Updated on September 11, 2022

Warning: the focus of this guide is (obviously) buying BUTAOTOME albums. It can be applied to Japanese albums overall (both doujin and major). Other types of stuff you can purchase on the shops mentioned here (comics, adult goods, etc.) are not taken into consideration and there are many other and better guides about them on the web.

First of all, what’s the difference between a “doujin album” and a “major album”?
Doujin: self-published by the circles/artists themselves, sold at the so-called “doujin events” (like Comic Market or Reitaisai) but also in some specialized shops. Most of BUTAOTOME’s doujin releases are derivated works of Touhou Project, but they also used to publish albums with their original music, back when they didn’t have the label.
Major: published by a major label (in our case Avex Trax), which also has partial, if not total, control over the distribution methods. They are available in mainstream Japanese shops and they are also more expensive than the doujin albums.

Prices
Doujin: 1200 yen (this is the general price for BUTAOTOME releases, but some albums with less than 8 tracks can be cheaper)
Major: 1500 yen (CD only version) / 2000 yen (CD+DVD version)
These prices don’t include taxes. To convert yen prices into your local value, use a converter like Xe.com.

Physical

BUTAOTOME’s doujin albums are sold on their official BOOTH Store. You can also find them in various doujin shops, with the most popular ones being Melonbooks and Toranoana. Each album page of Tiramisu Cowboy has its list of buy links.
However, except for Akiba-Hobby (be sure that there is “ovs” in the URL and not “ec”) all these shops don’t offer overseas shipping. You must rely on proxy/forwarding services.

Proxy service: you send them the links of what you want to buy and they’ll buy them for you and then ship them once they arrive at their warehouse. You have to pay them twice: the first time when they give you a quota for your purchases and the second time for shipping. There are lots of services of this type on the web, all of them with an English interface and their fees: when I started to buy BUTAOTOME albums in September 2012, I used Noppin, then I switched to OtakuRepublic (the items they have “in stock” actually come from the doujin shops and while they look overpriced, the prices include shipping and fees. and they can also accept particular requests pretty much like a proxy) after some years. I’ve also used Zenmarket for a while. Now I mostly use Tenso (see below) or just ask friends/proxy services in Japan to buy and ship for me. A friend also highly recommended Dejapan.
Forwarding service: they give you a Japanese address to use when purchasing in the shop yourself. Then it’s very similar to the proxies mentioned above. The most well-known example of this type of service is Tenso. (Toranoana, Melonbooks, and other shops have partnerships with Tenso: when they write “we can ship overseas!!11” it’s actually “use Tenso”)

There are also proxy services (mostly run by one person) that can go to Comiket and other doujin events and try to buy the items for you: you might get some exclusive stuff.

A few tips:
– Importing stuff from Japan is almost never cheap. You should buy more than a couple of albums.
– If you order from a proxy, try to include links from exclusively one shop. Also, for most orders, (at least from my experience with Melonbooks) pre-ordered items are treated separately from purchases of older albums, so if you want to do a bulk order of new and old stuff, I suggest only ordering from there at the release date of your desired album.
– useful words: 在庫あり = “in stock”, 残りわずか or 在庫残少 = “few copies left”, 売り切れ (or if you don’t see any “add to cart” button) = “soldout”,

Which shop you buy from depends mainly on the album availability and what you want to buy: if you want to order only BUTAOTOME stuff, support them more directly, or also get a nice thank you message, BOOTH is your best option. Otherwise, you can order from Melonbooks and others, if your desired album is available there.

Shipping types
– EMS (Express Mail Service): faster, with tracking and insurance, but also more expensive and easily subject to annoying custom fees (they mostly depend on your country and you can try to avoid them by asking your middleman service to mark the package as gift and/or lower the declared value – from my experience, OtakuRepublic does this by default and I also never got fees by purchasing from Mandarake, but I don’t know if that was because I purchased only a couple of albums at the time from there)
– SAL (Surface Air Lift): cheaper, less subject to custom fees but also slower and without tracking and insurance (unless you pay for it, the so-called “registered SAL”).
There are other shipping types, but those two are the most popular ones. The main rule is “the more you pay for shipment, the faster your package arrives”

What does “Melonbooks exclusive” mean?
Some albums (mostly minor releases) are exclusively sold on Melonbooks and can’t be found in other shops (except BOOTH). They are marked with the 専売 kanji on their shop page.

