Music Goes Global: How AI, Data, and Policy Are Redefining the Future of Entertainment (SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026)
At the SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 Summit, a high-level panel of international music executives, startup founders, and legal experts gathered under the cooperation of the Japan Culture and Entertainment Industry Promotion Association (CEIPA) to address a critical question: How can technology propel Japanese music beyond its traditional borders and sustainably scale it globally?
Moderated by Takayuki Suzuki, Representative Director of Music Tech Japan, the discussion highlighted a major paradigm shift. The convergence of generative artificial intelligence, predictive data analytics, and evolving copyright laws is fundamentally rewriting the business of music.
1. The Creative Export Mandate and the "Superfan" Era
The Japanese government, through the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), has identified the creative industries—encompassing anime, manga, gaming, and music—as a core economic engine. METI has established an ambitious strategy to expand Japan's overseas creative industry revenue to 20 trillion JPY (approximately $130 billion USD) by the year 2033, representing a more than three-fold increase from 5.8 trillion JPY in 2023.
While Japanese acts like the hip-hop duo Creepy Nuts and singer-songwriter Fujii Kaze are achieving historic milestones on global stages like Coachella, the panel emphasized that physical touring is only half the battle. To build sustainable, long-term global businesses, the industry must transition from a traditional "push" marketing model to a digital-first "pull" model by engaging "superfans"—a concept deeply rooted in the Japanese cultural phenomenon of Oshikatsu.
2. The Startups Disrupting the Status Quo
Two prominent Japanese startups showcased how modern technology is actively solving the industry's historical bottlenecks in funding, promotion, and creation.
BabyJam: Connecting Data, Promotion, and Finance According to BabyJam, the broader market encompassing related entertainment domains is valued at approximately $70 billion USD, whereas Japan's core domestic music streaming and recorded market stands at 1,050 billion JPY (approximately $6.8 billion USD). However, independent artists face severe fragmentation in digital promotion and capital access. To bridge this gap, BabyJam, led by Board Director and COO/CFO Ten Kameya, developed Norder Promotion, a unified data-aggregation platform that connects music and social metrics to optimize marketing. Ten Kameya noted that in a representative system campaign, the platform helped an artist generate over 500 million TikTok views and 52 million streams, delivering an ROI of 2,900%. Furthermore, BabyJam's Norder Finance uses a proprietary database with a 90% predictive accuracy rate to forecast revenue across four core areas:
Music revenue forecasting to estimate digital and streaming royalties.
Concert attendance forecasting to mitigate physical touring risks.
Merchandising demand prediction to optimize inventory.
Advertising performance forecasting to maximize promotional spend. By turning these predictive analytics into financial instruments, BabyJam enables advanced services like streaming-based loans and accelerated royalty payments.
SOUNDRAW: Ethical Generative AI by Design While generative AI has sparked intense controversy, SOUNDRAW Inc. has positioned itself as the industry's legally safe and ethical music generator. Founded by former professional dancer Daigo Kusunoki and led by Head of Marketing Anita Baumgärtner, the platform operates on a unique hybrid model: 100% of its training data is created in-house by professional music producers. By training its algorithms exclusively on proprietary, human-created stems, SOUNDRAW is explicitly designed to minimize copyright risks associated with unauthorized data scraping. Creators and musical artists (including major US rappers like French Montana and Fivio Foreign) use the platform to generate customizable, royalty-free backing tracks. SOUNDRAW's commercial success is highly globalized, with 80% of its revenue generated outside of Japan (particularly in the US, UK, and Brazil), fueled by major API integrations with LG (powering smart TVs via webOS), Canva, Panasonic, and captions.
3. The Global Legal Battleground: Input vs. Output
As AI tools proliferate, the music industry is grappling with massive legal shifts, particularly in the United States, which serves as the default regulatory battleground. Stephanie Hurst, a Partner at Mayer Brown LLP specializing in cross-border venture capital and M&A, outlined the two defining legal questions facing the industry:
The Input Question: Can companies legally train AI models on copyrighted commercial music without permission? The landscape is highly unsettled. In 2024, major record labels, acting through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), launched historic lawsuits against AI platforms Suno and Udio. Emerging settlements in 2025 (such as agreements involving Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group with Udio) demonstrate a transition toward structured, permission-based licensing models. Meanwhile, major legal disputes involving Concord Music Group and major publishers against Anthropic remain active, testing the boundaries of the U.S. fair use defense in AI training.
The Output Question: Is AI-generated music protectable by copyright? Under current U.S. Copyright Office guidelines, purely AI-prompted music lacks human authorship and is not copyrightable. However, platforms like SOUNDRAW that allow creators to extensively customize, mix, and edit individual WAV stems introduce a substantial human element that may qualify for copyright protection on a case-by-case basis.
4. International Policy and the Power of Collaboration
Different nations are taking vastly different policy approaches to balance technological innovation with creator protection:
The United Kingdom: The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), represented by Senior Innovation Manager Amalie Briden, actively opposed broad text and data mining (TDM) exemptions under its Make It Fair campaign, significantly influencing national policy discussions. Backed by the UK Government's Music Growth Package of up to £30 million, the BPI allocates £1.6 million annually over three years to run the Music Export Growth Scheme (MEGS), subsidizing international expansion for UK artists.
Japan: Currently, Article 30-4 of Japan's Copyright Act provides a relatively broad exception allowing the use of copyrighted works for information analysis and AI training under specific conditions, provided it does not unreasonably prejudice the interests of copyright holders. Major national rights organizations such as JASRAC are actively advocating for legal refinements to strengthen creator protections.
The Verdict: The Era of "Ask Permission Later" is Over
The consensus among the SusHi Tech panel was absolute: the era of tech companies scraping data first and asking permission later has officially ended. The future belongs to collaborative, legally compliant, and ethical frameworks that respect the human foundation of music. Startups that secure trusted legal advisors early and build proactive licensing partnerships—such as Klay Vision (Klay), which secured major label licensing agreements prior to launch to raise $10 million in venture capital—will be the ones that capture global market share and scale sustainably.
