All of Namie Amuro's music has been scrubbed globally online. Gone from YouTube, YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
No word on if this is on Amuro's side or AVEX. But Amuro hasn't been seen or heard from in over 5 years.
If you have her CDs, rip them now for backup. If you don't... well however you decide to acquire her music going forward, this is a judgement free zone.
@gnitro@jpop Wow, what the heck? This isn't even an unheard-of, unknown singer. She was pretty big. I guess there must have been a big falling out over label rights or something?
@nazokiyoubinbou@gnitro@jpop it looks like just a couple weeks after she retired in 2018 a bunch of things like her FB page, fan club, and online store got shut down. That leads me to suspect that the music vanishing is a result of letting her contracts with her publisher expire
@pcas@gnitro@jpop Yeah, I thought it had to be something like that. The sucky thing is that legally speaking that puts a lot of her works in a bit of a legal limbo.
Like the OP says, it would be a good idea for people to make sure to make backups.
@nazokiyoubinbou@gnitro@jpop if I’m correct, it probably means there’s nobody authorized to make copyright-related claims about her works (DMCA etc). Not that a lack of authority necessarily stops companies from doing so anyway
@pcas@gnitro@jpop I don't know. Big labels are pretty rough about that on artists. I imagine they still basically own rights, but it's just sort of stuck in limbo in regards to actually exercising those rights. Legalities around this stuff are very messy, but generally in favor of screwing over the artist as much as possible.
But yes, they'd file takedowns in a heartbeat if anyone dared share anything even IF they don't own them anymore.
@nazokiyoubinbou@pcas@jpop While everything is speculation. The fact it was pretty much 5 years after the fact, it must come down to some thing with rights.
I'm assuming her and AVEX had a contract length, and it either has to be renegotiated, or one side would need to buy the other out.
But Japanese companies are notoriously silent about things like this, and Amuro completely disappeared post-retirement. So its either hope for a quiet resolution or just realize it may be a long time. :(
@gnitro Had a song of hers on a playlist in Apple Music and can confirm it’s gone. Not even grayed out like what happens when albums are region-restricted. They kept her profile up but the only related songs are the ones that have her as a guest singer (or sample her songs).
@jpop@gnitro I noticed this last week when replying and bringing up Body Feels Exit. But at the time I don’t think I’d had any of her albums in Apple Music so I couldn’t tell “disappeared” from “never been online.”
Indeed wonder what’s going on. And indeed why I buy everyone on CD still. (Not that it’s too much.)
Things like Apple Music I have just for merit of connecting a family plan around, and otherwise wouldn’t.
@cthellis Yeah it really is wild, but Japanese companies are hard to get statements from when it comes to stuff like this. So I'm guessing we'll be in the dark until things randomly reappear (hopefully)
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