A little more than a week has passed since the soft launch of YouTube RED in the United States. This resulted in several Japanese music channels on YouTube being blocked for American viewers. There have been some recent developments though. As was said in an update in the original post, I spoke to tricot’s manager and they fixed the issue. Their channel is now available again in the US. In another update, I said I was in the process of contacting as many artists and labels as possible. I encouraged readers to do the same. There have been some success stories. The channels for Alice Project and RADWIMPS are no longer blocked.

I also got a response from Victor Entertainment, the home of acts such as Sakanaction, Hoshino Gen, and Leo Ieiri. The email they sent me was a pretty standard, polite customer service one. It basically boiled down to them thanking me for bringing this to their attention, apologizing for the inconvenience, and then saying that they’ll pass this information on to the powers that be. Seeing as how Victor is probably the largest label on the list, this email is probably something they routinely send out. It wasn’t automatically generated when I emailed them, so at least that’s nice to know.

So this is where things stand now: we have 3 unblocked channels, 1 pleasantry with several channels that are still blocked, and dozens of channels that are still blocked with no response from them. So what do we do now? I encourage you, the readers, to reach out to these labels and acts, because 3 have actually listened to us. Maybe the others just need a push? Or maybe they just don’t care? Whatever the case may be, we will find a way to access the content we want. We’ve been doing it for years already with the likes of Sony, Johnny & Associates, and the various acts / labels that post only short music videos on YouTube.