Lately I've been getting the feeling the 2011 earthquake and tsunomi (sic) may have damaged the Japanese music industry more than the rest of the world knows or suspects.

Look at the current product offerings of Roland, Yamaha, Zoom, Tascam, Sony, etc. Read some of the remarks in the thread about purchasing a keyboard. The same themes keep appearing, a decline in perceived product quality, little innovation and fewer product offerings.

Roland selling Cakewalk/Sonar and a US company buying Tascam makes me wonder what's going on. Sony isn't producing the acidized loop libraries as frequently as they use to. Zoom appears to be moving away from effects and audio to more video centric products.

What are your thoughts? Is it just my imagination?

Using Google shows the Japanese economy posted the worst quarterly decline since the 2011 disasters.

Another article points out a sharp decline in music consumption in Japan in 2013, and also mentions that Japan (much to my surprise) "largely relies on physical sales of music", which has also declined.

Finally Japan public debt is only second to Greece.

So a troubled economy and music industry could help explain what you are seeing.

But I don't have any firsthand knowledge here.

Japan under another global disaster right now with volcano eruptions. No question the country is taking a serious hit which will take years to recover from.