THE FUTURE OF EUROBEAT, YOUR OPINIONS..

[Bore]

Oh please, cut that superiority tone up, it's not producing at all.

What the hell can be a "wrong thing" to say about eurobeat, that's just annoying.

Happens that if someone finds a song really bad, they'll say it, as someone previously stated, the producers should be lucky that the fanbase of this subgenre of music is mostly into productive criticism instead of going all "BAAW KILL THEM ALL !!!". to my eyes that's not a "wrong thing" at all.

Instead of asking us what we thing, let's start thinking of ways for making the people who never bought eurobeat, buying music instead of stealing it from the idforums :') !
OH WAIT! we're not allowed in that conversation, because we're not worthy of such elevated topic.

meh..

I'm rarely the person to do this, but : QFT!

Sincerely sign this stuff and it's just a simple fact of life that the world is full of opinions and while some will be more harsh than others, they are just as valuable as the next person's. Nobody lives in a happy happy land where it's all laughs and giggles, the producers will face harsh criticism from time to time, but it's mostly a matter of taking it in. It might not always be constructive (god forbid we all fall in the same pithole and use the same reasons to describe bad songs from time to time), but it's still a valid way of pointing things out.

Also this being the internet, there will always be trolls lurking about hitting below the belt. If people haven't learned to live with that yet, then they better get off mah internet.

[Javy]

Oh please, cut that superiority tone up, it's not producing at all.

What the hell can be a "wrong thing" to say about eurobeat, that's just annoying.

Happens that if someone finds a song really bad, they'll say it, as someone previously stated, the producers should be lucky that the fanbase of this subgenre of music is mostly into productive criticism instead of going all "BAAW KILL THEM ALL !!!". to my eyes that's not a "wrong thing" at all.

Instead of asking us what we thing, let's start thinking of ways for making the people who never bought eurobeat, buying music instead of stealing it from the idforums :') !
OH WAIT! we're not allowed in that conversation, because we're not worthy of such elevated topic.

meh..

I think I love you

[the_ditz]

And I'm out! I too do not see the need for all of the extensive debates about the future of eurobeat, especially considering how strongly this new decade has begun. Styles evolve, tastes change, vocalists come and go, but surely all that is needed for the genre to survive is the continued support of us - the fans. I see no need for us all to start getting at each others' throats for no apparent reason at all!

[Vadim]

Instead of asking us what we thing, let's start thinking of ways for making the people who never bought eurobeat, buying music instead of stealing it from the idforums :') !
OH WAIT! we're not allowed in that conversation, because we're not worthy of such elevated topic.

meh..

That's why I touched up on Avex's *innovative* marketing/promotion ..
'Cause growths in piracy in great part result from that brilliant strategy..!

I live in Eastern European country now, and it is almost totally impossible to get SEB's in any form for ppl in these parts.

[DJ Mike TJG]

Can I make one point:

You should be happy that so many people in this forum post so many opinions about Eurobeat. Clearly a lot of people are passionate about it and that means that they're still listening. There'll be songs people like and songs they don't like, but that's fine because you really shouldn't expect everyone to like everything.

If we ever reach the day a new SEB is released, and no one says even one word about it, THEN you know that something is REALLY wrong. It's that sort of reaction you should genuinely be worried about. Because then Eurobeat will have truly lost its audience.

Oh, and incidentally - complaining about the people who complain about Eurobeat is going to do only one thing - drive them away. Good luck with that!

[n . paganini]

ciao !!

to the ditz : this is exactely the point what you are saying, i agree, look how healthy and good the new decade started,you are getting the point !! evolution and bringing the sound even more further, look what SEB 203 has to offer for us on this matter EVOLUTION & INNOVATION !!

to nullsoon : come on my friend, ofcourse you have a voice and you will be heard !! in fact your voice is important right now, as we can all hear on SEB 203: eurobeat will move further away from the parapara dancing, slowly but surely this dance will die out. then we only have the music left that counts, in fact this is happening right now. one of the key elements of eurobeat,s future will be THE MUSIC !! not the parapara dance anymore, it won,t surivive. instead of being moody, please open up your mind to post some ideas of how you want to see the eurobeat sound to evolve.
you are allowed in every discussion !! that why you are a member on this forum right ?

in fact i want to say this to everybody on this forum, stop the moody behaviour and start posting your own ideas on how you would like tot see the eurobeat evolve music wise. i think this was my main reason to start this topic, to be honest 2 reasons :

1, to stop the negative flow !! there are many good things ahead of us for the future !!

2, to let people get the opportunity to speak up and to hear your ideas on how eurobeat must sound like within a couple of years, because the future is bright, i wish you would be all able to see this and accept the fact that there is a life for eurobeat left after para para dancing !!

last thing to say for me is, nobody is left out on this forum, everybody has the right to speak up and don,t be affraid to express your ideas, but try to be positive please !!

ciao a tutti !!

