Dirk van den Heuvel wrote:
> Sorry. I bought my Cowboy Bebop remix CD at a Japanese magazine/music
> store in Arlington Heights and I think I paid $30 or so myself. Never
> really been able to sort out a good, reasonably priced source for
> Japanese music to wholesale.
I buy Japanese music all the time, so I know the best places to get
releases of specific genres, labels, etc... Here's some selling from $16
and up:
[places with the largest selection]: HMV, CD Japan, Fujisan, JPopHelp
If you're buying a lot, www.hmv.co.jp and www.cdjapan.co.jp are the best
places. Both have interfaces in English. HMV's shipping is the steepest
of all the shops I have listed here, but they've got shopping credit, so
in time you'd eventually $20+ discounts to cut down some of the shipping
cost.
CD Japan has lower shipping prices and very favorable Yen to USDollar
conversion. CD's there sell for around USD$23, but there is no shopping
credit. Go to HMV if you intend on buying more than once so to make use
of the shopping credit. Go to CDJapan if you're just in want of a single
purchase. CD Japan and HMV take only 2 to 3 days to ship.
There's www.fujisan.com (also available in English) which has some of the
largest inventory along with CD Japan and HMV. And they've got the
cheapest shipping prices of these three.
And there's JPopHelp, with similar prices as FujiSan. But they also
carry pirated copies, which are easy to spot (see below)
[best prices, and some with smaller selection]: YesAsia, (also) Fujisan
and JPopHelp
There's YesAsia. They generally have the best prices because of two
things, 1) their shipping is among the cheapest, 2) and they stock
overseas releases of Japanese albums which means you can get them for
around $16. But their selection is the smallest, they carry mostly
mainstream releases. However, like all the stores mentioned, you can
special request order for things they don't have listed. They're also the
slowest of the three in shipping. And when you choose items from this
store make sure you check who the record label is, as recently they' been
carrying more "faun baun" release, meaning they're pirated copies. You
can easily tell however by looking at the tracklisting (ie. if there's a
ridculous number of tracks) and the publisher. Some of the known
pirating publishers: Ho Sun, Ever,...
And there's OtherMusic which carries a nice selection of Shibuya-kei
release and other indies and underground stuff. Favorably shipping,
similar prices as YesAsia, Fujisan, JPopHelp.
There are many others, those are the better ones that come to mind at the
moment. It's somewhat unnerving with all the choices and various
pricings. If you have any questions, or you know which releases you want
and would like to know the best place to get 'em, feel free to e-mail me.
-- Wesley [Sound * Lounge] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoundLoungeCDs + Movies + Books Starting @ $6.00 [Babyface, Ken Ishii, MTV Unplugged, CliffNotes & more @ Amazon] http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/customer-open-zshop-items/A2IRBN8PA6TSLM/104-3574430-4914347
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