Post your "UNPOPULAR" music opinions!

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

UNPOPULAR OPINION NUMERO ICHI: I don't think people that don't buy any VK albums should be allowed to criticize or complain about band qualities when they aren't doing anything to help the genre economically. Money is a voting system for bands and the bands that get more money will live longer and disband less. (Look at how often bands disband.) Also don't think people should criticize a band for disbanding conditionally if they can't get a minimum number of people to a live. Yes it sucks. Yes the economy is bad for all. Yes Japanese cds are expensive and it's difficult to go see bands perform but I also think it's bullshit to refer to conditional disbandment as a trend or blackmail. Being in a band is a job for these people and they need the money to keep the band going and if they can't afford to buy outfits and make up and equipment and rent live houses for a night then they aren't going to be able to keep being a band. Everything costs money and being a greedy spoiled gaijin getting shit for free and bitching about the state of the scene (that you aren't even a part of locally in the country of Japan) is just redundant. 

Which leads to:

 

UNPOPULAR OPINION DOS: THE VISUAL KEI SCENE FOR PEOPLE NOT IN THE IMMEDIATE VICINITY OF JAPAN IS THE INTERNET AND THE RANDOM TOURS. VK scene for us is THE INTERNET. With out we'd be screwed. The only way you can bitch about the scene is if you've been to concerts in Japan and have experienced what the scene is like in it's native home land. Here in America the scene is American's laughing at Dir en Grey because they went to see Korn and Deftones and don't understand how the band got on stage or the random acts at lame ass anime conventions. Maybe if us foreigners support the bands then we'd have better lives and more incentive for bands to tour this country more. So if you really love save up your pennies to buy cds and dvds. I can't tell you how many Girugamesh, Dir en Grey, LM.C, etc CDs and DVDs onsale at American CD shops for 3-6 bucks a CD and 10 for a DVD. Which just proves how much isn't being bought.

 

UNPOPULAR OPINION SURII: Don't request high level rips if you rip your own shit in low quality bullshit. 

 

Unpopular opinion FOAA: Tacky bands that recycle boring sounds and don't keep it fresh (The GazettE being the first to jump to mind,) aren't trying hard enough and need to step it the fuck up before I track them down and throw excrement in their faces. Blending slipknot riffs with luna sea sounds isn't innovative or interesting. It's lazy. 

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

UNPOPULAR OPINION SURII: Don't request high level rips if you rip your own shit in low quality bullshit.

 

This actually used to cause a lot of drama.

[Gaz 1097]

Unpopular opinion FOAA: Tacky bands that recycle boring sounds and don't keep it fresh (The GazettE being the first to jump to mind,) aren't trying hard enough and need to step it the fuck up before I track them down and throw excrement in their faces. Blending slipknot riffs with luna sea sounds isn't innovative or interesting. It's lazy. 

OMG you are reading my mind

[Zeus 7997]

I doubt most people on MH would even know what I'm ranting about this time, but for those that do you will either agree with me or disagree with me almost instantly.

Circles and bands are pretty much the same thing.
 

Circles put the name of the circle on the album cover. That should be enough proof to tag them by circle and not by individual composer. I understand some people say that they should tag by individual artist to respect and give credit to every person who contributed to making the album, but no band does that. Dir en grey can record an entire album but I don't contribute one song to Kaoru and the next to Die. Since circles are pretty much bands that sometimes have rotating members it just makes sense to tag it as the circle, not the artists themselves. My last.fm charts don't need to look like alphabet soup. 

And also since half the scene went from circles to bands, changed their names and rarely play covers anymore everyone tags the band as the band and not the circle or the individual composer. Even more of a reason to tag circles as circles and bands as bands. 

[Umi_Niwa 31]

I don't consider music to be art in the same sense I consider plastic arts, though it certainly is  a creative process. But it's a very different one than in plastic art (i.e. drawing, sculpture, design, etc). I'm not saying it can't be an art though

(every case is individual). 