[SuperEuroJimmy]

Well, I'm going to kick against that dance/music statement you made. I've been activly promoting eurobeat and parapara in the Netherlands for the last few years. Recently (during the previous Deshima Sounds), I noticed how many people really became interested in eurobeat and parapara, through their first contact with it; parapara.

I'm thinking about setting up a way to allow these people to buy eurobeat more easily via the internet. Because that was the main issue for a lot of them; they either way don't know how they can buy it, or don't want to wait aeons before they get their stuff.

Parapara in the Netherlands is still gaining popularity, which is great. I don't think you can compare parapara to jump, because with jump you were very limited in the moves you could do, and parapara offers the dancer over ninethousand dances he or she could master.


Other than that, I agree with nullsoon, and also agree that we all would probably benefit good ideas on how to give eurobeat some more life, than saying we should go and talk about it! (see what I did there? ;P)

[Javy]

Lets not forget parapara has been around almost as long eurobeat itself. Is parapara as popular as it used to be no but if you think parapara is dying out then you sir are an idiot and know nothing bout parapara

[n . paganini]

ciao !!

to javy : i,m sorry my friend, let,s be polite to each other, calling each other names like " idiot" is absolutely not the way to treat each other. did i ever offended you or disrespected your opinion? i respect you as a person and that fact that parapara is your passion, i believe i wrote somewhere in my posts, that if parapara is your passion then please dance to what you believe in !! go for it !! but please try to respect also my opinion. i have strong doubts that parapara will survive in the future, i agree that the dancing style had brought the eurobeat sounds to the masses, but it,s the music that counts as most important element !! which music style would you use to parapara dance to if there was no eurobeat hypertechno etc, etc ?

to mkkwiakaku : i respect the fact that you are pushing deshima sounds and parapara dancing, nobody said that was wrong,i respect you as a person and as a promotor. i know you have worked very hard to make deshima sounds what it is today. what i like to point out again is that the musical element counts more than the dancing element. that,s my opinion, and i respect your opinion. i think you are a devoted dancer and you obviously love your parapara, please continue to do so.

to everybody : all i,m asking is your opinion about the future on the musical element, what would you like to see in the future and which developments an innovation are you interesed in ? no fights or arguments here, just plain ideas and what you want to hear for the future !!

one last thing, i come in piece and we are all adults i hope ? let,s treat each other with respect and no namecalling please , i think we are better raised than that !! try to respect each others opinion.

ciao a tutti !!

[SuperEuroJimmy]

Heh, I don't really care about parapara, but it's the one thing to use to get other (young) people at least get in touch with eurobeat. Nowadays you can encounter all kinds of music without much or any trouble, thanks to the internet. And I don't mean piracy, but stuff like MySpace and Last.fm allow people to hear stuff they normally wouldn't ever hear. I think it's great, but it also means there are a lot of things the masses are exposed to. It's hard to decide if anything other than what you're used to, is anything good.

Eurobeat especially is not a easy genre to get in to. There's a lot of different types of eurobeat (and probably more to come!), and not everything is to everyones liking, as we see on EbP. It's a great help if someone could get a bit of eurobeat-exposure through something else that's easier to follow. Like a simple dance, or a computer game, or a cartoon. There's nothing wrong with that, and I think it's neccesary to get to another boom.

If it's just the eurobeat that keeps improving, that'll just please the current fans. To get more fans, eurobeat needs exposure outside of the current eurobeat world. I think club events outside of Japan are a great start, and if anyone has any great ideas, please share them so we can try them out in other countries as well. Let's move eurobeat outside the Japanese borders!

[the_ditz]

Parapara is not what originally got me in to Eurobeat. For me, it was Konami's range of Bemani games, primarily DDR/Dancing Stage. I was always drawn to the hyped-up energy of tracks like Nori Nori Nori, Walkie Talkie and - dare I say it - Night of Fire over any of the more standard sounding pop, dance or techno tracks. At first, I believe these tracks had simply been created as sub-2 minute songs purely to be used in the game itself, but when I finally discovered there was a whole genre of music dedicated to that sort of style, I was in heaven.

Nowadays, these dance games have lost their widespread appeal, and much like Eurobeat they are only really still mega-popular with hardcore fans of the games - casual gamers have long since moved on to something new (Guitar Hero anyone?) But as for the strategy, it was a great way to introduce a new genre of music to a worldwide audience. I wonder whether there would be a way to negotiate with game developers to maybe provide tracks for racing games that get worldwide releases - something along those lines.

As for the music itself, I love the slower tracks that are becoming more and more popular, and the experimentation with song structures and sounds can also open the genre up to a wider audience. No-one is ever going to like every Eurobeat song (just like pop fans will have their own favourite sub-genre of pop music), but I have always been confident that the Eurobeat genre contains *just* enough variety to appeal to a broad range of tastes. I'm under no illusions that there is no way that Eurobeat can break into the UK music scene overnight (hell, the UK tries to resist most Eurodance styles nowadays, so Eurobeat has no chance) but using another channel of the media - such as the lucrative gaming industry - seems like the most viable method of raising Eurobeat's profile around the world once again.

