Music Awards Japan Is Everything Taiwan’s Music Awards Aren’t
Do you still get excited about major music awards these days?
In an era saturated with entertainment and with the old gatekeepers of taste rapidly losing their influence, it’s increasingly unclear how much weight major music awards like the Grammys, Taiwan's Golden Melody (金曲獎), or Golden Indie Music Awards (金音創作獎) still hold. So when I first heard about Japan’s newly established Music Awards Japan (MAJ) this past March, doubtlessly the largest event of its kind in Japanese history, from its scale of categories and voting members down to its ceremony production, I couldn't help but wonder how it plans to tackle such a changed cultural landscape. Will it manage to leverage the unique characteristics of our current times?
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Who’s behind MAJ?
The organization behind MAJ is CEIPA (Japan Culture and Entertainment Industry Promotion Association), established in 2023. Despite its recent inception, CEIPA comes with impressive credentials. It was formed through a joint initiative by the five major associations that make up Japan’s music value chain:
- The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ)
- Japan Association of Music Enterprises (JAME)
- The Federation of Music Producers Japan (FMPJ)
- All Japan Concert & Live Entertainment Promoters Conference (ACPC)
- Music Publishers Association of Japan (MPAJ)
In other words, CEIPA essentially represents the entire Japanese music industry.
Why was CEIPA created? According to Taro Kumabe, Executive Director of MAJ, who spoke with me via email, “Historically, Japan’s music industry addressed its challenges through individual initiatives by each sector. However, with the need to promote international expansion and digital transformation more strategically, it became essential for the industry as a whole to align and act collectively.”
Taro Kumabe (熊部太郎) began his career in the music industry in 1987, primarily working in music production and artist management. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of U’S Music, a company under the umbrella of the OTT streaming platform U-NEXT. Kumabe is also a board member of the FMPJ, which represents over 200 music production companies across Japan, and Vice Chairman of the IMCJ, an organization representing independent artists and labels. He has long been active in music production, promotion, and international development.
Though "culture and entertainment" is in its name, CEIPA clearly prioritizes music at present. Kumabe explains: “(Japan’s) visual culture, such as anime and film, has long received international acclaim. While Japanese music had seen some individual successes abroad, it hadn’t yet formed a strong unified movement. However, since around 2017, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, digitalization advanced significantly even in Japan’s traditionally physical-heavy market, creating momentum. CEIPA’s broader mission is to support not only music but Japan’s culture and entertainment as a whole — including film, drama, publishing, and manga — by building a comprehensive support structure.”
Perhaps like me, upon hearing CEIPA’s mission statement, you immediately think of similar organizations such as Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) or Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA). The key difference is that CEIPA was industry-initiated. On this point, Kumabe says: “We did reference the structures of other countries during CEIPA’s formation, but differences in public-private collaboration models, legal systems, and market frameworks led us to choose an industry-led approach with an emphasis on agility rather than a government-driven one.”
Under this model, CEIPA’s operational funding primarily comes from contributions by the five founding associations, along with corporate sponsorships. When necessary, they may also apply for government subsidies, provided this does not compromise their neutrality and sustainability.
(This raises an old question — Taiwan’s industry-wide strategies heavily rely on government initiatives. Would an industry-led model work better? And if so, what are the current barriers preventing it? I don’t yet have the answers.)
Why Launch MAJ?
Japan already has several long-standing music awards, such as the Japan Gold Disc Awards (日本ゴールドディスク大赏), the Japan Record Awards (日本唱片大獎), and the CD Shop Awards (CDショップ大賞). But to be honest, many of these feel outdated in structure and limited in scope. They’ve also never really gained international recognition.
According to Mr. Kumabe, "Japan has many prestigious music awards, but a new platform was needed that reflects global and digital-era standards of evaluation with greater transparency and fairness. MAJ employs a unique evaluation model that combines commercial success with expert voting, and is designed with a cross-genre and internationally competitive perspective."
In my view, MAJ is a strategic industry project more than a cultural one. Or rather, CEIPA seems to believe that popularity and acclaim are cultural values in themselves — stage a big enough show, and the audience will come—it becomes mass entertainment almost by default. Get the stars to show up, and you've created a cultural moment. There’s no need to over-intellectualize it. That said, treating an award show as a strategic tool is a relatively new approach in Japan’s music industry, which historically lacked an outward-facing game plan. How to make the awards serve that new strategy is MAJ’s biggest mission.
So how does that intent play out in practice? The most obvious sign is the scale of industry engagement. MAJ ditched the small jury model in favor of a sweeping vote involving more than 5,000 industry professionals, both from Japan and abroad. This isn’t a process built for in-depth artistic or cultural analysis like Taiwan’s Golden Melody or Golden Indie Awards. It’s more of a large-scale engagement campaign that brings as many insiders as possible into the fold.
That same approach extends to the award categories, which are sprawling to the point of overwhelming. A few key highlights:
- There are 62 awards in total, including major ones like Song of the Year, Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, New Artist of the Year, Top Global Hit from Japan, and Best Asian Song.
- Genre-wise, it spans everything from Western categories like rock and hip-hop to uniquely Japanese genres like idol culture, anime songs, and enka.
- The Top Japanese Song isn’t enough on its own—MAJ also breaks it down by region: Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America all get their own versions.
- International awards are just as detailed, with language- and region-specific prizes for Korean, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Filipino songs, alongside genre-based categories.
- Co-branded awards were created in partnership with outside organizations like karaoke giant JOYSOUND, U’S Music parent company USEN, and collective rights management organization JASRAC.
A quick visit to MAJ’s website confirms the scale of ambition. In addition to expected commercial sponsors, you’ll find heavyweights like Meta, YouTube, Spotify, and TikTok on board, alongside international distributors, e-commerce platforms, record stores, ticketing agencies, and data firms.
And while you're there, don’t miss the bilingual presentation: not just the site’s copy, but even press releases and award rules are available in both Japanese and English. If you caught the livestream of the awards ceremony on YouTube in mid-May, you might’ve noticed a half-hour delay — this was to accommodate English subtitles.
For Japan’s industry, this level of internationalization signals some serious soul-searching. Kumabe notes, “The success of K-pop has led Japan to adopt a ‘focused strategy with network expansion’ approach. Companies are independently launching overseas tours and social media campaigns, while also working with government agencies to build hubs for information sharing and international expansion.” Unsurprisingly, MAJ has its own international affairs division, dedicated to overseas partnerships and global PR.
All of this points to MAJ’s deep sense of ambition. But that’s not to say it’s flawless. The ceremony itself felt a bit dated, even falling into the usual awkward small talk from host Masaki Suda. Remember the question I asked at the beginning? MAJ’s answer to today’s challenges doesn’t lie in some revolutionary production concept — it’s just to throw every resource and connection they have into making something massive.
Still, the biggest area for improvement might be the one challenge every music award eventually runs into: the voting system.