Is there anything sold exclusively on BUTAOTOME’s BOOTH?
Yes:
– Yume no Hanashi
– Hyakumannin no Heikou Hifuu
– various merch and goodies

What does “reprinted album” mean? Should I expect anything different from the original?
The following albums got a reprint some years after their original release:
– Kouseki Radio
– Touhou Kaiten Mokuba
– Gensou Homo Ludens
– Long Skirt Panorama Girl
– Tasogare Elegy
– En
– Itanshinmon
However, don’t worry: except for possible minor differences in the booklet, they are the same exact thing as the first press, from the album artwork to the music. These reprints are aimed exclusively at those who don’t own the album.

I want this album so much, but it’s sold out everywhere!
The following albums are currently out-of-production and you can’t get them at all by regular means:
– Touhou Nekokenban (note: it’s included in the Nekokenban complete set, but you can’t purchase it separately)
– Kaen Ranzen
– Bowling
If you are desperate, you can check second-hand shops like Suruga-ya or Mandarake (the latter ships overseas). The stuff is cheaper most of the time, and you can also find event-exclusive discs that can’t be found elsewhere. However, keep in mind that by buying from these shops you don’t actually support the artists, so this guide won’t focus too much on them.
I only recommend using them as last resort, for these above-mentioned albums or if you are a crazy collector who wants rare event-limited stuff (do not try this at home!!!).

I’m in Japan. Where can I buy BUTAOTOME albums without handling shipping costs?
Most of the doujin shops have physical stores. You can find them on the official websites (here is, for example, the Melonbooks list). Alternatively, you can also attend BUTAOTOME’s live events, where there is always a corner where they sell albums and goods. Another good option is attending doujin events such as Comiket/Reitaisai. The sidebar is always updated (except for very small doujin events that are always announced at the last minute)!

Now, everything I wrote until now is limited to the doujin albums. For the major albums is a different situation. You can buy them on Melonbooks and co. along with the doujinz, but they are also easily available in international shops centered on Japanese music, with Amazon JP, CDJapan, and HMV Japan being the most popular ones. They are also in English, so everything is simple (and in the case of Amazon you can switch the language). In addition, most of these shops also have the BUTAOTOME Fanbook.

A note about Amazon: you might see some doujin albums as well, but they are unauthorized resales with larger prices.

A last note about the DVDs: all of BUTAOTOME’s DVDs (PV collection, Jump Otome, major albums’ extra DVDs) are coded to be Region 2, except for Pig Video Desu, which is Region All.

For further reading on how to buy stuff from Japan, I highly recommend reading Merami fan’s guide.

Downloads

The major albums are available on pretty much every Japanese website centered on digital music (mora, Rekochoku, dwango to name a few). However, most of them need some workaround (Japanese credit card, VPN etc.) and every shop only offers AAC files for BUTAOTOME’s releases (except Amazon JP, which has MP3 files), so in the album pages I only list iTunes and OTOTOY because they are “overseas friendly”. iTunes doesn’t need to be introduced: you can easily purchase the albums on the store of your country as well as the full versions of the music videos (but no other videos from the extra DVDs). In case you can’t/don’t want to use iTunes, OTOTOY is a good alternative (though it doesn’t have the videos): the site is partially in English, but it should be easy for you to buy from there and it also accepts Paypal.

Since October 2018, BUTAOTOME’s Touhou albums are easily purchasable on iTunes and Google Play Music! Note that they use a different artist tag from the major albums.
All the Touhou albums up until the 2021 releases are available except for Kaen Ranzen and all the live/event-limited releases.
Since April 2019, the same selection of albums is also available on Touhou Doujin Music Distribution’s BOOTH. You can purchase from outside Japan, and it also provides FLAC files. Due to a change of guidelines, TDMD’s BOOTH has been shut down on August/September 2021. Now artists can sell their digital releases on their own BOOTH store, so technically it’s up to BUTAOTOME themselves if they want to re-add their entire discography…

In the past, the only way to digitally purchase the doujin albums (and only the first five Touhou vocal albums) was Melonbooks DL. Now not just the website is blocked from outside Japan, but the albums have been removed. Because of this, the “how to buy from Melonbooks.com” guide that used to be on Tiramisu Cowboy has been deleted.

Please don’t use Eruce.com to purchase digital albums. It’s not an authorized website and it sells rips of event-limited stuff (such as Lovely Life), which aren’t available from legal sources.

Streaming

BUTAOTOME’s major albums are available on every big streaming platform that has popular Japanese music. You can also listen to them on Spotify, and they don’t require a subscription.

Since December 21, 2020, Touhou music is available on Apple Music and Youtube Music. Apple Music requires a subscription in the first place, and while you can use Youtube Music for free, you need a Premium subscription for Touhou albums. Since April 29, 2021, Touhou music became available on Spotify. It doesn’t require a subscription.

For a list of songs available on the digital market, click here.