Recently we held a survey for the “Best of 2009″ at JaME’s UK and US versions, and we got a number of comments on the lack of J-pop choices in the survey. We soon came to the conclusion that we cannot make everyone happy, seeing as next to the questions for J-pop, we got complaints about only including mainstream acts or not including any J-goth acts in the pre-selected choices.
At JaME we’ve always had some problems with the balance between styles. We try to give a good representation of the Japanese music scene, which includes a lot of pop acts, but we also try to please our readers, which are predominantly a visual kei crowd.
At the same time, it is rather hard to include as much J-pop as these artists are usually less accessible than other artists. Being big in the visual kei scene means the act is still rather small in the whole of Japan, but when we talk about popular J-pop artists, it’s a whole different type of management and artist to deal with – they are really huge in Japan!
However, we do certainly aim to feature more J-pop on JaME. We’ve just run out of ideas for this, so we want to ask you, our readers, for any ideas to improve the amount of J-pop features on our website!
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Kay is the English version manager, aka editor in chief/executive editor and one of JaME’s vice-presidents. Between her job, second BA studies and random language courses, she’s able to find time to shout at her darling team members and write an article or two once in a while. If that isn’t enough, she runs a JRock company in her home country and occasionally organizes concerts of well-known Japanese rock acts.
Although she got into Japanese music through visual kei, she has now moved onto different sorts of music such as pop, alternative/indie rock and will talk your ears off about anything related to reggae in Japan. More information on this creature can be found at 
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Why don’t you hire/get some writers that are into other types of music and have them submit news/reviews? I would especially like it if you covered alt/indie/punk rock bands more often
Well if there were any people into that kind of music applying to join the team, we would certainly hire them! But out of all the people that apply, about 90% is mostly or only interested in visual kei and jrock.