few Japanese-produced DVDs of Korean-made movies that were extremely more expensive than the original Korean DVD, which, often in my case, had already sold out all existing copies before I had the money to afford buying it. Another thing that struck me extremely strongly was at a certain point when I went searching to find a few Korean movie posters of movies that I loved. I found a few Korean sites that sold the actual movie posters that were hung up at the movie theaters for display. They were regular sized theatrical posters that in America would normally cost you about $10-15 dollars at most, but in the case of Korean posters, especially if it was a more niche kind of movie like horror, some of the posters were up around $250 just because so few of them were made. Again, I think this whole thing boils down to supply and demand and this is just another example of how products produced for specific markets are often priced higher.
That's a lot of typing and I'm actually wondering if anyone will read it all...I tried to use as little marketing jargon as I could so hopefully it makes sense.
Last edited by AEUGNewtype on Tue Dec 08, 2009 7:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
[quote name='The☆AEUGNewtype' post='72742' date='Dec 7 2009, 10:53 PM']That's a lot of typing and I'm actually wondering if anyone will read it all...I tried to use as little marketing jargon as I could so hopefully it makes sense.[/quote]
I do actually think that some of the more outrageous pricing comes less from supply and demand (like with the niche market games you mentioned) and more from the "brand name" of the artist/franchise/etc - for example, Gackt has a new DVD coming out that's ~$80 (a standard Gackt concert DVD is usually more around $50~60). So far, it just seems to be a standard concert DVD, but since it's for his ~*10th Anniversary*~ they can charge more for it without necessarily adding a bunch of bonus material because it's Gackt. This isn't much different from the U.S. (i.e. premium prices for Beatles anniversary goods), Japan just seems to be better at manufacturing a lot more of those special occations and such xD
Last edited by tsukinobyouin on Tue Dec 08, 2009 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
[quote name='The☆AEUGNewtype' post='72742' date='Dec 7 2009, 07:53 PM']I'm just kind of curious where you hear things like that, do you remember any specific instances of where you heard or read that they were the second largest market in the world? I'd be kinda curious to look through some info like that.[/quote]
I read this in academic articles on contemporary Japanese mass media. The articles are more about, like, dramas and anime and the power of Japanese capital as it penetrates Asian regional markets and in contrast, the resilience of the US market (the largest) to foreign penetration both due to racial/foreign bias and the sheer economic and marketing prowess of American companies. Given that, these stats probably do not account for foreign imports (like American music) nor are they straightforward industry analyses. When school gets out for the holiday, I can look up some of the articles for you if you want.
[quote name='The☆AEUGNewtype' post='72742' date='Dec 7 2009, 07:53 PM']The companies have certain contractors or sub-companies that do work specifically for that country. Like TnB said, there's a lot of extra, specific work that has to be done before something gets released in another country...since your product is much more limited and exclusive, to regain some of what you put into the project since you know you're not going to have a ton of sales volume, you charge a premium price point.
...\\Again, I think this whole thing boils down to supply and demand and this is just another example of how products produced for specific markets are often priced higher.
That's a lot of typing and I'm actually wondering if anyone will read it all...I tried to use as little marketing jargon as I could so hopefully it makes sense.[/quote]
Of course we read it all.
This argument makes a lot of sense given niche markets. The first thing that came to mind were mangas sold at Borders for $12 even though they are sold for like 500 yen in Japan. But it doesn't necessarily explain fully why cds and dvds at large are so expensive in Japan because presumably, domestic Japanese films are not niche to Japanese consumers. So perhaps to add onto this, we can consider that movies and dvds are considered more superfluous/ luxury items in Japan than in the US. I don't know how verifiable this is but it is my feeling because
1. The domestic film production is nothing on the scale that it is in India or America. Most big budget movies shown in Japan are American. On the flip side, Japan has a far more established drama/tv industry. Related to this....
2. Movie theater tickets are twice as expensive in Japan as in the US. I don't get the sense that there is a film-going audience like there is in America these days. We have holiday blockbusters that fall like clockwork each season and movies that *everyone* sees. In Japan, it seemed like just something you might do maybe, perhaps, if there was a film you really wanted to see.
3. In terms of music, Japan always had rental systems for cds as well as dvds. Perhaps the understanding is that people just rent and that owning a dvd is not common?
In that sense, we might say that owning dvds and cds itself is an entire "niche" within Japan.
