Chaku Uta Full song download services, hottest app in Japan

In a telephone interview with a research company in Toronto last night, Daniel Scuka of Wireless Watch Japan was asked for examples of the coolest new applications or services in Japan.

"Without a doubt, he answered, mobile music and the Chaku Uta Full song download services are really eating up packet bandwidth.

The week before last, KDDI announced that the cumulative downloads for EZ Chaku Uta Full (provided via the CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN network) had surpassed 3 million as of 1 March 2005, less than four months after the 19 November 2004 launch.

The company added that the 1 million and 2 million milestones were achieved on 5 January and 5 February, respectively.

The Chaku-uta challenge

In Japan, full-tune MP3 downloads to mobile handsets have already hit the 2 million mark. Red Herring reports.

"Wireless MP3 downloads to handsets in Japan are booming. Less than nine weeks after it launched its “EZ Chaku-uta Full” MP3 service, KDDI has delivered 2 million songs to subscribers.

Benjamin Joffe, co-author of a report published this week by Vectis International called Mobile Music Best Practices from Japan & Korea, believes this trend in the world's most advanced mobile markets points the way for other major markets, including the U.S., Europe, and China.

With over 120 million downloads in 2004, the market for MP3 ring tones in Japan is already one-quarter the market for CD singles.

[...] If the mobile phone vendors are determined to turn handsets into personal music systems, will Apple need to fight back by turning the iPod into a phone? “Apple still has time to figure out something,” said Mr. Joffe. “But it's a fact that in the most advanced markets, iPod will compete with mobile devices. It's already begun.”

EZ Chaku-uta Full, the leading service, takes its name from the Japanese chakushin, meaning reception, and uta, meaning song.

"Mobile Music Japan"

Excerpts from a new pay-for study by EuroTechnology on Mobile Music in Japan.

"It is safe to say, that there are more wireless music downloads of 20-30 second long "chaku uta" songs to mobile phones in Japan, then there are i-Tunes downloads on the wired internet.

This fact promises a fantastic success for the i-Tunes/Motorola cooperation.

Chaku-Uta-Full are full songs downloaded to mobile phones via KDDI/AU's 2.4 Mbps 3G mobile network.

Chaku-uta-full started on November 19, 2004 and achieved 1 million downloads within 48 days.

While polyphonic ringing tones (chaku-melo) have been developed to play 64 notes simultaneously, and have found many applications beyond pure ringing tones, the polyphonic ringtone (Chaku-melo) market in Japan is coming closer to saturation.

Ears and service providers' work and investors' attention are turning to MPEG

We project that mobile music has the potential to become a major, if not the major, music distribution channel in terms of value in Japan, replacing CDs and DVDs.

At the moment mobile music sales in Japan are around US$ 1 Billion/year. As DoCoMo's HSDPA services come online and more handsets are sold for full song downloads we expect a dramatic increase of mobile music sales.

Cell phones answer music players' call

After e-mail, Internet access and cameras, music will likely be the next killer application for cell phones in Japan, where online distribution is yet to catch on, according to The Japan Times Online.

"While cell phones may not become an instant threat to portable music players like Apple's iPod, their sheer volume -- some 85 million in Japan -- presents a vast potential pool of portable music-playing competitors.

Late last month, the country's second-largest wireless carrier, KDDI Corp., started a music downloading service for its au brand of mobile phones. Instead of offering the usual 30-second sample, however, the Chaku-uta Full (Ring Tone Songs Full) service sends the entire tune, just as online music services do for computer users, in the widely used MP3 format.

Owners of au's three latest 3G handset models can download a full song from a list of some 10,000 titles for about 300 yen a pop.

KDDI officials said the number of daily "chaku-uta" downloads might have already surpassed that of any online music distribution service for personal computers in Japan. They refused to quote specific numbers.

Label Gate Co., one of the largest domestic online music sites for PC downloads in terms of songs available, said it sold 270,000 songs in November.

The idea for chaku-uta came from the music industry a few years ago. Back then, "chaku mero" (ring-tone melodies) were the fad as phone makers gradually tweaked their handsets so they could handle increasingly elaborate chords.

Now chaku uta services are hugely popular, with some 130 million songs downloaded so far. That's nearly as many as the 150 million Apple has sold through the iTunes Music Store as of mid-October. The store opened in April 2003.

After starting with a mere 300 songs, some 70,000 chaku uta titles are offered today, covering just about every genre of music from pop to classical.

Avex Group Holdings Inc. said there were 12.5 million chaku uta downloads during the April-September period, compared with 5 million a year earlier.

The company's offerings include Ayumi Hamasaki's hit single "Inspire," which has inspired some 660,000 downloads -- more than the 420,000 CDs that have so far been sold.

What's behind the mania?

KDDI officials said few users are actually downloading chaku uta purely for use as ring tones. Instead, many are doing so to listen to songs with classmates and colleagues.

They attribute chaku uta's success to the sheer ease with which the songs can be downloaded. Unlike portable music players, cell phones don't need personal computers to download music.

Japanese to download full CD-quality songs to mobile phones

The Japanese will soon move to new frontiers in their passion for mobile telephones and pop music as customers will be able to download full-length, CD-quality songs onto their cellphones, reports the AFP.

"Japan's number-two telecommunications firm KDDI said Thursday it will offer a service of 10,000 songs with sound quality so good the music can be listened to on stereo speakers. Users can also use the tunes as ring tones.

Working with record labels, KDDI plans to allow users to download each tune for several hundred yen (several dollars) and eventually to expand the database of songs.

"We may be able to offer songs for downloads before CDs are officially released. That might serve as a sampler for people to decide whether to buy CDs of certain artists," said a KDDI spokesman.

