inartistic

I was going to say that they sometimes record a 90 second version of the song just for this purpose, but then I remembered we were talking about X JAPAN here and them recording and releasing anything is an accomplishment in itself.

Guren no Yumiya is ten times better than this, and I am not even a big fan of the anime nor its OPs. I'm just saying that this particular song from Yoshiki and Hyde doesn't catch nor fit the entire premise of AoT. 
 
(At least Guren no Yumiya is catchy AF and you have to admit it got stuck in your head at some point in time knowing how popular and "meme"-fied the song is. Red Swan.... I even forgot how it sounded after just a couple of minutes from listening to it. :-/)

You guys have gone so long without any new X stuff that you actually think this is good. lol

Maybe this is the gaijin in me, but I feel like KAGEROU, Kagrra,, and D'ESPAIRSRAY have to be on that list. Three renowned bands, two whose vocalists are deceased, and the third whose vocalist doesn't sing anymore? Yaaa
 
(Also, any native English speakers wanna unpack that last sentence and tell me if it's grammatically correct? The fuck.)
 
Ooh and now my brain is percolating, what about [YUKIYA bands here]? Kαin is in that weird spot where they're certainly not the most popular, but YUKIYA can sell a one track CD for $200 at a live, have it sold out, and then appear at auction the next day for $400 and people are actually paying for it. That has to be the actual meaning of “cult favorite” imo, which must make them legendary(???).

um, MERRY
 

 
also Dir en grey, LUNA SEA, X JAPAN, MALICE MIZER, L'arc~en~Ciel, Gazette, Versailles, Mejibray, An Cafe, Phantasmagoria, etc, judging on their wide fanbases.

If you want an approximate count for that, look for how many views a release has.

Thanks for the interesting responses!
 
It really does seem like the only "foolproof" way to know is to ask people who attended lives of each band, which is obviously not possible on a large scale. But for now, I think I'll keep the "venue size over time" charts on artist pages, as it's an interesting metric to look at nonetheless.
 
Incidentally, the idea of tracking downloads to gauge foreign popularity is brilliant. MH needs to implement this, stat

Thanks for the interesting responses!
 
It really does seem like the only "foolproof" way to know is to ask people who attended lives of each band, which is obviously not possible on a large scale. But for now, I think I'll keep the "venue size over time" charts on artist pages, as it's an interesting metric to look at nonetheless.
 
Incidentally, the idea of tracking downloads to gauge foreign popularity is brilliant. MH needs to implement this, stat

unironically the best way to measure a band's popularity overseas imo...
i guess it's important to distinguish between popularity overseas/domestic success for this conversation

You can't really take gigs / venues and judge their popularity unforutunately. I think you need to either see them live or see live clips, a good example of this is Gossip. You would assume that a band that has a 109 stop nation wide tour, a fanclub and a one man at Blitz would be very popular but they're not as big as they come off. 

Livehouse capacity for onemans can be a good indicator of a band's popularity at times, especially if the band consistently plays at larger venues, but some bands also play at venues they can't fill just because they can whether it's due to connections, the guys having money, having fans who give them a lot of money, or whatever. Some popular bands also like playing smaller venues because of the intimate atmosphere.
Also keep in mind that bands of all sizes play at AREA because it's a famous/popular vk venue. 
 
Number of tanuki threads is irrelevant. Sometimes bands have a lot of net gya who constantly like to shit on girls who go to lives, sometimes there's a lot of drama surrounding the members. XAA-XAA has had 95 tanuki threads in 3 1/2 years but they still have onemans at venues with a 200 person [or less] cap both in Osaka (where they started) and in Tokyo (where they're based now).
 
Being featured in magazines, it really depends, but many times it's really a matter of having a good label/management. XAA-XAA and Grimoire are not very popular but get featured in a lot of magazines because they're signed to Timely Records which is connected to little Hearts.
 
