Japan is a source of a wide variety of content, including manga, anime, J-pop music, and games—all of which have gained popularity outside of Japan in recent years.

In the past, when customers enjoyed books, movies, music, and other forms of entertainment, they consumed them as analog content by buying physical versions of those things. As the internet became widespread, however, content moved to the digital realm. Now digital content has been adopted in Japan, as well as the rest of the world.

Demand for Japanese content is growing thanks to overseas fans interested in subcultures such as anime and gaming. Consequently, the sale of digital content to markets outside of Japan has become a way for Japanese businesses to expand.

Let’s take a look at the best ways to sell digital content across borders. We’ll cover specific sales methods, points to consider, and businesses that have sold digital content overseas successfully.

What’s in this article?

• The size of the global market for digital content
  
• How to sell digital content overseas
  
• Success stories of selling digital content overseas
  
• Points to consider when selling digital content overseas
  
• How Stripe Checkout can help
  

The size of the global market for digital content

Data released in November 2024 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry METI gives a sense of the size of the digital content market globally. According to METI, in 2022, the largest markets—in order—were:

• The United States: 75.5 trillion Japanese yen (JPY)
  
• China: 33.2 trillion JPY
  
• Japan: 13.1 trillion JPY
  

METI’s “Size of the Global Content Market” report explored the market from from 2011 to 2022. The data shows that in 2013, China surpassed Japan to become the second-largest digital content market in the world, and China’s market has continued to grow rapidly ever since. The immense attention digital content receives in China stands out even on a global scale. The growth rate of digital content in China is much faster even than that of the United States, which is the leading market globally.

Furthermore, China had the highest digitalization rates for video, music, and game content in 2022

Although Japan’s market size is by no means small, when viewed through a global lens, it has lagged behind. However, selling digital content to countries such as China and the United States, which boast larger market sizes, presents an opportunity for Japanese businesses to acquire more customers and increase sales.

In countries such as the United States and China, in particular, where cross-border ecommerce is thriving, there are many customers who support Japanese content. Taking into account the steady rise in inbound tourism demand, there is also growing interest among tourists in Japan’s digital content. Therefore, for Japanese businesses, growth can come from expanding horizons and selling digital content to overseas customers.

How to sell digital content overseas

There are two main methods for selling digital content overseas.

Use a digital content platform aimed at the overseas market

The first method is to utilize a platform that operates overseas. Using video content as an example, businesses can generate revenue by providing videos to streaming services and selling them on that platform.

Using a video streaming service on a platform that is already moderately well known offers the advantage of delivering your videos to a larger audience than you could reach on your own. However, since fees apply to use platforms, it is important to check the pricing structure beforehand. Equally important is understanding that some overseas platforms might not support the Japanese language, so it might become necessary to hire personnel proficient in English or other languages.

There is a huge number of platforms available for selling digital content overseas, but some examples include:

• Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): For books and articles
  
• Udemy: For online educational content
  
• Twitch: For gameplay and commentary, music streaming, and art streaming (e.g., painting in real time, drawing tutorials, etc.)
  

Launch your own content site

The second method is launching your business’s own website or app, and then selling content through that channel. For example, if your company wanted to use this method for video streaming, you could utilize a video streaming site construction service. In this case, though you’d incur payment processing fees and system usage fees to the provider offering the construction service, building the video sales site itself would be done relatively smoothly.

The advantage of this method is that a dedicated site focused solely on your own company’s content ensures that your videos won’t be lost in the mountain of your competitors’ videos. The site’s design and layout can also be fully customized, and payment methods that meet customer needs can be implemented, with the ability to add multiple cashless payment types.

Success stories of selling digital content overseas

Let’s take a look at several examples of businesses that have successfully sold digital content overseas, as documented by the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Bandai Namco Entertainment

Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. first released their “Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle” role-playing game (RPG) for smartphones in Japan in January 2015. Starting in August 2021, it was available in over 170 countries and regions around the world, and it has now surpassed 350 million cumulative downloads. Furthermore, following its release in Japan, an English version was made available in July 2015, which reached 10 million downloads across 35 countries and regions by November of that same year.

In this case, the key to the company’s success was collaborating with local partner companies to enhance brand awareness. The business also holds anniversary events every January and takes other measures to accommodate fans worldwide, providing services that users can enjoy on an ongoing basis.

TV Asahi

There are also successful cases of overseas business expansion in Japan’s film and television industries (primarily dramas, when it comes to TV). For example, TV Asahi’s 2018 drama Ossan’s Love was sold overseas, mainly in Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Mongolia. The program aired overseas simultaneously with Japan, and it subsequently gained a great deal of popularity in those foreign countries.

