Rapper SKY-HI fears about the future of Japanese music

so is he worried about a future brain drain of talent to korean and kpop?

Quote from JiminieKookie

Why should he? He knows very well how Korea works compared to Japan.

SKY-HI debuted in 2005 as member of the co-ed group AAA, wich disbanded in 2020. He himself debuted as soloist in 2013 and is known as the fastest rapper of Japan. He knows a lot musicians from different countries and for example worked together with Korean rappers and even menaged to get a song produced by Groovy Room, wich was their first non Korean production. SKY-HI also helped a lot people as for example the vocalist and rapper Sanari to get contracts at the agencies they are at. I guess one of the biggest problems is that he for sure knows what happend to the company he is under. SKY-HI used to be fully under Avex till the middle of 2020.

In September he than opend up BMSG as his own agency. He is still under avex, but only for the productions and no more for the management. As he opend up BMSG SKY-HI shortly after promoted Produce 101 Japan and said he is looking forward to the group that will be formed from that show. And before you ask, the groups of Produce 101 Japan are going to be signed with Lapone Entertainment. Only 1 day later after the video got online in wich he promoted Produce 101, he said in an interview with a Japanese magazine how he was thinking to make his own survival show since he owns BMSG now. And for this SKI-HI most likly knows how bad it is at the moment with Avex.

Avex used to be the most popular Japanese company after Johnny's Entertainment with contracts to many different smaller Japanese labels, having their own sublabels and also working together with labels like SM Entertainment and YG Entertainment. Since the digital market is growing, many Japanese companys are trying their way to get money by heavly advertising special online-events or apps aswell as new Youtube-channels to get peoples attention, but Avex was like some others a bit behind and after having a few popular artists as for example AAA, Ayumi Hamasaki, Wagakki Band,.. but also publishing popular artists from other labels like GENERATIONS, Daichi Miura, ... Avex slowly lost in popularity and that mainly cause they stoped helping artists to promote. Somtimes it even feels like if Avex thinks having popular artists would make newer artists gain popularity but thats not how it works in Japan. You can't say "There is Ayumi Hamasaki, so GENIC should become popular too" as example like it works in Korea when you say "There is BTS so TXT can become popular". Avex announced in 2020 that they had a lost of over 300 million dollar compared to the year before and they even said selling CDs went down and people also were not going to concerts anymore aswell as other things didn't happend for most artists under Avex, so a bunch artists even didn't released much music and hadn't gotten into many deals (not apearing on magazine-covers, not modeling, not advertising stuff) and so it went down a lot for Avex wich cause at the end that they had to sell their 700 million dollar building and also had to cancle contracts with a lot artists aswell as over 100 trainees.

Another factor is that even tho Johnny's Entertainment only apeard on Youtube since 2019 and you can only find Arashi on Spotify aswell as 2 songs of KAT-TUN Johnny's still menaged to be on top of the Japanese music industry despite all the scandals of the past few years (since the founder Johnny Kitagawa had passed away many groups disbanded or lost member and a few idols got into different scandals from mildly scandalous as for example Hikaru from Snow Man thought it was bad to drink alcohol in public while being around minors to extrem scandals like Tomohisa Yamashita having sex with a minor girl). Johnny's new boygroups SixTONES and Snow Man also are the most selling boygroups in the past 20 years by both selling over 4 million singles in 1 year after debuting in 2020.

A bunch artists like for example Yorushika gained popularity in 2020 but it went downhill for many other artists over the past few years more and more and you most likly don't see so much groups being promoted anymore than 10-15 years ago in Japan. Even tho Produce 101 exist and the winner group JO1 from season 1 are very popular in Japan and the second season which is curently running also gained a lot popularity, its still very hard for everyone who isn't JO1 to become popular since apearing on Produce in 2019.

Orbit and OWV are groups with only member who were on Produce 101 Japan and they are doing quit good, even tho it's not as great as JO1 (Orbit's first album sold a bit over 80K aswell their first single a bit over 90K and OWV sould a bit over 100K with 3 singles, meanwhile JO1 allready sold over 1 million with 3 singles and over 300K with 1 album) but everyone else who debuted by now and was on Produce is kinda failing somehow (BXW released 3 MVs but not as single and they arn't even on Spotify or itunes, Boom Trigger made 3 MVs and 2 singles but failed due to lack of promotions and bad quality of their music, Lee Minhyuk only released 1 digital single so far, HICO has 1 single but even tho he is under the same company as Orbit he sold almost nothing, ... I could name all others but than it would be too long).

If you take a look at Japan than you can realy see that most artists often only have their big moment when they released the OP for an anime or popular drama, but than most people simply forget about the artists later on. Only groups under Johnny's or a few artists of Universal, Warner or Sony menage to become popular and stay popular. If you would ask people in Japan what music they like than you would hear them name someone from a bigger agency most of the time (or a foreign artist) but not really much about smaller artists. The time as many smaller groups could fill the place for concerts and had tours all over the country and said they are happy to sell quit OK are kinda gone since more and more the bigger artists take over the place.

SKY-HI knows how groups work since he was in one too and since Avex changed their directions to go a bit more international I would think that his thinking probably is that he wants to creat a group that can become popular in Japan and probably even make people get into Japanese music, so people won't think that it would be useless to be an artist in Japan, since the trend really goes to the fact that many people either don't want to be musicians anymore cause they think it wouldn't work for them or they search for how to work in a foreign country and yeah, you see it on for how more Japanese people try to audition in Korea even tho they could try it in Japan too. And the mindset of people is really fucked a lot of the time when they think auditioning in Korea would be better than Japan cause a lot of the time people who failed in Korea but are Japanese really say they thought they could be automaticly successfull when going to Korea instead of trying it in Japan.

Display More

sorry i skimmed reading that but your original quote from Sky hi he literally talk about If we stay on this path, I have a fear that in Japan we will never get high quality dance- and vocal-groups.

but then you wrote Why should he? He knows very well how Korea works compared to Japan.

it sorta doesn't make sense from my perspective since I don't know much but the quote you provided me seems like he's fearful of the brain drain of talent then you said he's not...so I'm confused lol

Quote from selfmate

so is he worried about a future brain drain of talent to korean and kpop?

Not really. Exactly from his own words "we have this mine with amazing diamonds and no one going into them to dig for them". He thought Japanese talents being wasted, not utilized. In his opinion, it's not about Japan lost its chance because K-pop snatched the talented ones away, it's not because of brain drain, but because J-pop did not utilize them.

Quote from bzzz

Not really. Exactly from his own words "we have this mine with amazing diamonds and no one going into them to dig for them". He thought Japanese talents being wasted, not utilized. In his opinion, it's not about Japan lost its chance because K-pop snatched the talented ones away, it's not because of brain drain, but because J-pop did not utilize them.

gotcha...makes sense...I don't know that much about the jpop industry so interesting

lol his words sound like pure resentment.

Also they do not matter, in Japan nobody knows him, so his words have 0 relevance