{"id":969,"date":"2010-09-02T11:10:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T16:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=969"},"modified":"2010-09-02T11:10:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T16:10:10","slug":"another-one-bites-the-dust-in-the-j-pop-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=969","title":{"rendered":"Another One Bites the Dust in the J-Pop Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a little behind the curve on this story, but the Neojaponisme website has a fine postmortem report<\/a> on the the recent closing of the HMV Store in Shibuya, Tokyo. W. David Marx analyzes the shifting role the influential music retailer played in the years after it first opened in 1990, becoming headquarters for what came to be called Shibuya-kei rock. The shop later lost its unique position of authority, however, and Marx suggests that its demise is due less to the rise of digital file-sharing and more to tectonic shifts in the structure of contemporary Japanese youth culture. As he aptly notes, “Popular music, more than ever in Japan, is an expensive hobby,” and after paying their cellphone bills kids today simply don’t have that kind of money to throw around. <\/p>\n