[DogManX 179]

Oh something else. I just had some "debate" on youtube about this certain band and I'd just love to repeat it here:

 

I have the verry unpopular opinion that bands are full of sh*t when they quit, and then reform under another name and with lightly different costumes doing the same damn music as before. It's a dirty sellout trick to young fangirls, and sadly it works. You might know on which band in particular I was playing on, that has done this shameful act just recently.

[JukaForever 758]

Oh something else. I just had some "debate" on youtube about this certain band and I'd just love to repeat it here:

 

I have the verry unpopular opinion that bands are full of sh*t when they quit, and then reform under another name and with lightly different costumes doing the same damn music as before. It's a dirty sellout trick to young fangirls, and sadly it works. You might know on which band in particular I was playing on, that has done this shameful act just recently.

 

Ayabie?

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

Oh something else. I just had some "debate" on youtube about this certain band and I'd just love to repeat it here:

 

I have the verry unpopular opinion that bands are full of sh*t when they quit, and then reform under another name and with lightly different costumes doing the same damn music as before. It's a dirty sellout trick to young fangirls, and sadly it works. You might know on which band in particular I was playing on, that has done this shameful act just recently.

 

OR most likely they had to quit and reform under a new name because the previous label/management company owned the rights to the name and songs. Like what recently happened to SuG who aren't allowed to use the SuG name ever again because PSC owns the rights and they'd have to purchase them back. There are lots of legal conditions that go with name branding and such as well. Management companies put a lot of time and effort into making visual bands work. They put a lot of money into it and have a lot to do with the overall look and style and what the consumer gets at the end of the line. From make-up and outfit designs to song polishing the bands get a lot of help from management companies. Sometimes band members can't keep the same stage name they used under a company because it has ties to other staff involved in the music writing or the stage name was owned by the management company and is their property. Lots of factors.

[Zeus 7997]

Oh something else. I just had some "debate" on youtube about this certain band and I'd just love to repeat it here:

 

I have the verry unpopular opinion that bands are full of sh*t when they quit, and then reform under another name and with lightly different costumes doing the same damn music as before. It's a dirty sellout trick to young fangirls, and sadly it works. You might know on which band in prarticular I was playing on, that has done this shameful act just recently.

 

I don't follow your logic.

 

So a band full of musicians decide to disband, form a new band with all the same musicians, change their outfits slightly, and play the same music as before rip off their fans how? There isn't even an implication to work with. Musicianship is all about marketing - how you market your music, how you market your concerts, how you market your band, etc. If a band feels that they need to start over to better position themselves to be successful, it comes out of no one else's pocket but theirs.

 

It doesn't seem to be any more or less "full of shit" than bands that change their name, since disbanding one band and forming another is a roundabout way of doing that. How does that rip you off? It doesn't. As a matter of fact most bands that start over take a huge risk since they (mostly) have to claw their way up the ladder once more.

I'm all for keeping it real but let's not make shit up and attach buzzwords where they don't fit.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

I'm kind of in the middle of this argument, although more to the side that Zess  and Flash-Fab-Maiku took. I can definitely see some motivational factors into breaking up and then reforming to more or less do the same thing (or at least the same thing to start, then evolving into something else). Or, they possibly have too much baggage with their old band that they can't evolve using their current persona. For example, didn't Arc form when their whole band was like 18, then broke up when they were all 24~26? They broke up and almost immediately formed Futurizm Boyz with the same members. Their music was fairly different as well, but they still had enough similarties that you can tell that it was Arc 2.0. However, they were in the same band for so long, they probably couldn't have done that change of style any other way other than starting over.

 

I'm assuming Sinceria / Fest Venquer were the same sort of deal, but I've listened to / followed either of those bands.

 

Not sure how to justify Secilia Luna. They got a new vocalist and became slightly more metalic, but kept the Raphael worship and removed the katakana from their name. How is this a "new band?"

