Jpopmp3s blog

90’s Jpop super producer Komuro Tetsuya, who produced hits for such acts as Namie Amuro, Tomomi Kahala, and TRF has been arrested by special investigators of the Osaka district public prosecutors office on suspicion of swindling 500 million yen from an investor in a bogus copyright scheme.

The 49 year old musician is suspected in a scheme to transfer the copyright of 806 (!) of his songs to an investor for 1 billion yen (approx. 10.5 million USD). Komuro allegedly neglected to mention to the 48 year old investor that the copyright to the songs had already been transferred to a record company and “other organizations”; Can you spell y-a-k-u-z-a anybody? 500 million yen had already been deposited into a bank account by the swindled investor.

Komuro was at his peak in the mid to late 90’s with songs he wrote or produced wining the top prize at the Japan Record Awards for four years in row from 1995 to 1998. The award winning songs were:

• 1995- “Overnight Sensation” by TRF
• 1996- “Don’t wanna Cry” by Namie Amuro
• 1997- “Can you Celebrate” by Namie Amuro
• 1998- “Wanna be a dreammaker” by Globe

He ranked 4th in the nationwide list of top taxpayers in 1996 and 1997 with an annual income in excess of 3 billion Yen.

Komuro has been married 3 times and alimony to his second wife, whom he was married to for only 10 months is reportedly 1 billion yen. This, and the failure of a record production company he set up in Hong Kong in 1998 called Rojam, have contributed to his debt or over 1 billion Yen.

Check out this video I just made detailing the step by step instructions on setting up your account at the Japanese iTunes music store. Absolutely no Japanese language required, it’s all in English. You can watch along with me as I create a new account with a prepaid Japanese iTunes card from JPopMp3s.com

Some people have expressed that they are a little intimidated by setting up an account at the Japanese store. As you’ll see in the video, it is as easy as pie. All you need is a Japanese iTunes card from JPopMp3s.com and you are all set.
Check out the video below [7:54]

Scroll to the very bottom of this post for an audio only version of the video.

This is my first video ever, so please don’t mock my squeaky voice. I hope you find this video useful.

Transcript of video

Hello, and welcome to the JPopMp3s.com video on how to set up your Japanese iTunes music store account with a prepaid card.

OK. So once you have purchased your card from JPopMp3s.com, of course, you go to the email address that you used with your order, and you’ll see an email from me which says “Your iTunes card number”. Click on there, and you will see a friendly email from me with your card number.

Highlight the card number and right click and copy the number. Then go over to iTunes and you need to go to the Japanese iTunes music store, so if you’re in a different country store, scroll down to the bottom and choose the Japanese store, which is at the bottom, here.

Once you’re redirected to the Japanese music store, go to the top, here, and click “redeem”. You’ll be shown this screen, with the redeem code, saying [for] you [to] click on here and paste your code, which you just copied from the email. To paste it with a shortcut from the keyboard, you press control V, or on a Mac you do “Apple” key or Control key, which I’ve done here. And we press redeem.

Then you’ll be prompted to sign into your account, which, of course, we don’t have. So we will create a new account there.

You’ll either get this page straight away, or you will get another page before this, which is like a welcome screen. If you get that one, just click continue, and then you’ll get sent to the terms and conditions page. Read that. It’s very important, of course. Click that you have read and click continue.

Here you need to put in your address, your email address. This is important. It needs to be an email address that you have not used to associate with any other iTunes account. Each email address can only be used at one country store or one account. You need to have a separate email address that you don’t have already set up with iTunes. And so it’s in here. Add your password. Put that same password in twice.

And put in the question so if you forget your password or something like that. I always put, “Where can I get Japanese iTunes cards?” And you know the answers to that one. [It is] JPopMp3s.com, of course.

So, put your birthdate in here. And here, if you can speak or read Japanese, you might like to get these emails of new releases and offers like that. But if you can’t read Japanese it’s not much point, so you can just unclick these and click continue.

This is where you need to put in your payment details. Down here there are the options; they have the credit cards in here. And here we have “none,” which we will be using.

Sometimes you may not have this “none” option. If you don’t have that option available to you when you first get to this page, what you need to do is go back to the top and click the home button and start the whole process again, and then when you get to this page the second time, this “none” option should be available. OK?

Then you need to put in your information here. Make sure you put your last name first. This being Japan, that’s the way they do it here. And here it says “phonetic last name”. This is where you would put in your name in Japanese characters if your computer can input Japanese. But it probably can’t. So it doesn’t really matter. You can put it once more, again in English, and that will be enough. That works fine.

So here you need to put a postal code. Now many people freak out when they get to this state, because they don’t know anything about Japanese addresses. Luckily, I’ve up a little help page here on the site. So once you’ve logged into your account, you will see this page here that says “click here for assistance with Japanese address for user setting up account“.