I remember seeing a similar thread or some posts on here regarding Youtube views and popularity but that's also not a good way to judge. DIMLIM's PV for vanitas has had over 71K views on Youtube in just 4 weeks (which is really good for a vk band) but I saw them again at EDGE on Friday and there were only maybe 15 people there for them (out of a crowd of maybe 40 people total)
 
Tbh the only way to know for sure how popular a band is is to go see them or ask someone who has seen them before.

How would you be able to determine the amount of fans who showed up to see that particular band and not one of the other head lining bands?
 
 
Any band can pump out releases, but popular bands would tend to sell more. If it's a limited release, you could try to figure out if the band sold out of all of the copies they pressed. If they end up pressing second or third editions that's a good sign.
 
That would be introducing bias into your data set because it would be restricted to vkgy users, which may not encapsulate the scene as it stands in Japan.

How many fangirls are in the comments dying over how sexy they are is a good indicator.

Hi all! Two questions, inspired by a chat with @cvltic.
 
---
 
First: for visual bands, which statistics indicate popularity? Obvious ones are “ticket sales × release sales,” but what else matters?
 
Capacity of livehouses at which they play? Capacity of livehouses at which they hold oneman lives? Number of sponsored/oneman lives held? Number of CDs released? Number of tanuki threads? Price of releases at second-hand stores? Length of activity period? etc.  
---
 
Second: without raw sales data, how can we approximate popularity?
 
We don't have ticket/release sales, but we do have lots of other data, via visual kei library vkgy available on iTunes. My hope is to compile/weight that data and automatically assign a rank to each band (as we overseas fans are notoriously bad at judging actual popularity). Here's what I have so far:
 
Average capacity of livehouses at which the band plays. (Could be improved by weighting sponsored events/oneman lives, but how?) Number of releases (excluding free releases?). Number of releases which vkgy users own. (Anyone with a vkgy account can add releases to their collection to make this stat more accurate!) Number of releases which vkgy users want.  
Average livehouse capacity is already pretty promising (see Syndrome vs Cell no.7 vs ARLEQUIN), and will become more accurate as more data is added (let me know if you'd like to contribute). But I think those other statistics could be useful if weighted properly; I'm just not sure how to do it yet. Before I make some monstrous algorithm that magically gives all of KISAKI's bands an S rank, I'd love to get some input from you guys!
 

Interesting topic! Your ideas seem good for old/disbanded bands i guess since its otherwise really difficult to determine how their popularity was. 
 
______________________
For active bands i think its what BrenGun wrote:
 
And since you wrote
 
for me results in
 
From my experience going to lives:
Capacity of livehouses at which they play? Difficult as described by BrenGun
Capacity of livehouses at which they hold oneman lives? Difficult as described by BrenGun; If a band does "free" oneman its also a very bad sign IMO
Number of sponsored/oneman lives held? No
Number of CDs released? Definitly no; budget =/= popularity
>Number of tanuki threads?< If positively, lol
>Price of releases at second-hand stores?< If the band is still active (i often see massive price dumpings the second disband is announced/foreshadowed)
Length of activity period? E.g. DANGER☆GANG is active, idk 15 years? When i saw them at an event they had 2 fans that seemed to be their kids or something playing infront of the stage.
Adding:
- Articles in visual kei related magazines (the vocalist of kuroyuritokage once explained at a oneman i went how he noticed their popularity decreased (beside obvious smaller audiences -> and therefore smaller livehouses (here is a pro argument for the live house discussion, lol)) that magazines stopped to feature them).
 
The biggest problem: I often feel its also not a band that is famous but a member of a certain band. You can see this when whatever i thought noname session has the venue filled cause the girls love member xyz and some what i thought would be big bands had everyone leaving. You can easily find out by looking at the number of twitter followers a certain band member has and compare it to the other members of the same band.
 
