Billboard‘s Global Power Players list recognizes the leaders that are driving the success of the music business in countries outside the United States. Warner Music Japan’s President & CEO, Takeshi Okada, was chosen from the music industry leaders of the world for inclusion in the list for the first time. Billboard JAPAN interviewed Okada in recognition of his selection for the list, covering a wide range of topics, such as artists expanding their activity scopes overseas and the potential of the superfan market.

In December 2024, you were appointed the new President and CEO of Warner Music Japan. Roughly a year and a half have passed since then. How has it been for you?

Takeshi Okada: Ever since I joined the company, I have expressed my strong desire to leverage the Warner Music Group’s global network and the expertise of individual markets to support Japanese artists on the global stage. We are now beginning to see the fruits of those efforts. Momentum to support Japanese talent has been growing at our global headquarters and various international affiliates. We’ve established a framework for strategic coordination. I feel confident that, going forward, we will continue to deliver strong results not just in Japan, but globally. In May of this year, Number_i signed a label deal with America’s prestigious Atlantic Records.

In July 2025, Warner Music Japan signed a comprehensive agreement with Yuki Chiba. What kind of outcome are you envisioning from this agreement?

Okada: Currently, Yuki Chiba is based in LA. He recently released “Medellín Takai,” a collaboration with a Colombian artist, Feid. There have also been collaboration offers from various overseas artists, so I think he’ll serve as a model for future overseas activities by Japanese artists.

Another thing is that he collaborated with Lil Moshpit on the song “Annyeonghaseyo.” It generated a lot of buzz, especially in Korea and the rest of Asia, and there’s been a lot of UGC posted online. Depending on the track, we are seeing the potential for music to ignite in various countries and regions beyond just Japan and the U.S., scaling into true global hits.  Looking ahead, in Japan, I would love to bring a music festival hosted by Yuki Chiba to life, featuring invited artists from overseas.

Japan’s music industry is really focusing on increasing exports. What do you think it will take for content exports to reach 20 trillion yen by 2033?

Okada: While we are seeing various Japanese artists begin to expand their footprint globally, these are still isolated success stories, or limited to specific genres and tracks. For Japanese music to truly explode on the world stage as a broader movement, we need to showcase J-POP as a collective front. Japan boasts a rich, diverse musical landscape where genres like idols, rock, and pop coexist, occasionally influence one another, and each commands massive popularity. I believe the main challenge lies in figuring out the best way to present this diversity as a unified whole.

Moving on, I’d like to shift to the domestic music industry. In 2025, the Japanese music industry grew by 8.9%. That’s a level of growth that surpassed the global music industry, which grew by 6.4%. In addition to the streaming market, there was also a lot of growth in the packaged product segment. How have things been for Warner Music Japan?

Okada: Over the past few years, streaming has become widely adopted in Japan. And yet CDs continue to sell well, and we still have the world’s largest physical music market. In recent years, we have seen a growing demand from overseas for Japanese physical releases, which are carefully crafted to resonate with fans and offer high value. I feel there’s still tremendous growth potential here. To increase that demand even further, I believe it’s important to redefine the value offered by physical formats..

Whenever I meet with Warner Music Group’s executives and colleagues from other countries, they always ask about our physical market. They’re like “CDs are still selling at Tower Records in Japan? Are Japanese record shops using some kind of magic?” 

Of course, it isn’t magic at all. It is simply because Japan has consistently sustained the physical business, which many other countries shut down early on. On top of that, we have continuously provided experiences and added value that allow listeners who love an artist to connect and engage with them on a much deeper level. I think that’s what’s behind Japan’s physical media success.

I feel like there’s a difference between the Japanese style of superfan (whose activities are called “oshikatsu”) and overseas superfans.

Okada: While Warner Music colleagues overseas are familiar with the word oshi-katsu itself, I have the impression that the sheer intensity of Japan’s oshi-katsu culture isn’t fully or accurately understood yet. Overseas, the word “superfan” refers to someone who has bought artist merchandise at some point, or gone to see them perform live. Because of this, it seems difficult for them to picture the reality of Japanese oshi-katsu where multiple versions of a CD are produced featuring different members in the jackets, and dedicated fans enthusiastically collect them all

In addition to the superfan market, a lot of attention is also being turned to the value of music back catalogs. When people talk about the value of Japanese music, they talk about its diversity and depth. What kind of potential do you in Warner Music Japan’s back catalog?

Okada: The Warner Music Group has a department that handles global catalog marketing. To continuously elevate the value of our catalog, they analyze data from platforms like Luminate on a daily basis to devise new initiatives and marketing strategies

Recently, I have noticed that tracks from the 2000s and 2010s are being streamed quite heavily. As we saw with the Japanese City Pop phenomenon, trends can explode overseas completely out of the blue. It is crucial for us to spot those early signs—including UGC—and take action to amplify them. For instance, the President of Warner Music Italy recently contacted me to say, “A song by Sal Da Vinci is buzzing in Japan.” We are in constant communication with our international teams like this every day.

There are a growing number of countries where people listen to back catalogs more than new music.

Okada: The catalog keeps growing, and the larger the streaming market becomes, the greater the share of revenue the catalog will account for. We’ve built up global expertise on how to increase the value of our catalog, and we’re sharing best practices with each other. At the same time, in Japan, we plan to continue allocating budgets and resources to putting out new music. The domestic market is important to us, but at the same time, we also think overseas exports are important, and since last year, we’ve had Japanese staff working full-time in Warner’s LA office. While an international team was already in place there, that team is responsible for every region and country outside the US. It covers music from Japan, the U.K., Latin America, Korea…everywhere. So, starting last year, we decided to station a dedicated person in LA just to handle music from Japan. Communication has become incredibly seamless, and we are already seeing results. Inspired by our success, there are now discussions about whether staff from South Korea and other countries should be stationed there as well.

Looking at international repertoire, American artist Ashnikko recently collaborated with Konomi Suzuki for the fourth season of the popular anime, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World, which started airing in April. Exporting Japanese music doesn’t just mean sending Japanese artists overseas, sometimes global reach of Japanese music is achieved through collaborations between international artists and Japanese culture or content. We plan to actively pursue these types of collaborations like that going forward.

—This interview by Naoko Takashima first appeared on Billboard Japan

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