“The Post-Pandemic Voice” is a series of interviews with key figures from various pockets of the entertainment industry. In this series, we discover how individuals in the music industry navigated the shifting landscape during the 2020 pandemic. How did they adapt to changing industry values, and what are their perspectives on the post-pandemic music industry? We also gain unique insights into their work and how they found themselves in the industry to begin with.
Our third guest is Yohei Yashiro of Sony Entertainment Music Inc. Yo hei launched the YOASOBI project in 2019 and is still deeply involved in it. He talked about YOASOBI's inception, strategy, and his music background.
- Can you tell us what kind of work you are doing now?
Yashiro: I am in charge of the management, planning and production of the online novel submission site, monogatary.com under the Digital Contents Division of our company. This is where YOASOBI was born. I’m also in charge of the management and day-to-day label activities for YOASOBI under the RED Agent Division.
The Room Y in this RED Agent Division manages YOASOBI, Ayase and Rila Ikuta’s solo projects, bassist Hikaru Yamamoto who also plays in YOASOBI's band, illustrator/animator Niina Ai who created the music video for “Into the Night”, and Vocaloid p roducer Tsumiki who produced “Phony " and “Tokyo Shandy Rendez‐vous.” I also manage and do A&R (artists and repertoire) for pop duo NOMELON NOLEMON which features singer-songwriter Maria Miki.
-Wow, you are also working with a variety of artists other than YOASOBI!
Yashiro: Originally, my main work was in new business development So YOASOBI is the first time I've worked with artists for a longer term. Because I’ve managed the novel submission site for a while, if you look at what I do in the YOASOBI project, there are probably more non-musical works. Working with the authors and publishers of original stories that inspired the songs, managing social media accounts, and communicating with illustrators and/or animation artists.
-First of all, what do you think about the reaction to YOASOBI’s "Idol"? (*On July 12, it reached No. 1 on YouTube's world music chart)
Yashiro: Objectively speaking, none of us has ever seen anything like this before. Due to this popularity, we have to adapt and make some changes. I’d like to use these changes to make YOASOBI even more popular.
―As well as the music charts in the U.S., are you constantly checking the global reactions to your music?
Yashiro: Yeah. Last December, we went to Indonesia and the Philippines to join Head In The Clouds Festival and we got a great response from the local audiences.
Analytics show that, overall, overseas listeners are the largest group. So I had an inkling that people in the world are listening to YOASOBI. But when I saw the local audiences singing along in Japanese, I truly felt, "Maybe we are reaching people more than we thought."
Now I have been thinking harder about how to approach overseas audiences to attract more fans. Or how to make the songs penetrate further before they become fans. The success of the song "Idol" has given us more to work with, and has changed our perspective.
-You also released an English version of "Idol" didn't you?
Yashiro: Yes. I think when a foreign artist releases a Japanese version of a song, Japanese people feel a sense of closeness to the song. It just so happened that Ikura had lived in Chicago and has good English pronunciation, so we tried to do an English version of “Yoru ni Kakeru ” called "Into The Night." We used English lyrics that partially sounded like Japanese lyrics. It was just an idea that came to me by chance, but it was one of the things that people talked about.
Then, two years ago, we decided to continue the YOASOBI project. We realized many people thought “Idol” was our first English version of music released. S o technically we still need a lot of work to promote our project, but I'm glad that it became a topic of conversation
-So through the English version of “Idol,” people realized YOASOBI had released English versions of their songs before.
Yashiro: There is another purpose to releasing the English versions. When overseas distributors promote YOASOBI in their countries, it is difficult for them to listen if we only have the Japanese version of the songs.
If they have the English versions, they can say, "YOASOBI is very popular in Japan, and they are also making English versions." This encourages them to promote YOASOBI more.
For instance, they’re more likely to think, "Can we get the artist involved in promotion?” and we’ve been receiving requests for interviews and comments.
By responding to these kinds of requests, local promotions become more effective. So deliberately , we need many tools to promote our songs globally, and the English versions are one of them.
