Mechanisms and Strategies for the Global Diffusion of J-pop Through Anime Collaboration and Digital Platforms: Sony Music Entertainment Japan

Against the backdrop of global streaming services reshaping the pop music market, Japanese popular music (J-pop) has expanded overseas through animation collaborations and digital platforms. In this context, Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ) stands as a representative case of vertical integration across animation, music and global distribution. Employing the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) as a framework, this paper uses a qualitative case study to examine SMEJ's mechanisms and limitations, and proposes optimisation strategies. The study reveals that J-pop achieves global diffusion through anime-driven attention, cross-platform synergy, multilingual adaptations and hybrid live-offline spillover effects. However, constrained by reliance on anime, project-specific ties, data and copyright issues, and popularity mismatches, the industry requires breakthroughs in music independence and localisation, advance planning, cross-platform data management and improved offline performance production capacity. The study indicates that J-pop's globalisation relies on the dynamic capacity to continuously reorganise resources while retaining cultural authenticity to achieve global circulation, which has transferable value for the overseas expansion of non-English-language popular music.