With the new service, mobile phone users can listen to music without operating their PCs. That offers a new choice, a new way of enjoying music for consumers," he said.

The service, which begins next month, is called "Chaku Uta Full," or "Full Ringer Songs."

Since December 2002, KDDI has offered a hugely popular "Chaku Uta" service that allows mobile phone users to download parts of songs for ring tones.

The original Chaku Uta service has seen 120 million downloads or around 10 million per month.

For related articles on Chaku Uta, click on this category in Ringtonia.com

Chaku-Uta reaches one hundred million song download

Japans KDDI says that its EZ "Chaku-Uta" service achieved the one hundred million song download plateau on July 5, 2004, reports Cellular News.

"Z "Chaku-Uta" is a service which allows artists' songs to be downloaded directly to a mobile phone for use as a ring tone. au surpassed competitors by starting the service in December 2002, made possible using the high-speed communication capabilities of its 3rd generation mobile infrastructure.

Since its introduction, EZ "Chaku-Uta" has continued to improve, adding an AAC codec for improved sound quality and stereo playback. Also, with the cooperation of record companies, au has been able to provide more and more new songs from artists, even before they are released on CD. As a result, EZ "Chaku-Uta" is becoming established as a way to enjoy the latest releases first. An additional service, which allows users to easily download the currently-playing song as a ring-tone, is also offered for au handsets equipped with an FM tuner.

Currently, 134 web-sites support EZ "Chaku-Uta", with a total of over 60,000 songs. All handsets currently on sale by au support the service (as of the end of June 2004, the number of handset subscribers supporting EZ "Chaku-Uta" was 11.16 million)."

More on Chaku-Uta in this special category of Ringtonia.com.

Downloads of KDDI ‘chaku uta' ringtones top 100 million

KDDI Corp announced Friday that downloads of its "chaku uta" ring tone service for "au" brand mobile phone handsets topped 100 million Monday, reports Japan Today via MocoNews.

"Users can enjoy a 30-second clip of song in the "chaku uta" service, which started in December 2002 for subscribers of third-generation mobile phones capable of high-speed and large-capacity data transmissions."

For related articles on Chaku-uta, check out this category in Ringtonia.com

Chaku-motion: The Latest in Mobile Music Video

I wasn't sure were to post this one, it fits best in Picturephoning where I published the full article, but Ringtonia readers may be interested too, as it's related to cell phones and music.

"As ringtones gradually give way to chaku-uta (mastertone) services, many Japanese content providers are now offering short video clips - known as "chaku-motion" - of well-known artists on their sites." More in The Japan Newsletter.

Chaku-uta ring songs - New Hope for Music Industry ?

Trends in Japan via Xeni Jardin for Unwired.cc has an interesting article on the tremendous success in Japan of the Chaku-uta ringtone service.

"Chaku-uta is a ring-tone download service that was started on KDDI Corp.'s au brand cell phones in December 2002. It had marked somewhat over 44 million downloads as of the end of November 2003, less than a year since its launch. The service has dramatically grown into an almost $90 million (¥10 billion) market in its first year.

The monthly download count currently stands at seven million. In addition to their originally intended use as ring tones, these "ring songs" are generating new demand as substitutes for rental CDs and as a way for consumers to sample a song before deciding whether or not to purchase the CD".

To fully understand this service, check out Justin Hall's Chaku-uta article of last December, published in TheFeature.com.

Chaku-uta

Justin Hall for TheFeature.com, has a very interesting article describing the success of KDDI Japan's Chaku-uta MP3 ringtone service, enabling users to download real music to their mobile phones, then set the music up as a ringtone. 20,000 to 30,000 songs are downloaded daily from the KDDI site and the number of users with chaku-uta capable phones is now around 100,000.

"A number of large record labels in Japan set up Label Mobile, an umbrella company to sell digital rights to their music catalogs. Label Mobile has been an integral partner for KDDI's chaku-uta, coordinating rights to songs and providing Chaku-uta for downloading. According to Maede, Label Music approved this innovative service only after KDDI guaranteed technological protection from the spread of mobile file sharing. KDDI has encoded the downloaded music files to prevent sharing of music between handsets, and so far their system hasn't been cracked.

But the concept is catching on; KDDI is seeing some fresh "Chaku-uta" competition. Last week, Vodaphone Japan launched a competitor service, and DoCoMo plans to launch something similar early next year.

And interesting, Justin Hall points out that

"Ringtones have been fabulously popular for users and a great windfall for carriers and mobile entrepreneurs alike.

Acquiring the rights to a melody is easier than acquiring the rights to tracks on a CD. According to analysts with Music Media Watch, record labels are glad to see chaku-uta type technology return control of hit music to their star-making machines. Soon, we should see (and hear) MP3 ringtones appear alongside major media campaigns promoting musicians. It's a brilliant scheme for disseminating hits - ask people to pay for the privilege of playing your song in cafes, in their bedrooms and boardrooms."

Au Cell Phone Music Proves Popular despite High Price

From Moco News: The CD music downloading service for KDDI cellular phones has been very popular since its debut in 2002...Music downloaded through the service, called Chaku Utah, can also be used as cell phone ringer melodies, prompting some subscribers to spend as much as 1,000 yen a month on the service.

Favorite Ringtones are cultural in Japan

Xeni Jardin reports in a post on boingboing on the changing business of cell phone ringtones in Japan, where roughly 80 percent of the ringtones are Japanese songs with Japanese pop music ruling the ringtone charts. "Song clips, called chaku-uta, are hayatteru ("totally trendy") with the under-30 crowd. And chaku-goe, ("voice,") is "another popular type of ringtone".