Ticket Pia (チケット ぴあ) and UDO Artists, two of the biggest players in Japanese music have announced a new partnership! The name they have selected for their partnership is Upcoming. The name is confusing at first, however it is literally “Upcoming“, not figuratively. This unification may very well lead to a complete shift in the Japanese music world as we know it.
For those unaware, Ticket Pia is the largest ticket sales website in Japan. If you want to get into an event like HYDE, SEKAI NO OWARI, and many more, odds are that you will be using their service. Alternatively, UDO Artists serves as one of the biggest promoters for Japan. UDO not only brings talent in but also helps to spread Japanese acts to countries outside of Japan. On UDO’s homepage alone, there are artists like X JAPAN and GLAY.
Obviously, the question of how this will affect us Jrockers still remains. Unfortunately, all we can go off of at this point are the words of Upcoming‘s managing director Keisuke Endo. In an interview with Billboard, Endo states:
We’re not looking to take over the management of artists already well known. We want to develop our own talent from scratch and put new and exciting faces on the market.
Naturally, this means more room to be discovered and become the next big act in Japan. Even though we might not see an instant impact, this may very well usher in a new era of power artists in all corners of Japanese music. Not only this, but we will more than likely be seeing new Japanese acts performing on a much more global scale.