anyone know good sources for japanese cds ...we have a bookoff and kinokuniya in town but they don't always have everything...and I do want to support the artist by buying the music

My understanding is that there are much better ways to support artists than buying their cds. http://www.p2punite.org/?q=node/1156 might be an interesting read.

Unfortunately, Japanese music is incredibly expensive/hard to find anywhere outside Japan. If you are willing to pay $40 a cd, Kinokuniya and amazon.co.jp are your friends. You can save on shipping by buying stuff from amazon in large amounts :/

There is an iTunes for Japanese music. I think it takes yen, but you should be able to order money cards that have yen on it.

In addition, in the non-supporting route, there's YouTube and JPopAsia. There are programs that will rip the audio from YouTube and save it as an MP3's.

Another way is getting pen pals from Japan that you can pay to mail you cd's they get from bargain bins (and you return the favor if needed).

yesasia.com has free worldwide shipping if you order enough. They carry K-pop, cantopop, etc etc too, and Japanese books. They also often have K & HK versions of J-movies (dunno on CDs) which are infinitely cheaper & sometimes have English subs.

(Amazon.jp works too, but shipping is quite expensive, and you get charged in yen, so there's usu. a finance charge)

Tons of BT on http://jpfans.com/ if you go the evil route. Read somewhere that j-gov is instituting new net-crime laws, dunno what that will entail. Careful!

cdjapan isn't bad. They have a point system where you earn points based on the dollars you spend, and you can redeem the points for discounts on your orders. They get my business mainly because they send me emails when the artists that I've purchased from them in the past announce a new release. And, they guarantee first-press goodies if you pre-order.

Forgot about them. How's shipping/any hidden charges?

Hi, I'm new here, just got started and don't have the books yet, but I noticed this topic. I am also looking for good sources of Japanese music, but I'm not quite certain where to start *listening*. Are Myspace and iTunes the best places to find new Japanese bands I like?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned JPOPSuki for the evil route. It's mostly crap (aka Johnnys/H!P type stuff), but once in awhile some good stuff pops up.

mine aproach is to just download heaps and heaps from bittorrent sites such as mininova and drop the stuff i dislike.
i now have a playlist of 69 songs and i think that is perhaps 1% of what i downloaded, maybe im picky or maybe tis that most stuff new is garbage.
on the other hand i have tons of anime ost that i like.

i think i like songs of of kumi koda, yuri chika and sona, those form the biggest part of mine collection.
but i am still much an00b in j-pop

@stshores24,

Before buying anything, I would just spend an afternoon on Youtube. Tons of videos, no download hassles, all free. You can just keep clicking through to new artists, too.

Also, if you have some favorite bands/styles of Western music, maybe we can make some general recommendations. For instance, if you like hip-hop, I would recommened Rip Slyme, m-flo, or RSP...

@billyclyde,

Yes! I'm listening to a few artists today on Myspace and will be hunting others, too. I'm also using the 'evil' method (or 'try before you buy') at home.

As far as the genres, I'm mostly into Americana-style rock (not really hard rock), jazz, or shoegazer stuff. I enjoy pop bands with prominent female vocalists; a friend of mine who lives in Asaka pointed out some YouTube videos of Utada Hikaru's music, and I liked that.

I happened upon a band called Bon Voyage that I really like, and I'm hoping that I can find their stuff for cheaper than amazon.com has it (will check CD Japan in a few minutes, but I know they're on [blech]iTunes[/blech].)