2. people
it seems difficult to make the first contact (more on this in the second part), but when you get to know Japanese people, they’re always nice to you, ready to help. This is true in public (or private such as their tremendous rail systems) services, as with personal relations. They always care, something we couldn’t say about french people especially towards foreigners/tourist. Even if I hardly know a few so far so this is maybe too early to judge, they also seem well educated, with a wide knowledge and a thirst to learn about other people (even if they don’t always have the means to)

3. women
I would not have said that before landing to Japan, as I’m a big fan of clear blue eyes, but I quickly changed my mind, especially when I met my local Twitter contact, which easily seduced me (how idiot I’ve been to dress casual I thought :p). Japanese are probably the cutest women of Asia. Besides, they surely are the most feminine women in the world, they are thin (maybe too much sometimes), they are often classy, eccentric sometimes but in the end I think this is just a pleasure to see women not trying to replicate men in clothes, and see them in naked legs, anywhere any time

4. Going out
I was really surprised by the number of strip clubs, and adult entertainment venues, which are not restricted to a red lights district. And I guess (at least that’s what I experienced in Shibuya) that men don’t come back early home not only for work. Still on for the late night activities, it’s really convenient to be able to walk the streets with your smartphone on hand without risking to get it stolen, to find a Kombini anywhere at anytime, to buy anything, and not having girls to be afraid to walk the streets alone, even wearing a skirt. I “only” tried 3 music clubs (Warehouse 702 and Air in Tokyo, Metro in Kyoto), one of them last night, and if entrance is quite pricey (around 30/40 euros), they are well arranged, with nice sound and crowd. so for sure this is something I liked, especially as electronic music becomes more and more popular (don’t think I could stand J-pop, didn’t try karaoke)

5. They like France
Fashion (accessories and perfume mainly), food, flowers, many retail stores show the taste for France (if not French) by Japanese people. I don’t know however if this “passion” goes beyond commerce

Top 5 reasons I couldn’t live in Japan
1. Communication/language
This is by far, the biggest issue when you come to Japan and only speak a few words of Japanese. Sociability is not the main quality of Japanese people, and English is spoken as much as it is in France (so basically not outside of business environment). Eye contact seems even non existing, so that doesn’t help a shy guy like me talk to the locals. As in France, speaking native is mandatory, but contrary to France it won’t be enough. In Tokyo, most places have English or romaji (Latin characters), but this is something you will see much less often outside

2. Japanese work and carreers
Commitment at work is high for Japanese people. They usually stay within the same company their whole carrier, without really changing their job. They often work late (but are not more productive than us) and take short holidays. They all dress in (kind of) suits. Of course these things are not familiar to French people, and especially to me. Already had 3 different works, like to work late only for my own (small) company rather than for my boss, and do whatever I like, so many things related to music, which can hardly be considered as office work. For sure I couldn’t adapt and would have to work for a western company

3. Food
Why is food repeated here ? For 2 reasons. the first one would be that I couldn’t anymore go to this high quality but affordable (less than 20€) restaurant as we have so many in France, where you can have wine and foie gras for example.
Second reason is that I would miss my kitchen, my wine cellar, and the cakes I cook as this couldn’t be feasible in a Japanese flat.

4. Comfort
What about the flat amenities ? large table to invite some friends, real bath tub, queen size bed and garden ? Proximity of countryside, beach ? I think I would have to forget all of these.

5. Isolation
For geographical and political reasons, Japan is quite isolated, so holidays abroad are not as easy as in Europe.

So to sum up, Japan could be a country where I could live for a while (as long as I learn Japanese), but certainly not my lifetime

Friday line-up was made of too many Djs that were similar, all of them but one (Joris Voorn) played the Swedish House Mafia track (You have to understand this track is massive when played in a amphitheater) for example. By the way, all tracklistings are available here. Joris Voorn is really the DJ I appreciated the most on the first nights as the other DJs (Dirty South, Funkagenda, Dada Life) were too electro-house for me. Joris offered a good selection, good technique, and sounds we wouldn’t hear for the whole night. I was surprised to see that the amphitheater was the most crowded when Joachim Garraud, a customer of mine (with iPhone app), was performing. I was expecting more from Laidback Luke, especially when he started to mix The Bells by Jeff Mills, but was quite disappointed when he (tried to) mix it with Major Lazer. Technically, he wasn’t so good, real mixes where rare, he just tried to place a maximum of its own juice. Probably one of those producers who are better in a studio than on stage in a DJ set. Rain accompanied us for the 2 last hours with the sun rise
I was eager to attend the Saturday night as I had appreciated Pete Tong 30 months before in London and had never seen Sasha, Hardwell was a good candidate also. Pete Tong was quite good, offering a better, more subtle selection than most DJs, and for sure more diversified. Good moment, even if most of Polish people didn’t appreciate. Many people came back to see Sasha, but his intro by Sasha let almost everyone still as he started very smoothly with no beat where most DJs at the festival we just using massive kicks and long breaks to get the people dancing… But surely, he got people to move to his hypnotic set. Only for his set, I think that Sunrise was worth attending as I felt as I was in a rave like I haven’t felt for years (and surely not at a Caribou live set 2 weeks after such as a ignorant Inrockuptibles journalist). Many other stars (ATFC, Hardwell) performed but no other really grabbed my interest. I didn’t see at all Armin van Buuren, as even if I wanted to see the “phenomenon”, I knew I could see him again one week later at Nature One in Germany. Rain also was the last guest for this second night

The third night is actually a day and night as you can attend the after party on the beach (beginning 2 hours after the end of the second night, so that’s really difficult not to get some sleep before), and the awards event. If you are not Polish, you can avoid Sunday evening event as there’s a lot of talking – including during the DJ sets, which are again a bit too electro-house/trancey for me. That made me go to bed before the end, although I attended the whole 2 first nights. I only see the 2 latest hours of the after party and there were the best ones for weather as this was the only time we really had sunshine. A good moment to have a look around to beautiful women as well

I will attend for sure again, as I both enjoy the ambiance, the numerous views :p and some of the DJ sets. I just hope next year they will have more techno (or real house ?) and less electro-house (I guess that Trance is too popular right there to get rid of it… anyway, I don’t mind if we have a good line-up on Analog Stage). With Nuits Sonores festival in Lyon, these are so far the festivals I like the most so far (still haven’t attended Sonar). I guess that with such videos and photos, that shouldn’t be too difficult to bring some friends from France.