Now, because we’re not setting it up with a credit card, it doesn’t matter what address we use. If you have a credit card, of course, your address has to match with the address that is associated with the credit card. But here, we’re just using the prepaid cards, so they really don’t care.

So, I’ve got a bunch of cities here with the prefecture and the post codes that you can use if you like, or if you have the address of a friend that you want to use or anything. It doesn’t really matter. So I’m just going to use the top one here, the city of Nagami in the prefecture of Toyama and this is the post code. You can use anything in here. OK. So the post code is 935-0024.

It doesn’t really matter if they don’t match up. They don’t check it. Toyama…City…. Where did I say it was? Nagami.

And then the address here, most Japanese addresses have a series of three numbers separated by hyphens. So you say 21-4-43. That will work.

And then you can put any name of a “-cho” here. I’ve also listed a bunch of often appearing names and addresses, either Honmachi, Sakae, Okino, Tori, Akasaka, Hiromi, Yamato, Hayama. Anything you want is OK.

So let’s just take one of them, let’s just take Hayama. OK. I live at 21-4-43 Hayama in Nagami in Toyama. OK. Just put anything here. It doesn’t matter. Let’s make a number up right there. OK. And make sure you click “none” here.

Now, don’t worry about putting in a fake address, OK? The reason why they only let people with Japanese addresses open up an account in the Japanese store is… It’s not anything to do with anything illegal. It’s something to do with record companies.

So, for example, one artist, for example Mariah Carey, she might be on Sony BMG in Japan, but she might be on a different record company in America. So if someone from America is buying Mariah Carey at the Japanese store, her record company in America is not getting any royalties, so they don’t want that to happen. That’s the only reason why they have this. Right? They have restrictions. OK?

So once you’ve done that, click continue.

And you’ll see here, “Thank you.” It’s been successful, and you will see here that you have successfully set up an account, and your email, and you have been credited with 6000 yen. Also, if you look up in the corner here, you should have your email address and the login name, and the amount of credit here.

So you go back to the iTunes store, and any time you want to buy something, it will take it from the credit.

Sometimes, when you do that you may not be automatically logged in. If that’s not the case, go to this front page and click “redeem”, and you will be asked to log in. And then you’ll be logged in up here. OK?

That’s all. And I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have questions, give me an email at support @ JPopMp3s.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you.

 

 Standard Podcast [7:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I have just added a new desktop wallpaper featuring the beautiful Namie Amuro. It is 800 pixels x 600 pixels. Clicking on the image below will take you to a full sized version, which you can save by right-clicking the image and selecting “save image”, or you could select “save image to desktop” to instantly make it your desktop wallpaper.

This is my first Photoshop attempt so I would appreciate it if you could leave a comment and tell me if you like or not. Any feedback would be great.

If you have a request for a particular artist, leave it in the comments below and I’ll see what I can do next time.

Here’s What I’ve got:

I have Japanese iTunes music store prepaid cards in 2000 Yen, 3000, Yen, 4000 Yen…all the way up to 10,000 Yen amounts. These are for use in the Japanese iTunes music store only.

Here’s what it’ll do for you:

With these cards you can create an account at the Japanese iTunes music store -which normally requires a Japanese credit card and Japanese address, but if you have one of these cards you don’t need either of those.

You will be able to legally purchase and download all of the latest JPop and JRock songs and music videos instantly, not only on your PC or Mac, but on your iPhone or iPod touch as well. No more trying your luck with dodgy download sites or file sharing. You’ll know exactly what you are getting.

Here’s what I want you to do next:

Go on over to JPopMp3s.com, scroll down the page and sign up. Click the confirmation links in both emails you will get (to confirm your membership). Log on to the site and check out the cards for sale in the members area. If you like what you see, (and if you are looking for a great way to get JPop or JRock why wouldn’t you?   ), choose the card you want, and I will send it to your email as soon as I get it. If I’m at home and awake (and this being Obon, the Japanese summer vacation, I’m home everyday) I’ll send you your card as soon as I get the order. I do have to sleep sometimes so there may be a few hours wait, but I’ll send it as soon as I wake up.

Anyone can access the Japanese iTunes store from within iTunes on their PC or Mac.
Click on the “iTunes Store” button on the left side menu in iTunes. Scroll down to the bottom of the store and you will see “My Store”, with the name and flag of the country’s store which you are in at the moment. Click on the arrows to the right side of the country name and a dropdown menu of all the international iTunes stores will appear. The Japanese store is at the very bottom of the list, written in Japanese. Clicking on this will take you to the Japanese store.
You do not need to buy an iTunes card before you browse the Japanese iTunes store. Anybody can access it, however if you wish to download from the store, you will need an iTunes card, or a Japanese credit card.

Once you have found something you like, you can get your Japanese iTunes cards from JPopMp3s.com