 

I'm also not sure what the deal with Born was. Didn't they completely change styles, names, and musical influences 3 times? At least the 3rd time they stuck with it and are fairly popular. I think the only reason these are easy to call "new" is because the 3rd rendition of them has last for a few years, where as the other two parts, I think, had a mini album and probably 2 singles collectively.

 

Unless, of course, you're really referring to Grieva who did exactly that, but are pretending they weren't Reload and crawled out of Kyo's kakusei no laybial. (To be fair though, Reload sucked and I would have pretened that never happened either. Did you see the split level roof hair the vocalist had? Gurl.)

[DeithX252 1266]

I doubt most people on MH would even know what I'm ranting about this time, but for those that do you will either agree with me or disagree with me almost instantly.

Circles and bands are pretty much the same thing.

 

Circles put the name of the circle on the album cover. That should be enough proof to tag them by circle and not by individual composer. I understand some people say that they should tag by individual artist to respect and give credit to every person who contributed to making the album, but no band does that. Dir en grey can record an entire album but I don't contribute one song to Kaoru and the next to Die. Since circles are pretty much bands that sometimes have rotating members it just makes sense to tag it as the circle, not the artists themselves. My last.fm charts don't need to look like alphabet soup. 

And also since half the scene went from circles to bands, changed their names and rarely play covers anymore everyone tags the band as the band and not the circle or the individual composer. Even more of a reason to tag circles as circles and bands as bands. 

Is this for doujin scene? I am totally agree with this, but sometimes I tag it to singer when it comes to solo debut or something. A circle made from illustrator, composer, singer, musician, they are all working together to make an album, and I simply tag them as circle name

[Guest mitsubana]

 I don't think people that don't buy any VK albums should be allowed to criticize or complain about band qualities when they aren't doing anything to help the genre economically. 

 

This 110%. This is honestly why I don't come on here much anymore. Anytime I'd mention I'm purchasing or purchased something visual kei, I get requests to share it... Then people bitch at me when I won't share with them. Buy it yourself. Period. 

[JukaForever 758]

This 110%. This is honestly why I don't come on here much anymore. Anytime I'd mention I'm purchasing or purchased something visual kei, I get requests to share it... Then people bitch at me when I won't share with them. Buy it yourself. Period.

I don't mind sharing personally, it's how I discover new artists all the time, its just the attitude of the people that requests stuff that is very irking

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Requesting something because you're interested in hearing it is one thing.

 

 

Demanding you share it because you're entitled to have it is another.

 

 

Tact makes all the difference.

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

Flash-Fab-Supernova, on 08 Aug 2013 - 00:27, said: I don't think people that don't buy any VK albums should be allowed to criticize or complain about band qualities when they aren't doing anything to help the genre economically. 

 

Oh boo-hoo. I haven't bought a VK CD in ages and still my opinion matters just as little as yours. Why on earth shouldn't I be able to praise or criticize ( both sides of the same coin )  unless I belong to this elit3 VK-consumers club. How does one gain entrance? One CD a month, year, week? I bought a couple some years ago, so am I a lifelong-member? 