I suspected some fake exclusives, but I didn’t think that trickery was that important. When I recorded my last DJ set, I built a new features for the DJ Hedonist mobile app. You will be able to purchase the tracklisting through iTunes Store when track is available. Having bought half of my tracks as exclusives on Beatport, I didn’t expect to find as many tracks available on iTunes (With $0.99 price tag, and a better audio quality: AAC 256k)

Out of 7 announced as exclusives on Beatport, not less than 3 are available on iTunes. Here is the list if you want to check by yourself:
Mark Knight, Mannheim, Toolroom
Plaupez, L’Ame d’un Singe, Le Bien et le Mal
Gino’s & Kiko, Pink Loco, Eklektisch

OK, Beatport could say that labels are responsible, but in any case, it shows that neither Beatport or those labels respect their consumers. They may announce that they have Wave exclusive, but they should find some other reasons to continue charging us 2.49 for MP3s and AACs…

Full, permanent and realtime access to music
This is an access from a PC, but also a mobile, hifi system or car audio system to the whole library of music available on earth. Cultural benefit can’t be discussed, but multiple barriers exist. Financing, territorial issues plague this kind of service nowadays. Still, a service like Spotify is close to achieve it. A mobile version (announced), and being able to import our own library seem to be the 2 biggest steps to overcome.

Controlled channel
It’s been a long fantasy from the musical industry for a while, abandoned just some months ago with DRM removal, a way to control music distribution. Apple does it (with some drawbacks) for its apps delivery platform, and it seems that users are accepting it: use an unique distribution service to download content on a mobile device. But today, it’s only possible on a mobile device (and maybe even only on those from Cupertino) If mobile app can be used to promote an artist (including those developed by NeoMusicStore), it is not yet used to deliver for-pay content, except using iTunes links (which is already good). The album is dead, long live the app

Extending live experience
Most live shows are now recorded. What is done about it ? Rarely anything internally, this is generally licensed to a media. Why shouldn’t put it on sales, for every single performance ? It’s quite easy to do, and still, very few artists do it. In my personal library, I only count one group (The Pixies) whose I bought a concert. As group is selling the complete tour, those attending can either choose the concert they attend, or any other one, if tracklisting is different for example: Nine Inch Nails performs different sets, but even if Trent Reznor is avant-gardist, hist last tour is not (yet ?) available to download. I’d would be a customer if the Nîmes Arenas show and another one including tracks I like which were not performed that night were made available. Beware not to be greedy as bands (or their label) have been with live performances CD. This is an extension, or even an incentive to go and see an artist performing live. Beyond$8/€6, this is probably too expensive. Video, whether it be live or on-demand, can also be part of the package. For having experimented it during the previous months, solutions now exist to stream live or on-demand on a PC or mobile device and make users pay for that.

Selling “social link”
When Joachim Garraud sells a customizable album on its website, not only he’s selling its own music, but also a social link. First he lets everyone decide what should be the tracklisting and layout, then the customer almost makes a donation (as tracks are available on pirate websites). Nowadays, everyone knows how to sell music with no relationship at all through an aggregator or iTunes, whether the artist is wll known or confidential, but we fail at building/selling this social link, which is really important for a long term relationship with the audience. Selling on a direct channel is a good way to enhance this relationship, but collecting emails to offer exclusive content is another one, and building a link within the audience is another thing to think about.

Selling artistic process or material
Imogen Heap is the perfect example of an artist which lets her public involve in the artistic and promotional process for her productions (cf The New Music Business Model: Imogen Heap), Trent Reznor allows musicians to remix his music, others are selling learning lessons. Not everyone will buy music-related products or services, but those who really like music can buy a lot more than CD and merchandising, as long as they get a benefit from that (unfortunately most new ideas are purely marketing gadgets).

All of this is already experimented on NeoMusicStore, and should grab some attention in the coming months as sales decline continue (and I don’t think any Cocktail nor CMX will prevent it). Innovators like Nine Inch Nails won’t have waited for the sales to decline to get millions of dollars of incomes by reiventing themselves, showing there’s no crisis but only some people which don’t know what their market (OMG what a terrible word, again) is.

One of the latest tracks by Paul Ritch, Carrrrramba (Monkey mix) is among the best sales on the US platform, and still, there are many chances that track is massively pirated. Quick analysis on how and why:
1° Track is exclusive to Beatport
2° Beatport sucks at SEO
3° Track is not on sale on artist website neither on label website
4° Google is indexing relevant websites on a given expression. Relevant websites for this query are, in order: artist website, label website, artist MySpace, label MySpace, legal music downloads websites, other websites

1+2+3+4 equation equals to illegal downloads being in top results in Google !!!

What’s even worst in the story is that Beatport is proud to have exclusives, and artists and labels really think that is a chance for them !

For those who do want to purchase the track, it’s here (jI don’t promote Beatport, but the artist)