There's plenty of good reasons for city pop to see a resurgence at the current moment. Many of which are mentioned in the article, such as the now-lost innocenc

There's plenty of good reasons for city pop to see a resurgence at the current moment. Many of which are mentioned in the article, such as the now-lost innocence of a time when capitalism seemed fun rather than threatening. But one factor I think is underappreciated is the copyright environment surrounding these songs. Having no remaining commercial value in the Japanese domestic market, let alone the global market, city pop songs were able to spread widely and quickly on YouTube instead of languishing forever in their labels' respective back catalogs. In addition, even if the labels knew about this and wanted to reassert their ownership, policing Western streaming sites would have seemed an unpleasant distraction from the real goal of selling more CDs to Japanese buyers. Sure, there's artistic reasons for Americans to be rediscovering these decades-old Japanese pop songs --- but there's structural reasons as well.