Last Monday I launched my new project, a website about Japanese music (obviously!) called Land of Rising Sound, whose main goal is to spread the world’s biggest music market’s artists to everyone with several types of articles.
But let’s go back in time a little bit.
It all started after my second trip to Japan: After coming back home in January of this year I learned a lot more things about Japanese music and the culture surrounding it, and I felt like I should have wrote about it and dedicate some time to it. So I started to think about how to to englobe everything I learned and how to spread Japanese Music from a general point of view, and realized that Perfume Disco Blog wasn’t enough anymore; I’ll always love Perfume, they’re one of my favorite groups and the one that started it all, but the Japanese music scenario is so vast and filled with valid artists that writing exclusively about them would mean limiting myself and my passion. So I spent a good couple of months thinking about (i.e. torturing myself) about what to create and how to create it.
And so I ended up building a website about Japanese Music: It was easy to realize, but it took me a while (I’m like this).
Still, there are lots of good western online portals talking about the argument, some of them very good too, and if there’s something I hate to do is to create something that already exists. So I created a website apparently similar to the other ones, but conceptually different: I’ll explain myself better.
Most of the websites out there are all about news (sometimes even not related to music), often featuring interviews and live reports, but news are the main thing, which is really the smartest thing to do: They’re the kind of article that’s really quick to write and get you loads of visits, which translates into popularity and even money if you’re doing it for a living.
Now, let’s see this from a different point of view: You’re new to the Japanese music, you’ve just watched for the first time a Kyary or BABYMETAL video, and you want to know more about it, so you start searching for a website that could talk about this music market, the artists themselves or the genre they play, or simply why are they doing it in such a different way from the rest of the world: But what you get is only “Ikimonogakari to release a new single next month” and “Ayumi Hamasaki marries a random dude that’s 18 years younger than her”. At this point there are two possibilities: Search another website, or just go back to the world where Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Pitbull feat. Romeo er mejo gatto der Colosseo reign supreme. And we Japan lovers don’t want that to happen.
So, here’s what I’m trying to do with Land of Rising Sound: Provide basic informations like News and Impressions on newly released material while also analyzing music (the absolute and only argument of this website) with Reviews of Singles/Albums/Live DVDs, plus Articles about the music scene and the culture surrounding it and how it influences the Japanese society. Guides are also another important feature of this website: With an in-depth introduction to the Japanese Music market and how the society reacts to it, full descriptions of genres and all the most recommended artists and how to support this industry, I’m trying to create a place where the newcomers can finally understand what they’re hearing and watching and long time listeners can come back anytime for daily news, impression and musical analysis.
So that’s what my new website is about. It took me eight months to realize it (cause real life duties are cruel) and I hope people will like it, and eventually see it growing. It’ll be hard, but I’m confident in it. I still have many things in the works for this website, and there’s gonna be a lot of new things to enrich it in the future (without becoming too dispersive). I’ll also need a Staff with members, and that’s why I’m currently searching for people who loves Japanese music and writing.
In any case, I hope you’ll enjoy Land of Rising Sound. All the reviews I wrote here on my personal blog are now available there, so be sure to check them out!
That’s it guys. Imma buy some noodles now. Have a nice weekend! 😀
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