This argument makes a lot of sense given niche markets. The first thing that came to mind were mangas sold at Borders for $12 even though they are sold for like 500 yen in Japan. But it doesn't necessarily explain fully why cds and dvds at large are so expensive in Japan because presumably, domestic Japanese films are not niche to Japanese consumers. So perhaps to add onto this, we can consider that movies and dvds are considered more superfluous/ luxury items in Japan than in the US. I don't know how verifiable this is but it is my feeling because
I was actually thinking very much along those lines for the Japanese DVD market. DVDs do seem like very much a luxury item for the Japanese market for one reason or another, even if it is a Japanese film. It seems like in general, most entertainment items are kind of a luxury, maybe its because they assume that most people who are old enough to be buying (or affording) DVDs or newer video games are already deep into the working world, and the working world for Japan is basically sleep-work-repeat, so I don't think they'd have a lot of time or interest in coming home to sit down for a few hours and dedicate their time to being idle on a couch. That's just an idea I had in the back of my head and there may be some truth to it, but that's only of the only semi-logical reason I could come up with if you were really looking for a reason that entertainment media is expensive by and large.
3. In terms of music, Japan always had rental systems for cds as well as dvds. Perhaps the understanding is that people just rent and that owning a dvd is not common?
In that sense, we might say that owning dvds and cds itself is an entire "niche" within Japan.
I don't think this really matters all that much. I'm not entirely sure how the rental system works, how widespread it is, etc., but I do know of it. The reason I'd think so is you can do fairly similar things in America, though not with the music, that is, unless you go to a library. The DVD/game rental market in the US is pretty big, but it doesn't nearly overshadow DVD/game sales. Obviously that doesn't mean that's true of Japan as well, but just because the system is there doesn't mean it is a replacement for the slightly more expensive option of owning something permanently.
Last edited by AEUGNewtype on Tue Dec 08, 2009 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
[quote name='The☆AEUGNewtype' post='72808' date='Dec 8 2009, 04:42 PM']I don't think this really matters all that much. I'm not entirely sure how the rental system works, how widespread it is, etc., but I do know of it. The reason I'd think so is you can do fairly similar things in America, though not with the music, that is, unless you go to a library. The DVD/game rental market in the US is pretty big, but it doesn't nearly overshadow DVD/game sales. Obviously that doesn't mean that's true of Japan as well, but just because the system is there doesn't mean it is a replacement for the slightly more expensive option of owning something permanently.[/quote]
Yeah I was thinking this more in terms of CD rentals, which blew my mind when I first heard of it -- it made so much sense and yet was nonexistent in the US market.
All I know is that Gackt's RE:BORN album cost me $51 after tax at Sanseido today. Fuck Japan, I'm buying ONE CD from them per year from now on. <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... >/geof.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':geof:' />
[quote name='CO2 Blasted Idols' post='91599' date='Jan 12 2011, 06:50 PM']Also, this is MM-BBS, the BBS that hates the H!P fans in almost all other forums.[/quote]
[quote name='Geof' post='72817' date='Dec 8 2009, 08:20 PM']All I know is that Gackt's RE:BORN album cost me $51 after tax at Sanseido today. Fuck Japan, I'm buying ONE CD from them per year from now on. <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... >/geof.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':geof:' />[/quote]
[quote name='mEri' post='72812' date='Dec 8 2009, 09:27 PM'][quote name='The☆AEUGNewtype' post='72808' date='Dec 8 2009, 04:42 PM']I don't think this really matters all that much. I'm not entirely sure how the rental system works, how widespread it is, etc., but I do know of it. The reason I'd think so is you can do fairly similar things in America, though not with the music, that is, unless you go to a library. The DVD/game rental market in the US is pretty big, but it doesn't nearly overshadow DVD/game sales. Obviously that doesn't mean that's true of Japan as well, but just because the system is there doesn't mean it is a replacement for the slightly more expensive option of owning something permanently.[/quote]
Yeah I was thinking this more in terms of CD rentals, which blew my mind when I first heard of it -- it made so much sense and yet was nonexistent in the US market.
[/quote]
Yeah, like I said the only CD rental things I know of in the US is many public libraries have huge collections of music that you can rent out. Often you just need a library card, but a lot of libraries will charge you minimal fees per CD you take out, like a dollar or two. I don't know exactly what kind of places do this whole CD rental thing in Japan, but I've actually bought a number of Japanese music CDs in the past off of eBay that used to be from a rental service, so I knew it has existed for many years, but never really knew the details of it. Maybe someone here who's lived in Japan for a while could enlighten us? And I know they used to do it a lot, but maybe its been phased out of the market by now? I don't know.
I used to go to a few japanese video rental stores in Torrance & Costa Mesa, CA which also rented CDs & games. It was basically the same as renting a movie; $1 for singles, $2-$3 for albums & you generally had them for 2 or 3 days. I'm pretty sure you just needed to give them your credit card number to start up a membership. I also remember after awhile, one of the stores starting renting burned CD-R copies of the CDs instead of the originals. I assumed this allowed more copies of new releases (they almost always had most new releases the day the Asahiya next door got them in) but I'm sure there had to be a fair amount of theft as well. With so many lossless format torrents available now, I don't miss the 60-mile drive as much anymore, haha.
[quote name='CO2 Blasted Idols' post='91599' date='Jan 12 2011, 06:50 PM']Also, this is MM-BBS, the BBS that hates the H!P fans in almost all other forums.[/quote]
