Yeah it seems they really let perfect be the enemy of the good.

No worries, and it’s not a dumb question!

Not really, unless there are specific tracks you want. Most of the time it’s demos and singles, but imo they break the flow of a lot of albums. If there are no extra tracks then the only difference is in the physical packaging afaik (translation of the lyrics into Japanese, extras like postcards ame other collectibles etc.).

It’s because CDs were/are super expensive in Japan compared to the rest of the world and thee distributors wanted Japanese customers to purchase them at home rather than import.

Recurring payments I think

I think they just released the fair phone 6 not too long ago so it’ll take a while even if it’s on the tables.

100% for better tools for parents. I helped set up the Google parental control on the phone owned by my ex’s sister and it was so buggy with the app not even scaling properly on their mum’s iPhone 6S back then.

Your last link gives a 404 error :/

It’s gotten so popular that even YouTube itself has a built in skip ahead feature for premium subscribers lol