Forum - View topicTofu Records story in the Daily Yomiuri
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Iron Chef
 Posts: 487 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Thought y'all might like to read this:
Tofu Records takes J-pop to United States Rori Caffrey / Special to The Daily Yomiuri "Actually, 'Tofu' has two meanings," explains Rob Kelso, label manager of Tofu Records, Sony Music Japan's newest offshoot. "The first and most obvious is the bean curd we all know and love. The second is from the kanji 'to' meaning 'east' and 'fu' meaning 'wind.' So we like to think of ourselves as the Wind from the East." Last July, Sony Music Japan took a brave step westward and launched the label, which according to Kelso, is the first one dedicated to bringing Japanese pop and rock music to the United States. Based in California, Tofu Records is set to bring some of Japan's most popular artists into U.S. music stores. Breaking into the Western market, however, will take more than a gentle Eastern breeze, a hurricane would have difficulty squeezing into the airtight U.S. music market. Sales figures in the United States continue to plummet as, for one reason or another, people choose not to buy CDs. Whether they're downloading music instead of purchasing it, finding other distractions to spend money on, or just not hearing anything they want to shell out for, the music-buying market has become smaller and shrewder. Kelso says Tofu Records isn't out to convert the dwindling number of music buyers to the sounds of Japan. Rather, Tofu Records aims to provide J-pop lovers who live abroad with the music they already love at reasonable prices. "For so long, there has not been anything that these fans wanted to purchase at a typical American record store. They have walked into a mall store and were greeted with blank stares when they asked for J-pop artists," he says. He adds that online specialty stores, a common channel for foreign J-pop fans to acquire music, charge 35 dollars to 45 dollars per import album. Tofu Records releases sell for roughly one-third the cost and contain bonus tracks and Romanized lyric sheets. Kelso explains that the J-pop community in the United States consists generally of two groups. The first are fans with a direct connection to Japan. They know the country through family or friends, work or travel. The second group are people with a "driving curiosity to be different than the people around them" who discover J-pop by word-of-mouth, Web surfing, or through Japan's hottest pop culture export--animation. The connection between J-pop and anime is cleverly tapped by Tofu Records. On their flagship release, a compilation entitled Jpop CD, eight of the 15 tracks are anime-related. In addition, the first artist on their roster is T.M. Revolution, who has not only lent two of his songs to anime series, but his own voice to an anime character. "We chose T.M. Revolution because we knew we needed to make a big splash in the Anime community," Kelso says. And a splash, if not a tsunami, they did make. In August, the label brought the dance-pop singer to the United States for a performance at Otakon 2003, an anime convention. The performance, aimed to drum up interest in the label, attracted 5,000 spirited J-pop devotees. They waved hand-made signs, busted dance moves patented by the singer and demanded two encores. "It was shocking the dedication of these 5,000 screaming fans," says Kelso. "The advantage to working with this community, is they are unbelievably dedicated fans. They will go out of their way to collect every piece of information on the artists they like." They will also go out of their way to support the label behind the artists. A group of devoted fans act as the label's street team, voluntarily hanging Tofu Records posters in local music and comic shops. Others plaster cyberspace with Tofu-praising Net posts. What could inspire such loyalty to a record company? "Well, I hope that we spend a lot more time listening to our community then most American labels," Kelso says. "Tofu Records is trying to be as fan-directed as possible. We spend a lot of time reading both fan mail and what people are talking about on our Web forum and other Web forums." Currently, the most popular topic on the label's forum is who Tofu's next artist will be. Kelso is tight-lipped on the subject, but says four projects are in the pipeline. "We have a lot of different options for our next release. Right now we are trying to come up with a release that the fans want," Kelso says. What fans want, Tofu is already delivering--the chance to walk into a local music store and buy Japanese pop. For these fans, Tofu Records, is a welcome wind of change. |
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isaacada1
 Posts: 779 Location: Snohomish, WA |
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In the future, do not post an entire article in the forums. Just post the link. Thank you.
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Iron Chef
Posts: 487 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Sorry, brotha. My bad.
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mikazuki-linlin
Posts: 20 Location: Kyoto, Japan |
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Except for the part where those two words are pronounced differently... right. |
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InSeRtNaMeHeRe
 Posts: 57 Location: under a rock? |
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yay! *waits impatiently for t.m revolution's coordinate to come out*
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wcy2003
 Posts: 52 Location: Richmond |
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im not trying to get people to buy the cd or anything, however I did purchase it at otakon, and it is quite good. It has a lot of songs from kenshin, the song that made me want to buy the cd was Super Driv, the Gravitation Opening. It's got some good stuff on there. Kinda funky cover though. I've never seen anime fans dress like those two do, unless I don't get out much.
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