[nullsoon]

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not moody. my rants were going to DarkSky and his "I'm with Dima, I'm better than you" tone. And the redundancy on the nothingness of this conversation.


Now, talking about parapara. I agree with MKwiakaku on the fact that the biggest hook to get someone into Eurobeat nowadays is ParaPara, as it is Games and Cartoons.

Initial D, parapara and Bemani Games have been the biggest two hooks Eurobeat have had massively, I mean you can bet over 70% of the supporters come from one of these groups. Please let's keep that in mind because it's the key for hooking up new audiences.

Also, please have in mind that if parapara was never born, Eurobeat would have never developed into what we hear nowadays. I don't think that you could move on with the Eurobeat just leaving back the dance. In my opinion, that'd be Eurosuicide.. Well, that's not something you could do on purpose, anyhow :') !!

Now getting down to business, (even tho we're not supposed to get our noses into such elevated and confidential matter.. The biggest client of Eurobeat producers has always been Japan. Let's see what's the customer purchasing: Anime J-euro and house. there are the new influences you're looking for! Of course, in the case you're wanting to keep your historical customer and make commercially attractive music for them.

Now, viewing it from another angle and going along with the_ditz's comments, I think that a good "new" hook for getting Eurobeat into new audiences would be to take advantage of this -80's and 90's revival- with more eurodance, house techno, europop sounds~


Hey, hey, just thought of this!!
You know what would be the OMGBEST thing that the producers could do if they really want our opinion down here?

How about letting us hear samples of their experimentation; that way they'd get real time feedback on what they're doing and how to improve it ;D
</thread> ?

[#Infinity]

I got into eurobeat for pretty much the same reasons as the_ditz. I actually already knew him before I signed up here, so in a way I felt quite connected to him coming to this site.

I don't really know if eurobeat would really become that popular if it were marketed more thoroughly, but I very much think it can get at least a fairly solid fanbase. It's hard for it to fit in when compared to most songs you hear on the radio because it's such a radically different style of music, but I do know that there are least some people who quite enjoy it, so long as they're somehow introduced to it. Promoting the genre in a more widespread way, especially as to release it beyond only Japan, where it's losing attention, would be the best way, in my opinion, to benefit its popularity. I don't think it would work to immediately try to make it mainstream, but if it at least somehow finds its way into various dance clubs, I think it would be a welcome addition to the varieties of dance/electronic genres that are already in-place.

[Jay]

Like a few others here, I discovered eurobeat through DDR back in 2003, although not directly. I went searching on the Internet to see if I could find extended versions of DDR songs (particularly Jenny Rom) on P2P programs, the Internet, basically anywhere until I exhausted all my search options. I developed a considerable library of these mp3s just through endless and persistent searching for what seemed to be songs belonging to a rather obscure genre.

I didn't actually discover eurobeat until 2004 when I chanced upon iocc's website. I was originally after the Jenny Rom mp3s that were on the website but I also downloaded some of the eurobeat songs that were listed as well. May as well, hey? Basically, one thing led to another, and that was how I became hooked.

If it wasn't for DDR, I probably wouldn't even be listening to eurobeat today. Likewise, if it wasn't for the Internet, I doubt I would've discovered the genre at all. So I'd have to agree with the_ditz's idea on promoting eurobeat through mediums like DDR and Initial D more, otherwise people just aren't going to discover eurobeat other than through word-of-mouth (and really, that doesn't help much in the end). Rather than waste time trying to convert pirates into legitimate buyers (because pirates are inevitable), we should focus on finding ways to draw people in. Even if we draw in 100 pirates and just a handful of keen listeners who are willing to buy the albums and support the genre, it's better than nothing at all.

Another problem is keeping current listeners interested. This has mostly been discussed already, but some labels really need to update their sound and try new things (I'm not referring to any label in particular, I think most of them have this problem). That will keep current listeners interested and allow eurobeat to move forward. At the end of the day, nobody wants to listen to the same rehashed song, do they?

[Vadim]

Remarkable thing is that I was making my eurobeat discoveries through Napster in 1999. I was looking for early low bpm Sophie tracks, and suddenly I came across these insanely fast tunes of Sophie from mid to late 90-s. It was hard to get past the insanity of music just going lightspeed.
Napster opened the horizons for everyone in USA or Europe who
wanted to find new styles in the Far East or elsewhere. For the very
first time you could get mp3's of all kinds of music that you would never see in your record shop in million years.
It was set up as a global user sharing system on a Napster site platform.

In 2000 Napster was suddenly sued and the site was forced to close
and everything that was going on just ended...
Reason for this untimely demise (to thousands's of users' detriment):
It appears that through mp3 sharing of Metallica's mp3's it prevented a great rock icon of all time, named Lars Ulrich, from making all the
money in the world from Metallica then hugely falling cd's sales.
It seemed that it never dawned on Lars that maybe it was 'cause they
sold out big time, and their music always sucked since and still sucks now.

Check this out.. these videos are classic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIuR5TNyL8Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OGGtF_h0mw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVV-ul2rh8k