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I’m really sorry that I’m so bad at replying to your comments these days, but there are so many things happening in my life right now, and not all of them are good things. But I thank you for all your comments, and I hope you will keep them coming because even if I don’t reply to them they matter a lot to me, and ever so often it’s your comments that inspire a new blog post like this one. Most of them aren’t necessarily Pulitzer-worthy comments. Sometimes it’s just a little side-remark that triggers a blog post. You can never know, and that’s why I cherish and appreciate all comments, no matter if they’re long or short. My blog would be nothing without its readers (that’s YOU!), so thank you.

Okay.

So, Jump No.1 sold exactly 156,118 copies in the first week. Which is great. The interesting question, though, is: what does that mean financially? For most of us it means 2,381JPY plus shipping, if we ordered a copy. But what does it mean to all the people in Japan who were involved in producing, manufacturing and selling those 156,118 CDs?

I’m basing the following calculation on figures that apply to the American music industry. In Japan things might be slightly different, but probably not very different, so this is going to be more or less accurate. If you have any information on the Japanese music industry that is dramatically different from this then please let me know.

This calculation is also based on the price of 2,381JPY without sales tax. If you already have the album and you look at the back you’ll see two prices: 2,500JPY including tax, and 2,381JPY without tax. Those of us who don’t live in Japan and ordered the album online didn’t have to pay the sales tax of 119JPY. For convenience’s sake let’s assume that 1,118 copies were sold overseas, and that the other 155,000 were sold directly in Japan. That will mean that the Japanese treasury will be rather happy about Hey!Say!JUMP‘s success, because

119JPY x 155,000 = 18,445,000JPY

is around US$ 208,000 in sales tax. In the current economic climate every finance minister in the world would be happy about that.

But what about all the rest of the money? I’m talking about the

2,381JPY x 156,118 = 371,716,958JPY = US$ 4,206,608

that Hey!Say!JUMP fans spent on that album so far. 4.2 million dollars, that’s a lot of dough.

Here’s where all that money goes. These percentages are estimates, but they should be just about right.

• Distributor: 9%
• Manufacturer: 13%
• Artist 16% (usually, but not in this case)
• Record company: 27%
• CD retailers: 35%

Let’s look at them one by one. The album is distributed by Sony Music. They get

33,454,526JPY = US$ 378,595.

for getting the CDs from the manufacturer to the shops.

I don’t know who the manufacturer is. It might very well be the case that Mr Johnny-san owns his own CD factory, in which case

48,323,204JPY = US$ 546,859

would end up in Johnny’s pocket, but let’s assume he has his CDs manufactured elsewhere, so he doesn’t get any of that.

Now, the artist usually gets 16%, and that would mean

59,474,713JPY = US$ 673,057

divided by 10 members = US$ 67,305.70 for each member. HOWEVER, that’s obviously not how it works in Johnny’s. Let’s face it, Johnny’s artists are, for the most part, paid employees. They’re salarymen. They probably get a fixed monthly salary, no matter how many CDs they sell or how many concerts they play, and that salary is most likely just a tiny little fraction of what they actually deserve for their hard work. Also, Hey!Say!JUMP are not the only artists involved in this album. There are also the songwriters and the studio musicians who want to get paid. So the vast majority of those US$673k (minus royalties for the songwriters and probably fixed salaries for the musicians) ends up in Johnny’s pocket, and I’d be surprised if the members even get royalties for the lyrics they wrote or the instruments (tambourine!!!) they played themselves.

The record label, J-Storm, gets

100,363,579JPY = US$ 1,135,784.

Over a million dollars, isn’t that nice?

And finally, the lion share remains with the people who have been collecting all the money from the fans in the first place, the CD stores and online retailers. They get

130,100,935JPY = US$ 1,472,313.

1.4 million dollars. Not bad either.

But Johnny as producer of the album and “owner” of the artists ends up with a total of US$ 1,808,841. That’s US$ 11.59 from every single copy any of us bought. From that he has to pay the manufacturer, his artists (like I said, that’s probably just a tiny amount), and the promotion they did for the album. Billboards in Shibuya, TV commercials, maybe a couple of print ads. But even if you deduct the cost of all that the boys still made Johnny a net revenue of over 1 million dollars in just this one past week. And that’s pretty amazing, don’t you think? Okay, he has yet to pay income tax on that, but still.

Then again it’s nothing compared to the 66 million dollars a company like BP makes every day. Always a good idea to keep things in perspective.

Oh my, this was rather a long post, so I guess I’m not gonna add another poll on top of that. In my next post, okay?

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