__
I somehow was reminded of Saki's XII-Destructive Agent of JAP reading this thread  With faked/photoshopped audience pictures, randomly calling themselves major, etc. you cant believe what you read online and need to see yourself.

Length of tanuki threads about the length of their p-
 
Also, how many "Come to Brasil" comments there are on YT.

I think oneman tours and the size of the tour final livehouse says a lot about how the band is gauging their size. I'd say any band playing on 1000~1500 capacity livehouses on their tour final is pretty much sucessful nowadays, which means they can sustain band actitivies without the need of a part time job.
 
But that is definitely the soft cap of a band grow. to break this barrier is WAAAAAY harder, would need some kind of mainstream breakthrough, or at least employ some alternative tactics to earn a bigger following

Hi all! Two questions, inspired by a chat with @cvltic.
 
---
 
First: for visual bands, which statistics indicate popularity? Obvious ones are “ticket sales × release sales,” but what else matters?
 
Capacity of livehouses at which they play? Capacity of livehouses at which they hold oneman lives? Number of sponsored/oneman lives held? Number of CDs released? Number of tanuki threads? Price of releases at second-hand stores? Length of activity period? etc.  
---
 
Second: without raw sales data, how can we approximate popularity?
 
We don't have ticket/release sales, but we do have lots of other data, via visual kei library vkgy available on iTunes. My hope is to compile/weight that data and automatically assign a rank to each band (as we overseas fans are notoriously bad at judging actual popularity). Here's what I have so far:
 
Average capacity of livehouses at which the band plays. (Could be improved by weighting sponsored events/oneman lives, but how?) Number of releases (excluding free releases?). Number of releases which vkgy users own. (Anyone with a vkgy account can add releases to their collection to make this stat more accurate!) Number of releases which vkgy users want.  
Average livehouse capacity is already pretty promising (see Syndrome vs Cell no.7 vs ARLEQUIN), and will become more accurate as more data is added (let me know if you'd like to contribute). But I think those other statistics could be useful if weighted properly; I'm just not sure how to do it yet. Before I make some monstrous algorithm that magically gives all of KISAKI's bands an S rank, I'd love to get some input from you guys!
 

They way the CDs are made tell a lot about their budget. When a band is low budget ATM they use a thin CD case, or one with not much prints, or a small booklet, or a 8cm, when they have a budget at the moment, it's a thicc well made CD with sometimes a DVD extra.

Hi all! Two questions, inspired by a chat with @cvltic.
 
---
 
First: for visual bands, which statistics indicate popularity? Obvious ones are “ticket sales × release sales,” but what else matters?
 
Capacity of livehouses at which they play? Capacity of livehouses at which they hold oneman lives? Number of sponsored/oneman lives held? Number of CDs released? Number of tanuki threads? Price of releases at second-hand stores? Length of activity period? etc.  
---
 
Second: without raw sales data, how can we approximate popularity?
 
We don't have ticket/release sales, but we do have lots of other data, via visual kei library vkgy available on iTunes. My hope is to compile/weight that data and automatically assign a rank to each band (as we overseas fans are notoriously bad at judging actual popularity). Here's what I have so far:
 
Average capacity of livehouses at which the band plays. (Could be improved by weighting sponsored events/oneman lives, but how?) Number of releases (excluding free releases?). Number of releases which vkgy users own. (Anyone with a vkgy account can add releases to their collection to make this stat more accurate!) Number of releases which vkgy users want.  
Average livehouse capacity is already pretty promising (see Syndrome vs Cell no.7 vs ARLEQUIN), and will become more accurate as more data is added (let me know if you'd like to contribute). But I think those other statistics could be useful if weighted properly; I'm just not sure how to do it yet. Before I make some monstrous algorithm that magically gives all of KISAKI's bands an S rank, I'd love to get some input from you guys!
 

thank GAWD they changed their name, their old one was horseshit altho i do prefer marvelous cruelty lololol

What a plot twist!

god has spoken