As Japanese programs become more well known overseas, it is expected that remakes will be produced and distributed to even more countries and regions. In the case of TV Asahi, which has developed remakes, it has paid careful attention to ensuring the content is aligned with the cultures and customs of each target country. This included adding original scenes exclusive to the international versions and featuring music from local pop stars, resulting in appropriate localization tailored to the local audience. This approach is considered key to the business’s success.

Points to consider when selling digital content overseas

It’s very appealing for a business to target overseas customers interested in Japanese digital content because it allows the business to create a larger customer base that extends beyond Japan. However, selling digital content overseas is different from typical domestic transactions, and there are several points to keep in mind.

Japanese consumption tax (JCT)

JCT is imposed on goods and services purchased and consumed in Japan. This means that when customers residing outside Japan purchase Japanese digital content, consumption tax does not apply. However, businesses must configure settings on their content sites in advance to ensure that consumption tax isn’t applied to overseas users. Settings can typically be changed from the management interface screen of a content site.

Tax systems and reporting obligations for other countries

Selling products, whether physical or digital, to overseas customers constitutes cross-border ecommerce. When conducting cross-border ecommerce, businesses need to be aware of the tax system of the other country involved. Tax systems and reporting obligations vary depending on the country of sale. Value-added tax (VAT), which has been implemented in Europe and Southeast Asia, is an example of this. It is important to prepare in advance by consulting experts knowledgeable about cross-border ecommerce in each country you might do business in. This will allow you to properly address their respective tax systems.

Delivery

The sale of digital content is considered strictly an online transaction. This means that unlike with products that can be picked up or handled, there is no shipping of an item from one location to another. For sites that handle the sale of both digital content and physical goods, it is necessary to distinguish the two and configure digital products as nonshippable.

Translation quality

Customers can’t enjoy digital content, such as ebooks and movies, if they can’t understand it. Therefore, if you’re selling digital content to overseas customers, it is important to properly support each country’s language.

You might understand this especially well if you’ve ever experienced a language barrier yourself as a customer. Perhaps you’ve been streaming a video from overseas and felt that something was off—that the translation was a little strange. If you’ve been in this situation before, there’s a good chance that the content was translated using a free translation service that could not handle the complexities and nuances of the language.

To make sure that the digital content your business sells isn’t poorly perceived, it is advisable that you use high-quality services or tools to translate and localize the original Japanese to other languages.

Licensing

It is also possible to license digital content. Examples of licensed content include photographs, illustrations, videos, and music.

When monetizing your business’s digital assets by charging usage fees, make sure to implement security measures to prevent unauthorized copying, establish expiration dates for the content’s use, and set clear terms of use.

Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition is important in order to get as many people as possible to purchase your business’s digital content. Unlike physical objects that are in front of the customer at the store, many people are unaware that digital content, such as a particular movie or album, even exists. One marketing strategy to ensure that as many customers as possible know about your content is the thorough use of search engine optimization (SEO).

Additionally, promotional activities on social media, such as live commerce, have become increasingly common in recent years. If you use these kinds of methods effectively, you can expect to achieve significant promotional results.

It is also key to perform customer analysis. Identify the target audience for each genre of your digital content, analyze how customers discovered your content and what ultimately influenced their purchase decision, and use these insights to further improve customer acquisition rates.

Payment methods

Let’s imagine that all your customer acquisition efforts work well, and lots of customers living overseas begin visiting your business’s website. Even if you’ve caught their interest, if you haven’t implemented the payment methods they prefer to use, there’s a high likelihood they’ll abandon their purchases.

This shows that it is key to conduct thorough research on the payments necessary for cross-border ecommerce. Typically, a good approach is to offer credit card payments while integrating multiple cashless payment options commonly used in your target countries and regions. It’s also important to optimize and simplify the payment pages on your website.

Providing overseas customers with a smooth payment experience can improve customer satisfaction and lead to a growth in repeat customers. This will ultimately improve the conversion rate for the digital content your business offers.

How Stripe Checkout can help

Stripe Checkout is a fully customizable prebuilt payment form that makes it easy for you to accept payments on your website or application.

Checkout can help you:

• Increase conversion: Checkout’s mobile-optimized design and one-click checkout flow make it simple for customers to input and reuse their payment information.
  
• Reduce development time: Embed Checkout directly into your site, or direct customers to a Stripe-hosted page, with just a few lines of code.
  
• Improve security: Checkout handles sensitive card data, simplifying PCI compliance.
  
• Expand globally: Localize pricing in over 100 currencies with Adaptive Pricing, which supports more than 30 languages and dynamically displays the payment methods most likely to improve conversion.
  
• Use advanced features: Integrate Checkout with other Stripe products, such as Billing for subscriptions, Radar for fraud prevention, and more.
  
• Maintain control: Fully customize the checkout experience, including saving payment methods and setting up post-purchase actions.
  

Learn more about how Checkout can optimize your payment flow, or get started today.