The Groove Music Life

In a few weeks, Morning Musume are going to make their American debut at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. As of the schedule I saw this weekend, it seems odd that what should be capping off the festival – their debut US concert performance – is actually occurring at 2:30 in the afternoon on the second day of the convention.

OK, what next?

Almost a year and a half after I wrote my first column on getting Morning Musume to America, one reader recently relocated the column and commented on how much “fun” it was to re-read the article now, given the present circumstances.

So far we have:

• Morning Musume performing in Los Angeles.
• The first Morning Musume titles to see physical release in America – Platinum 9 Disc and the follow-up single “Shouganai Yuma Oibito”.
• Up-Front Works and their present American licensee, JapanFiles.com, working on tie-ins to the appearance and Anime Expo in general, including an OPV contest.
• An official MySpace page (Given how many “unofficial” MoMusu MySpace pages have come and gone over the years, what took UFA so goddamned long with that?!?)

And with those, come the caveats:

• So far, the physical CD releases have only been available from JapanFiles.com’s own retail site. A search of Amazon.com and CDUniverse.com only turns up import editions of everything.
• No other appearances have been scheduled in this country for the band – but it’s still early in the game here. (Yes, Virginia, even my caveats have caveats.)
• What was previously available on US iTunes up until JapanFiles.com got the American rights to much of the Hello! Project back catalog is not presently there, save for All Singles Complete. Platinum 9 Disc and more recent singles have turned up there the same time as in Japan and on JapanFiles.com since then, though.

So, Morning Musume comes here, plays their hearts out, has a successful show, and goes back to Japan Sunday night or Monday morning. What next?

Let’s be blunt. This is not the time for everyone involved to be sitting on laurels. With all the effort being put into this, it would be a big mistake for UFW to send MoMusu over here one time and one time only, and not capitalize on it further. I highly doubt they would be going through the trouble of sending them over in the first place if this was going to be a onetime thing. Up-Front Works, as I have written before, had to have known of the growing non-Asian fanbase for Morning Musume and Hello! Project for quite some time. Surely, someone at CDJapan had to have shared overseas sales stats with people at Up-Front Works and their partner labels.

Even though I already own the Japanese editions of Platinum 9 Disc and “Shouganai Yuma Oibito”, I pre-ordered copies of the American releases just to do my part to help support my favorite band. (And in a handier personal advantage, the US copy of Platinum 9 can be the copy I grab off the shelf when I head for my car.) One fan complained about what he or she initially felt was the questionable print and paper quality and lack of obi of the US “Shouganai” single at a Hello!Online post, but a JapanFiles representative responded in kind (as they are wont to do): “There’s a standard difference in manufacturing [and] distributing between the Japanese and USA markets (Same reason we have to have a bar code on USA editions). We try to match paper stock as best we can, but sometimes it’s not possible. Again, that’s due to [different] printing industry norms in both countries. That’s also the main reason why we imported all the member cards for Platinum 9 Disc.”

I don’t know what JapanFiles’ distribution is completely like when it comes to retail stores. As stated earlier, searches of a couple of prominent CD sites only reveal the imports, and as far as I know, the only nationwide retail store that is carrying releases from JapanFiles is Hot Topic, and those are genre specific. So, you might find Hangry & Angry (whose EP is indeed available on the store’s website) and you’ll definitely find some of the edgier J-rock acts who have had physical releases come out through JapanFiles in the Stages, like Girugamesh, but I don’t see Hot Topic filing Morning Musume in their CD bins between the Misfits and My Chemical Romance. Some of Hot Topic’s shoppers (besides me – I blame their T-shirt and vinyl record selections, plus they had YoYo Girl Cop, Aya Matsuura’s movie, in stock and out in the open when it came out!) might be tuned into Morning Musume, but that’s another story. Anime-specialist retail stores may also be carrying these releases, but this is still targeting a small, existing market, and Morning Musume’s music deserves more than that.

This is where some “next level shit” comes in. What kind of next level shit, you ask?

Wider distribution for Morning Musume’s US releases. JapanFiles partnering with a widely distributed independent label like Matador or Merge would be a boon for Morning Musume (and subsequently, for many other artists who are associated with JapanFiles). JapanFiles would still have main North American licensing rights, including digital rights. The sub-licensing labels’ main role would be to distribute the records to retail record/CD stores, assist in manufacturing (an established indie label would have a better line of credit with CD and record manufacturers and get CDs out a lot faster), and promote the releases like they would any other release.

For those who question why I make such a case for wider dissemination of Morning Musume’s releases, the answer is simple: It’s all about making those releases easier to get – and more visible to casual record buyers. Puffy AmiYumi had it with Bar-None and Epic (not so much with Tofu, who in their biggest downfall failed to realize that they were a record company selling recorded music when they directed their promotion only to the anime crowd and not to music buyers, and their distribution only to the anime section at Suncoast, not to the pop/rock section at Virgin, FYE, et al.) Dir en grey has it currently with The End Records and RED Distribution, and BoA currently has it with an American subsidiary of her Asian label through Universal’s Fontana Distribution.

Also, why should JapanFiles deal with a bigger independent label, some may ask? I can imagine someone looking up Matador’s and Merge’s websites (since I cited those labels as prime examples), looking at their artist rosters, and wondering why I would want to see Morning Musume share the same label as indie-rock heavyweights like Sonic Youth or Conor Oberst? Last year, I had pointed out a couple of major label imprints that might have served Morning Musume well. That was last year. Let’s get one square fact out of the way right now: Major labels, for the most part and as of this writing, stink. A major label will take Morning Musume, throw them against the wall, and hope they stick. Fuck that. A veteran pop act like Morning Musume with a growing American fan base should not be given a token couple of month’s attention and then get pushed aside in favor of the latest Lady Gaga or Lil’ Wayne clone.

An independent label will not do any of these things. An independent label will nurture an act as it gathers a loyal fanbase and a wide back catalog. Some of that work is already done in the case of Morning Musume – the growing fan base is already here, and as for a wide back catalog, does nine albums, an EP, three anthologies, and forty singles (never mind all of the PV collection and live concert DVDs) sound wide enough of a back catalog for you?

In my five years of being a Morning Musume fan and interacting with other Morning Musume fans, I’ve found one thing in common. A typical non-Japanese MoMusu fan does not listen to whoever the latest Western pop sensation is. They are listening to Sonic Youth, and Coldplay, and Conor Oberst, and Dinosaur Jr, and Black Flag, Iggy Pop, Panic! At The Disco, Slayer, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra… the list could go on all night. They are listening to indie rock, punk, jazz, metal, and older American pop from the days when hit songs had verses and choruses instead of just the same two to four bars of music repeating ad infinitum for three and a half minutes. They wouldn’t listen to Kid Rock or the Jonas Brothers if you put a loaded pistol to their heads. There is nothing ‘hipster’ about them. They have made their own sincere choice to follow these acts, and buy import copies of their records; many have even gone to Japan to see Morning Musume and their fellow J-music acts perform live. These are the same people independent labels like the ones I have mentioned cater to. Morning Musume would be a perfect fit.

Easier availability of the music leading to bigger sales, and subsequently to touring schedules beyond just showing up at America’s biggest anime convention. It’s not just a big idea, it’s a no brainer – and given a wide enough berth, it’ll work.