Nuclearnemo

Also another thread where we can discuss this whole "old VK is better/worse" thing (Gaz posted a link to another thread)
 
The title of this thread is definitely misleading a bit. Also everyone else has said, what's to say and mentioned the shift in interests, copyright and so on. I want to add a bit of my perspective, mainly from my subjective experience with the Austrian and German fanbase, which is mostly based on real life experiences (with my rather tiny and small local VK fanbase) and what i have witnessed on several national and German Forums, Boards and Websites.
 
I came in contact with VK in 2003 and 2004. I have heard of it even earlier in Anime Magazines, but didn't pay any attention to it. Back at this time it was difficult to get information on VK bands. Only if you have been to Japan yourself you would have come into contact with more obscure indies bands. The groups that were known over here were all the big groups, the ones signed to major labels or which were pretty popular and well established: Dir en grey, Malice Mizer, Buck-Tick, Luna Sea, Pierrot, L'arc~en~Ciel, Moi dix Mois and Gackt (technically not VK, but he was in Malice and so appealed to the european fans). My first real experience with VK was, when the distributor Gan-Shin was founded and started to release some VK CDs here. Mind you, they were still hard to get, at least in Austria. Only one store carried Dir en grey and Moi dix Mois' albums and so I bought them. The only reason why I knew about these bands was because of Manga magazines.
 
I am sure there were several people in the early 00s who came to VK not through the Anime "Scene" but I'll say for the majority of the fanbase at this time this was the entrance. Let's say 90% of the German fanbase at least was compromised of Manga reading Weaboos, who threw around japanese words in their German sentences, because it was so cool and so on. VK appealed to them, because they already lived in a fantasy world and bubble, where everything is "kawaii" and where Japan was the garden Eden of the Earth, filled with hot crossdressing men. The Anime fandom was very big at the time, as we were still in the midst of the Anime and Manga boom, which started somewhere in the mid to late 90s. Everything japanese was considered "fresh", "new" and "exotic".
 
Now more then 10 years have passed and surely the world isn't the same. Nowadays everything is much more accessible. You don't need to spend shitton of money and habe patience to be able to get your hands on a new CD of your favourite VK band. You can buy their CD now easily in Online Stores or just download them. The Anime and Manga boom is over too. Being a Weaboo was always frowned upon, but today it seems to have become an even heavier stigma. In the 00s young teens still could go away trying to appear unique and cool by dressing up as self proclaimed "Visus" (yeah, they really saw Visual kei as some kind of subculture…) and shout "people who criticize me just don't understand it!". But if you do this today, then you are considered highly immature, dumb and annoying.
 
Of course most of those "Visus" grew out of it (and very fast). Almost no one of these people I knew (and have even seen in real life) sticked to it. Most of them moved on and became "normal". Others entered other subcultures in the course of the 00s (such as Scene and recently Hipster). A big majority of them don't even want to remember their old self, when they cosplayed as Kyo or Ruki daily (even to school) and probaböy washed their hair only once every 8 days (I am not joking. Many Visus' outfits and body hygiene were bad). I have to say that the current and modern fanbase isn't nearly as crazy as the old one. The cosplays and outfits have gotten better and I feel the amount of delusional fans has started to decrease.
 
So simply put: because it was new and because the Anime/Manga community offered a quick and well guided portal to it, VK was very popular here between 2004 and 2008. It was still fresh and the many japanese oriented fansites and boards were often the only information sources – hence there was also a bit more of a sense of community. Many places were similiar in activity and interest as MH is now. People regulary chatted about what band X is doing, even if the topics were often arbitrary. When I look into the same forums today, there is almost no activity left. That surely gives you the impression as if the VK fan scene would be dead. But MH actually disproves it. I'd say that since VK has become "normalized" and doesn't seem so new and exotic anymore (and since many people have stopped paying attention to it), the scene has become a lot smaller.
 
It's true however (but that's more for the new vs old VK thread) that many people left the scene, because the music has changed and they don't pay any attention to newer releases. I am sure some of them still enjoy the old music they have come to like, but they don't care about any new releases or bands. I myself had stopped listening to VK between 2006 and 2007 (which was a rather short pause anyway). VK lost some fans, as it started to become different, but as you can see it also gained new ones. I guess we could discuss this as some kind of generational conflict (as many of the new fans are in the age we old ones were when we first discovered VK, but yet grew up with other music and have different tastes) in the other thread.
 
Also finally: are music videos really that important anymore? I have the feeling that it's not only limited to VK, but the overall music scene. Music videos don't seem to have the same value as they did maybe 10 or 20 years ago, when MVs were broadcasted on MTV (when it was still mainly a music TV channel) and MVs were often produced with high budget. My mom used to own Michael Jackson's Thriller music video on VHS and it was the extended long edition with Making of. The VHS was probably around 2 or 3 hours. It was expensive, but she loved it and watched it many times. How often do we modern consumers watch a MV? Would we buy a MV with making of for 20-30€? I don't think so. Many people have stated they watch PVs and MVs one time on youtube and never again. We live in a world, where everything has started to become fast lived and is consumed like Junk Food. This is logical, because the WWW offers so much and in masses at a few clicks. Our consuming behaviour isn't the same, so I guess the aproach to MVs and PVs has changed drastically. I know a band which personally would like to make MVs for their music, but they don't do it, because they know people would watch them one time and it would be more expensive and profitable. And before they are forced to do a 0815 cheap low budget one they rather produce none.