HearJapan Online Japanese Music Store

For those who like to act rather than read…

Access HearJapan, a beta online Japanese music store.

Use this Coupon Code to register a new profile: jpn536

Browse, listen to 30-second clips of any song, read band profiles, or buy a song for as low as 100 yen (currently 5% off entire albums).

Now for the readers…

Hey everyone! If you like Japanese music and aren’t able to access enough of it to meet your eccentric tastes, I think you’re going to love HearJapan (details on how to register follow).

HearJapan is a brand new online music store (kinda, technically it’s not released yet, it’s still beta – but even Gmail is still beta, so let’s not hold that against them) that allows you to buy Japanese music online.

Even if you have other ways to acquire your music, I still think you’ll be hard pressed to find a location that offers so much Japanese music related content in English, including band profiles, album information, and lyric translations. Just browsing the site to read about what’s out there is entertaining. You can even listen to 30-second clips of any song available on the website.

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Even though the site is brand-spanking new and new albums are being added daily (literally), they already have some major artists available including: Vidoll, D’espairsRay, and ALvino. Vidoll is the visual band you see in the “group information” screen shot below. If you’re into Japanese visual bands, they’re one of the major upcoming acts right now. Check out the song “Sarah”, it’s alright. I’m not into visual rock at all… but I picked up a track from an instrumental rock band called Te’ in order to test the site. Good stuff.

In regards to the shopping experience, the mp3s are high quality, have no DRM (yes!), and get this, once you purchase you can download the music three times from the HearJapan website. So if you lose the file for some reason, or even if you want to download your music to another computer you’re free to do so. It’s obvious this is a music site created by a music lover.

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You can purchase individual songs at prices between 100 and 150 yen per song (about $1.00 - $1.50 USD), and during this beta period if you purchase an entire album you get 5% off each song. At the moment purchases can be made with major credit cards, but PayPal isn’t supported yet. I’ve been told that support is coming soon. I hope so. I happen to like Paypal.

As I said, HearJapan is still beta, and on a “invitation” only basis. So here’s an invitation. You can access HearJapan using the Coupon Code ‘jpn536′, and entering it along with your information at this registration URL. The “beta” is really very open, and it is OK to share this code with anyone else you want to be able to access the site. I guess the creators want a controlled “word of mouth” crowd to break in the site before they open it to the rest of the Internet.

The owners of HearJapan are located in Japan, speak fluent Japanese, and love music. I met one of the creators while I was studying at IUC. He graduated a year before me and did his research project on Japanese intellectual property law. HearJapan is the fruit of his hard work.

This is an extremely grassroots-style project, as the creators have personally contacted each and every band whose music is available in order to get the license agreements to make this work. This is a true labor of love, and I really think it’s going to take off!

- Harvey