Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has launched SO-FU MUSIC, a new government-backed support programme for music artists and managers, with applications open until April 30th 2026.
The programme builds directly on last year’s New Music Accelerator (NMA), which ran from March 2025 through February 2026 and selected ten acts — TakaseToya, tamanaramen, TENDOUJI, Blume popo, MIKADO, Rommy Montana, Ayatake Ezaki, Skaai, Haruki Hamano, and HARU NEMURI — each using the support for self-directed projects including live events, music video production, and overseas performances. CANTEEN Inc., the management company behind hip-hop artist Tohji, returns as the administrative office for the new scheme.
The headline change with SO-FU MUSIC is a doubling of the maximum subsidy: where NMA offered up to five million yen in production and activity costs, SO-FU MUSIC raises the ceiling to ten million yen per applicant. International expansion is now also an explicit requirement within the application guidelines, with candidates needing to demonstrate plans for distribution in at least one overseas country and localisation into at least one non-Japanese language.
SO-FU MUSIC sits within IP360, a wider METI initiative targeting 20 trillion yen in overseas sales of Japan-originated content by 2033, spanning music, anime, manga, video, and games. Applications are open to individual artists or artist-and-manager teams, and applicants must be Japanese nationals or foreign nationals with permanent residency in Japan. Eligible expenses cover pre-production through to post-production, localisation, and promotion, with the subsidy covering half of eligible costs and the period running through to the end of February 2027.
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The screening process unfolds in three stages. Those who reach the second stage gain access to expert mentoring, international trade show exhibition opportunities, and business matching with publishers. A third-stage pass brings streaming platform distribution opportunities, and promotion through creator/streamer content.
Among the mentors are Hiroki Shirasuka, an award-winning music industry veteran with over 15 years of artist management experience who is currently supporting the global expansion of artists including Fujii Kaze, Hikaru Utada, and Tohji; entertainment lawyer Eisuke Mizuguchi, who founded Law and Theory, a free legal consultation service for musicians; Noa Cid Blanco, a former VICE Media strategist now focused on the international expansion of Japanese artists; and Yohei Yashiro, the creator of YOASOBI and their ‘novels into music’ concept.
NMA’s final presentation event in February offered a candid look at what the programme achieved and where it fell short. CANTEEN representative Keiichi Toyama reflected that “the response was stronger than I expected”, but also acknowledged that administrative burdens had weighed on selected artists, a point echoed openly by HARU NEMURI’s team, who noted that NMA’s own procedures had at times competed with the time needed for actual audience development work. Toyama said those observations would feed directly into the design of the successor scheme.
At the close of the event, METI’s Masaya Koshida confirmed that preparations for a second-year NMA under the FY2025 supplementary budget were already underway — making SO-FU MUSIC, in effect, a scaled-up continuation of a programme that, by most accounts, proved its case in year one.
Further details and application materials are available at the official SO-FU MUSIC website. The deadline is April 30th at 5:00pm JST.
AloJapan.com