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Poll: Eurobeat in your country?

Posted: 12 Feb 2010, 17:57
by MirĂ²
Hi guys!
I'm here in the name of (some of) the italian labels to ask you a favour.

Could you please describe us the situation of Eurobeat in your country?
How many people listen to it?
This number is growing or decreasing?
Do they/you have plans to diffuse it more widely?

Things like these.

I will e very thankful to those who will answer =)

THANX IN ADVANCE

Posted: 12 Feb 2010, 18:54
by Lebon14
I think, here in Canada, we're only a couple fans across the country. Or maybe some people actually like Initial D's soundtrack but they don't know what they listen is actually Eurobeat.

So, Eurobeat is pretty much unknown here. The only people that lives here in Canada and that I know they love Eurobeat are Will154 (Montreal), Densetsu (Montreal), Bozz (IDW - Toronto) and myself.

Stats wise, I dunno if it's increasing, decreasing or how many people listen to it.

I think people in parapara might be able to shed a little more light about Eurobeat in Canada.

See you later.

Posted: 12 Feb 2010, 20:27
by zoupzuop2
I'm a Californian... I can't speak for all of USA but a common reaction to Eurobeat is that it's "gimmicky but fun". I actually played a live show with some of my Eurobeat tunes and the crowd was fairly receptive, but...
As a whole Eurobeat in the USA is an extremely small niche market that is increasing more and more with each passing moment. With the advent of such labels as Magic Hammer and Disko Warp hailing from here, awareness of the "DDR Music" is increasing rapidly amongst those who know where to look for it already.

Posted: 13 Feb 2010, 06:25
by ryosuke63
zoupzuop2 wrote:I'm a Californian... I can't speak for all of USA but a common reaction to Eurobeat is that it's "gimmicky but fun". I actually played a live show with some of my Eurobeat tunes and the crowd was fairly receptive, but...
As a whole Eurobeat in the USA is an extremely small niche market that is increasing more and more with each passing moment. With the advent of such labels as Magic Hammer and Disko Warp hailing from here, awareness of the "DDR Music" is increasing rapidly amongst those who know where to look for it already.
This pretty much sums it up for fans in the states.
I wonder who this representitive of the labes is though... 8)

Posted: 13 Feb 2010, 10:08
by Wataru Akiyama
Long Island, New York, here.

No one knows about it and those that hear it for the first time either think it's cheesy, too fast, or doesn't make sense.

I did go into a chinese restaurant once and they were playing "SPEEDY SPEED BOY", I almost shit several bricks and squealed "OH MY GOD" like a huge fairy, the staff thought I was flipping out. it was just hella unexpected, like i didn't expect to hear it there.

Posted: 13 Feb 2010, 10:34
by cheeseman
In Poland, Eurobeat is mostly known to fans of Japanese culture, though most of them only know J-Euro like Hinoi Team rather than Italian Eurobeat. In fact, almost everyone thinks that Eurobeat is Japanese music. However, I've been working on popularizing Eurobeat in Poland, and so far it looks quite promising. I hosted a discussion panel about Eurobeat and Para Para at a Manga & Anime convention last summer, and I will probably be hosting another one at a Japanese Pop Culture Festival next month. Para Para shows are also quite common on M&A conventions. If everything goes well, we might even organize a Para Para club event some time this year.

The biggest drawback is the poor availability of Eurobeat in Poland. Even though there are companies importing CDs from Japan, it's mostly J-Pop and J-Rock, no Eurobeat whatsoever. The only way to get Eurobeat is by ordering CDs directly from Japan or downloading from Juno (since we don't have iTunes ><). It would be great if the labels could somehow promote Eurobeat around here, as there is a reasonably large potential target market, especially among M&A fans.

Posted: 13 Feb 2010, 14:36
by Javy
Here in CT USA Eurobeat is pretty known in the anime circles but very few people here actually buy it...

Posted: 13 Feb 2010, 23:33
by nullsoon
Well In Chile it's almost the same as what Javy describes, actually I believe I'm the only one actively purchasing Eurobeat and related releases. (at least that claims so on the interwebs)

Besides that there is a very small fanbase (around 200ppl tops) that likes Urobeets, listens to it, talks about it and, most relevant to what I guess is the motive of your calling, downloads it illegally.

Posted: 14 Feb 2010, 01:34
by Nine
Vancouver, BC: It's rare but it's around if you're in the correct place. Arcades from Initial D, anime stores and the one anime convention that happens around here. It's considered to be DDR music by those who don't know it.

It's rare, but you can find SEB albums used in Bookoff in Vancouver, and if you're lucky there's a vinyl shop on Davie St that has some old Italo Disco records (like Time, ASIA, etc.)

Posted: 15 Feb 2010, 05:05
by drnrg
Baja California Mex. No Eurobeat at all. The closest I came to Eurobeat was a jingle for the Eurobeat version of Boom Boom Boom- Venga Boys playing on a kid's scooter. If you wanna hear Eurobeat, you gotta come to my house were I can play for you 1000s of songs from my vinyl and cd collections :grin:

Posted: 15 Feb 2010, 22:16
by the_ditz
My UK perspective...

The only time you are ever likely to hear Eurobeat in the UK is if you stumble upon an arcade and find someone playing Nori Nori Nori on a Dancing Stage Euromix 2 machine. As a musical genre, it isn't even on the map. Juno being a website based in the UK may give the impression that it is a relevant genre to the UK music community as a whole, but outwith the DDR and anime communities that everyone has already mentioned, I don't believe there to be a massive amount of other "true" Eurobeat fans like myself (and by that I mean avid followers of the music scene itself and not just a casual fan that likes it because it features in an anime show or a video game...)

