Mobile music business in Japan and Korea: Copyright management institutions as a reverse salient

摘要

To examine the development process of the music business on mobile Internet in Japan and Korea. Japan and Korea are leaders in mobile Internet, especially in music related to mobile Internet business. Research in the mobile music Internet business would help in understanding the cause and conditions of mobile commerce. Hence, the present paper focuses on countries like Japan and Korea, leaders in mobile Internet commerce to understand the critical factors behind the growth of business. The introduction section of the paper highlights the need for the present work. An overview of the mobile music business in terms of the statistics of the subscribers of both the countries and the kind of services available is presented in Section 2 of the paper. In Section 3, the authors have discussed how the business has developed by explaining the concept of the Large Technological System (LTS). The LTS is explained and the feature of reverse salient is also discussed in the context of mobile music business. The evolution of the mobile music business in Japan and Korea forms Section 4 of the paper. It focuses on the copyright owners and institutions in both countries and compares the same with other countries. In the discussion part (Section 5), the authors discuss the music copyright institutions as the reverse salient of the LTS and how social institutions can play a major role in the Internet music mobile business. The paper also suggests the need for public policy and regulations in developing mobile Internet commerce.