MBW’s World Leaders is a regular series in which we turn the spotlight toward some of the most influential industry figures overseeing key international markets. In this feature, we meet Manubu Tsujino, President of Sony Music Labels, the recorded music division of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. World Leaders is supported by PPL.
Manubu Tsujino wanted to be a newscaster but became one of Japan’s most prominent A&R execs instead.
He joined Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc (SMEJ) after graduating from university in Osaka in 1996 and has spent his nearly thirty-year career at the company.
“When I was a student, I hoped to go into journalism, but my mother was a music teacher and music was always a part of my life growing up,” he remembers. “These days, I’m genuinely grateful to be able to work in the music industry.”
After four years in record store sales, three years in promotion for both international and domestic music, and two years in sales promotion, he became an A&R in 2005.
Tsujino says he had no hits to speak of for his first two years as an A&R at SMEJ, but his fortunes changed in 2007. As Tsujino explains, “inspired by TLC and SportyThievz“, a group from Osaka called RSP covered Japan’s biggest reggae hit, Lifetime Respect, by Dozan Miki, “re-producing it from a female perspective”.
The track became a hit in Japan, selling around 2 million downloads.
“After that, I gained an understanding of how to create hits as an A&R, and I was able to produce additional million-selling hits,” says Tsujino.
Tsujino’s upward career trajectory continued, becoming Managing Director of Sony Music Records, SMEJ’s ‘founding’ label in 2015.
He assumed his current position as President of Sony Music Labels in 2019 and has also served as Director of SMEJ since 2023.
“We have long believed that for Japanese music to make its way into the global market, synergy with anime is crucial.”
Artists signed to Sony Music Entertainment Japan have seen significant global success this year.
One of those artists is hip-hop duo Creepy Nuts, whose single, Bling-Bang-Bang-Born, released in January, became a viral hit. It spent several weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 and has racked up over 500 million streams by the beginning of October on Spotify alone.
The duo also teamed up with superstar Dua Lipa, who released a remix of her single Illusion featuring Creepy Nuts in June.
Bling-Bang-Bang-Born was used as the opening theme for the hit anime series Mashle: Magic and Muscles, and Tsujino points to anime as one of the main drivers behind the global rise of Japanese-language music.
Evidence of that rise arrived via Luminate’s 2023 Year-End report, which showed that the share of Japanese language tracks in the Top 10,000 global tracks increased from 1.3% in 2022 to 2.1% last year.
“The global rise of Japanese anime is significant,” he says. “We have long believed that for Japanese music to make its way into the global market, synergy with anime is crucial”.
SMEJ owns its own anime unit called Aniplex and claims to be one of the first record companies in the market to recognize anime’s potential.
Tsujino adds: “Also, when we initially considered expanding overseas, we thought we needed to stay in line with Western trends in terms of creativity. In other words, our guideline was to create music similar to what was popular in North America and Europe in order to yield better results.
“However, nowadays, with diversity being important, we have come to embrace originality in addition to multi-cultural perspectives. I speculate that this approach is starting to help reach the wider global audience.”
Here, Manubu Tsujino tells about the key trends in the world’s second-largest recorded music market, the rise of J-Pop, and SMEJ’s ambition to bring Japanese-language music to global audiences…
J-Pop is growing in popularity outside of Japan. Creepy Nuts for example have seen success with ‘Bling-Bang-Bang-Born’ and they recently collaborated with Dua Lipa for a remix of ‘Illusion’ – how is SMEJ positioned in this rising trend?
Through the internet, global sales trends can literally be captured instantly. In the case of Creepy Nuts, hip hop being used as an anime theme song was already extremely rare, but the main character of the anime “MASHLE” performed a unique dance in the artist’s animated theme song video, making it stand out from traditional anime songs.
“I truly believe it was a hit created by the collective efforts of SME globally.”
Users on platforms like TikTok instantly and creatively repurposed it, which led to increased subscriptions. SME US, Mexico, and other countries quickly responded to that trend and prioritized its promotion. I truly believe it was a hit created by the collective efforts of SME globally.
YOASOBI performed at Coachella for the first time in 2024. Tell us about the significance for YOASOBI getting booked for the event, and how important live appearances at festivals abroad are for raising the profile of Japanese acts?
YOASOBI is a bottom-up project that two young employees created with YOASOBI artists Ayase and Ikura.
I serve as the head of the department, but my responsibility is mainly executive. After the resounding success of Into the Night, The Orchard‘s staff contributed greatly to its worldwide sales.
“Seeing a Japanese artist receiving thunderous applause from tens of thousands of American fans moved me to tears.”
Last summer, I attended Head in the Clouds in Los Angeles hosted by 88 Rising and seeing a Japanese artist receiving thunderous applause from tens of thousands of American fans moved me to tears.