You ought to have seen the crazy looks I got one day when I pulled up to a traffic light singing along to Super Rider - like I had horns or something!!

Posted: 17 Feb 2010, 15:24
by Densetsu13
Lebon14 wrote:I think, here in Canada, we're only a couple fans across the country. Or maybe some people actually like Initial D's soundtrack but they don't know what they listen is actually Eurobeat.

So, Eurobeat is pretty much unknown here. The only people that lives here in Canada and that I know they love Eurobeat are Will154 (Montreal), Densetsu (Montreal), Bozz (IDW - Toronto) and myself.

Stats wise, I dunno if it's increasing, decreasing or how many people listen to it.

I think people in parapara might be able to shed a little more light about Eurobeat in Canada.

See you later.
At the moment I can probably think of a good ten people in Canada that actively listen to Eurobeat. Back in the Bemani days there used to be so much more but most of those people grew out of it.
Besides that there is a very small fanbase (around 200ppl tops) that likes Urobeets, listens to it, talks about it and, most relevant to what I guess is the motive of your calling, downloads it illegally.
Nully I find it amazing how you consider 200ish to be a small fanbase 8D While compared to other genres that is quite small, but compared to other places in the world that have no listeners at all except for one user from this board that's a WHOLE lot of people.

We also have to keep in mind there's a lot of people who just don't post on the internet or join discussion boards. Never forget that while we may be the loudest at voicing our opinions we ARE the minority.

Posted: 17 Feb 2010, 20:52
by nullsoon
Haha yea, I think I'm spoiled with being a lot of people :') (compared to other places)
We used to be much more, though. In the good days there were like ten or more 6+ppl para teams, all dancing, making performances, plus the other kids that didn't had teams but participated actively.. aah.. nice times.. they took off the ParaParaParadise arcade off the main Arcade place in Santiago and it vanished away t_t


I think if the artists/producers decided to kinda go on tour (I say kinda because they should think of it as Vacations+Shows, because of the little money it'd report), this would be a nice place to come, people don't buy euro, but they definitely pay tickets for seeing the artists live.

I believe Brazil has a larger fan base than Chile, though (and there are a few that actually buy stuff, instead of only one, lol)

IIrc, some people @ SEF was gonna come to Brazil to an Animecon, (that didn't happen) but something's something, right?
Besides they just did theDiamond7 event, which was a ParaPara Night, just as the ones in Japan. I read it was very successful.

So doing something like a Rio - Sao Paulo - Santiago tour, could comewhat pay off, hehe, and I'd love to be in the production of such event.

Posted: 18 Feb 2010, 04:27
by vinyl12
Also in South Korea, eurobeat is mainly known to who is interested in Japanese culture like fans of Initial D animation series or music video games(like DDR, beatmania...). But it's small popularity. There was many parapara dancers in my country. I'm not sure if they're still into parapara......

In 90s' and earty 00s' a few Korean music composers ripped off eurobeat songs, so maybe many koreans actually heard some eurobeat songs, although they don't know it was Eurobeat.

Posted: 18 Feb 2010, 06:06
by Tiger
Densetsu13 wrote:

We also have to keep in mind there's a lot of people who just don't post on the internet or join discussion boards. Never forget that while we may be the loudest at voicing our opinions we ARE the minority.
Yes, that is a point that people seem to miss whenever they debate eurobeat popularity.

But in my opinion, I think that most people who buy eurobeat are actively online. I highly doubt people who do not frequent the internet to check for new releases every month actually buy many releases at all, if any.
I mean, sure, there are tons of lurkers on idforums, here and such, and there are also many divided forum communities in that some are regionally based, but of course, there is no way to gauge if they buy anything.

Darksky has asked "why doesn't avex just get information on international sales from online retailers," but this is not feasible because these are private entities that may or may not be obligated to provide confidential information. So, how would we get an estimate of the amount of times that people buy eurobeat outside of Japan? Up to avex, I don't know. Maybe they're already doing so and we don't even know it. Hopefully we're giving them ideas.

I'm kind of up in arms about whether I believe that it should move out of Japan or not. One part of me says that it needs to stay because if it becomes infused with other countries' cultures, then it may evolve into something disastrous, while the other part of me says that if it should diffuse into other markets, then it might... what? spark another eurobeat boom? in another country? but what does another country have to do with Japan? Nothing. Everything aside, I know it's about improving overall sales and not about moving it completely over, but as nullsoon pointed out on PPS, Chile and Brazil HAVE access to online stuff (Juno, maybe iTunes). I've never heard anyone from there buying stuff from iTunes or Juno. This is why I somewhat don't believe that it would work in South America. I mean, it's worth a try in Brazil, like a test CD, but I don't think it'll sell that much.

This issue gets even more complex. One must differentiate between the paralist and the person who listens to SEB. There are tons of paralists that don't buy anything and there are even fewer people who collect eurobeat albums. People like me, Alex, d~tan, and a few others (i can barely count many at all) are in the minority since we buy both SEB and para-related releases very often. The majority of the people just buy the SEB decade releases and very occasionally some para-related stuff. One cannot conclude that since there are tons of paralists (ie Diamond7) that SEB, or eurobeat in general, will sell well.

I hope I explained things well enough and please correct me if I'm wrong on some things.

I have no idea why nobody is mentioning the ParaPara Max series from the US in their arguments...