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

At least buying a few forever ago is better than never buying any and then bitching about the state of things or when a band disbands. I've been seeing a lot of posts from members where they criticize bands for being money hungry when everyone in any modern society is money hungry. I didn't mean criticize or praise a band artistically, that is everyone's right and of course artistic opinion matters very little since it is very subjective. But when a band has CDs or DVDs or lives that are expensive or the band fails or proclaims their money troubles in the form of conditional disbands with the need of attracting enough fans to a concert so the band can at least break even and someone says "OH HEY THEY R SO GREEDY CAN'T STAND IT," is just ridiculous. We all live off money and we all need it to live and I just get disgusted when people act like its wrong for the musicians to actually need money. I'm sure most of the people here understand that the bands need money to keep going and that in most cases, especially VK, there are a lot more different aspects to being in a band such as  design professionals from artwork to makeup and other production costs. A lot of VK fans on the net are spoiled rotten from all the free tunes, they get bitchy when things aren't shared for free in a timely manner if it is known someone has a release not uploaded yet.  The same people that don't understand why a band would disband for monetary reasons or why a band has to charge so much for their services. Sorry for not making myself more clear~. I just think that if everyone at least bought even just one CD for every so many they download then maybe things would change. A lot of Japanese media was doing well here in the states. Anime and manga and Jrock used to be very popular but it has since dwindled. Some caused by bad decisions on the part of companies bringing the stuff over (like Tokyopop trying to become a multimedia power house that produced music by Courtny Love's daughter and tried to make live action anime movies but ran out of money when they should have just stuck to manga, which is what caused a major leap to pirating manga on manga reader websites) to how Adult Swim and Cartoon Network periodically taking down their anime scheduled programmings due to the high amount of fansubbing and pirating. It's all rather connected. Most of the people here probably came across japanese music from anime. I'm not sure how well Adult Swim's current reanimation of Toonami is doing ratings wise but that market directly affects the music one as well in terms of exposure and other factors and since everyone is just downloading everything all the numbers aren't really matching. Pirating is just a problem in general is all I'm saying and it's causing little ripples in the ocean of content that are causing bigger problems for the intellectually created content. Yeah I've downloaded some stuff for free but I buy things and support with cash munny when I can but there are some people that don't even make that much of an effort and just go tra-la-la-la-ing down this path that causes the creative individual to wonder if they will be able to afford cheese sandwiches to live off of if people just keep stealing things for free. Yes I understand that most of the members here are drawn by that elusive downloads section and its all fine and dandy that that stuff is available right at your fingertips but it's the same essentially as robbing a CD shop. Yes there are some good things from sharing this stuff for free with everyone and it creates more exposure but at the same time how is there going to be any support at all? How are these bands going to keep going? It's hard for the little bands just starting out to last and the whole state of VK right now isn't doing that well. (Bands disbanding left and right, magazines ending publication, collapse of management companies.) And then people whine about that stuff and don't realize is that it's because the pirating fans are causing there to be no money in it on a scale that it should be compared to how often these things are downloaded. But this is the same for all bands worldwide and all creative content and I don't believe that my stance is wrong at all Dispo. Creative content is a service like anything else and we live in a world that runs on money, a world where everyone HAS to be greedy in at least one small way. And I'm in no way saying that people do creative things JUST for money. I'm saying that if someone has done something creative and it's being sold that it should be paid for more than it's stolen.

[Pretsy 1343]

^your wall of text hurts my eyes.

[Nyasagi 259]

I doubt vk bands have much money from the foreign sales. Foreigners are also ignored by many bands (there are CDs or services available only in Japan), while people in Japan can go to the instore when they buy the CD, for example. Foreigners don't get anything else, than the physical CD and bonus items sometimes. It's so easy to complain about people who don't spend money, but these bands totally don't care about any other market, than Japan, so the sales outside of Japan probably don't matter to them. I've seen many bands open to foreign audience and happy people all over the world listen to them, but Japanese are so closed about everything. Sometimes I feel like a worse kind of a fan, because I can't even participate in everything fun.

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

I doubt vk bands have much money from the foreign sales. Foreigners are also ignored by many bands (there are CDs or services available only in Japan), while people in Japan can go to the instore when they buy the CD, for example. Foreigners don't get anything else, than the physical CD and bonus items sometimes. It's so easy to complain about people who don't spend money, but these bands totally don't care about any other market, than Japan, so the sales outside of Japan probably don't matter to them. I've seen many bands open to foreign audience and happy people all over the world listen to them, but Japanese are so closed about everything. Sometimes I feel like a worse kind of a fan, because I can't even participate in everything fun.

 

Yes I understand this too but I still feel if more foreign sales happened there would be more of an incentive for bands to release things in foreign markets. 

[Des 289]

Supernova, the only way one can 'steal' music is when they either steal a physical copy of a cd or vinyl record OR when they claim a certain composition as their own creation when it's in fact someone else's. The first could be discribed as plain old theft of physical goods and the second as plagiarism. Downloading (thus only copying) music is NEITHER of those.