When artists perform at festivals, in a sense, it’s a kind of affirmation.
The audience, who are already familiar with the hit songs, further deepens their fandom, making it a crucial part of the process leading to the next step: the artist’s solo performance.
MILLENIUM PARADE recently signed a deal with EPIC in the US and RCA in the UK. How significant is it for Japan-born acts to be signing deals with labels headquartered in two of the other Top 3 largest recorded music markets?
Millennium Parade is a unit with exceptional creativity from a global perspective. They have talent that is not only outstanding in music but also highly relevant in the field of visual arts on an international level.
I understand in the past there have been contracts with SME labels in the US and UK, but most of those Japanese music projects were developed and promoted according to Japanese demands and strategies.
This time, the US and UK saw our presentation, were impressed with the talent of Millennium Parade, and actively pushed for the contract. This is literally the first time implementing a truly integrated global strategy with the three parties working together, and I am thrilled to be a part of it.
Tell us about the strategies you’re implementing to take advantage of the rising popularity of Japanese-language music.
Simply put, it’s dots and connecting them. Right now, we’re just starting to plot the points. And that is the “hits”. The next step is to increase fandom at the artist level, including hosting concerts.
Currently, our analysis shows that while the songs themselves are well-known, recognition of the artists performing them has not followed. This can be attributed to the pandemic, which limited in-person opportunities for the artist, as well as impracticalities of English education in Japan.
“Our analysis shows that while the songs themselves are well-known, recognition of the artists performing them has not followed.”
Many Japanese people who have received higher education can read and write in English but often struggle with speaking it, causing promotion efforts to fall short.
Managing to overcome these issues, our goal is to develop J-POP as a distinct genre and gain acceptance in regions such as Asia, Europe, and the US, which would be connecting the dots and building a presence. To achieve this, we believe it is essential to actively pursue collaborations with local artists and co-host events.
How hard has it been historically to break Japanese-language acts globally?
Until the world became connected through the Internet, I personally did not see any possibilities for Japanese music breaking globally. I knew that Kyu Sakamoto’s SUKIYAKI hit No. 1 on the US charts in 1963, but that was before I was born, and after that, no Japanese-language song even made the Top 20, so in a sense, I thought SUKIYAKI was a miracle hit.
The Japanese music market peaked in 1998, but even after that, new formats such as Chaku-Uta-ringtone downloads, digital downloads, and subscriptions have been introduced. Even now, the physical market still accounts for 65% of the total [market], so the real need for us to step out of this very fortunate environment didn’t seem too pressing. Although there have been artists in the past who pursued international markets, I think the industry only began to seriously focus on the global market after the pandemic.
I had also thought that the fact that Japanese is a unique language not used in any other country or region prevented Japanese music from reaching the global stage. Just as we were thinking this, K-POP began to achieve major success with artists like PSY and BTS, which gave us a great opportunity to learn from.
What trends are you seeing in the market, both creatively and on the business side, that we should know about?
The key to making Japanese songs successful seems to be their companionship with distinctive animations and illustrations. This suggests that we should delve into understanding what characterizes us as Japanese and what we excel at. In this context, one prevailing trend should be acknowledged.
This is the ‘Net Creator Culture’ in music, which we call ‘Vocaloid Culture.’ It is a unique Japanese phenomenon that consists of a trinity: Vocaloid producers who create music using Vocaloids, singers who perform these songs with their own voices, and illustrators who create animations for the music videos to be uploaded on video-sharing platforms. Amazingly, they communicate and form teams over the internet, and sometimes have never met in person.
“The key to making Japanese songs successful seems to be their companionship with distinctive animations and illustrations.”
The music they create has distinct features that set it apart from conventional J-POP and many have become hits in Japan. Kenshi Yonezu and Ayase of YOASOBI also come from a Vocaloid producer background. ‘Kikuo’ who we signed last year, is doing shows with audiences of 4,000 in North and South America, supporting that this culture is beginning to spread worldwide.
What are your predictions for Japanese-language music’s positioning globally over the next 12 months to 24 months?
As I mentioned earlier, the global strategy for Japanese music has just begun. I believe that rather than focusing on a one or two-year perspective, we need to aim for a five or 10-year outlook. Even taking a different approach to current K-POP practices, we aim to work towards global expansion that can follow in K-POP’s footsteps.
If there was one thing you could change about the music business, what would it be and why?
I am constantly supported by my team and run the organization together with them. In that regard, there is nothing I can do alone. However, from an optimistic perspective, I hope that Japanese products and Japanese entertainment fandoms together might be an opportunity for people around the world to rediscover the quality of Japanese products.