 

An artist should be glad that people are enjoying his creations. The internet is the greatest medium in the history of mankind that allows the sharing of art and knowledge. Let's just use it to the fullest and stop worrying about money so much. When art is liked, the artist is bound to get money anyway. It's a natural process. People are willing to give money to those who make things they enjoy.

 

Even if we assume that an artist loses out on money due to free downloads (this will always remain impossible to measure, because the free publicity might be worth a lot more to them), then it's still no use for that artist to start complaining about that because that'll not only mean the loss of money, but also the loss of their artistic value (which could in turn backfire and lead to the loss of even more money!).

 

Also, try to use paragraphs to prevent a so-called "wall of text".

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

If only record lables thought like Des.

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

Supernova, the only way one can 'steal' music is when they either steal a physical copy of a cd or vinyl record OR when they claim a certain composition as their own creation when it's in fact someone else's. The first could be discribed as plain old theft of physical goods and the second as plagiarism. Downloading (thus only copying) music is NEITHER of those.

 

An artist should be glad that people are enjoying his creations. The internet is the greatest medium in the history of mankind that allows the sharing of art and knowledge. Let's just use it to the fullest and stop worrying about money so much. When art is liked, the artist is bound to get money anyway. It's a natural process. People are willing to give money to those who make things they enjoy.

 

Even if we assume that an artist loses out on money due to free downloads (this will always remain impossible to measure, because the free publicity might be worth a lot more to them), then it's still no use for that artist to start complaining about that because that'll not only mean the loss of money, but also the loss of their artistic value (which could in turn backfire and lead to the loss of even more money!).

 

Also, try to use paragraphs to prevent a so-called "wall of text".

 

I agree about exposure and that it's great that more people are enjoying the artists creation and that it may cause more sales and interest. But I disagree with the "just a copy" argument now that the world is overflowing with MP3 stores and digital formats of all kinds. Physical versions of CDs and books and everything are essentially just copies as well. Just because something isn't physical doesn't mean it isn't "real." 

[orangetarts 249]

This 110%. This is honestly why I don't come on here much anymore. Anytime I'd mention I'm purchasing or purchased something visual kei, I get requests to share it... Then people bitch at me when I won't share with them. Buy it yourself. Period. 

 

 

I don't mind sharing personally, it's how I discover new artists all the time, its just the attitude of the people that requests stuff that is very irking

 

Not everyone really has money to buy the music and I very much believe in sharing the wealth but also as juka was saying, attitude makes all the difference.

maybe im too nice a person, but the reason i stepped out of the jrock/vkei scene was because of snotty elitist prats being all high and mighty about what they owned and refused to share...

 

idk thats just me tho.

[Guest mitsubana]

Not everyone really has money to buy the music and I very much believe in sharing the wealth but also as juka was saying, attitude makes all the difference.

maybe im too nice a person, but the reason i stepped out of the jrock/vkei scene was because of snotty elitist prats being all high and mighty about what they owned and refused to share...

 

idk thats just me tho.

 

Naw, it's quite understandable and common knowledge there are v-kei/j-rock fans without jobs or barely make ends meet so they can't afford to purchase any Japanese music. It can get very expensive with shipping costs, etc.  I just feel like, "Hey, I saved up the money to purchase this, because I like to do my best to support my favorite artists and it's the only way I can being a foreign fan." Then it bugs me when I am excited about purchasing something etc., share that info on a forum, and people bug me about sharing it and I say no. Then they treat me like shit. Sorry that I don't believe in illegal downloading? Does that make me better than anyone else? No. I am no better than anyone else. I just won't share, and there are other people like me with probably similar opinions.

[Miasma 162]

I just feel like, "Hey, I saved up the money to purchase this, because I like to do my best to support my favorite artists and it's the only way I can being a foreign fan."

 

lol no it's not. you don't have to share if you don't want to, but smh @ this elitism. you can be a fan of any artist/band without having bought their music, merch, etc.