Google trends showing the decline of visual kei

[Panda_bear 43]

This is my view from the decade of being involved in the J-rock /vk scene.

 

I think the current slowdown of VK over the last few years has a number of factors behind it.
    
The first is the over saturation of bands in the scene. Not only did there seem to be more bands than ever in the VK scene but they more or less all sounded the same. It kinda makes sense that following the rise in the number of VK bands, there would be a huge number of disbandment's with the competition being so stiff, and very few bands actually innovating or at the very least making decent music. A vast increase of bands with the same cookie cutter sound and low quality output is a brickwall for any genre. This also has the effect of making labels and even fans, tired of VK bands, thus further ensuring a downward trend. 

 

Another reason is that VK is usually horribly promoted either by the labels or the bands themselves. They make such dumb decisions that end up costing them a ton of money, either by squandering it on ventures with very little to no returns, or over looking untapped but very potentially rich opportunities. This has always been a problem with the scene, but it becomes magnified on an even greater scale when you have a whole bunch of vk bands rise up and almost simultaneously implode back to back, month after month, year after year.

 

A big part of what I believe plays a major role for those outside of Japan is the accessibility to VK, and music in general. To an extent this has always been a problem with VK, but with a ton of file sharing sites, music blogs, and forums getting axed in the last couple of years, it is harder to find access to VK or Japanese music in general. There used to be a time where you could literally google some obscure Japanese band and get your hands on their releases without much effort. Today that’s rarely the case. Not only is the quantity of releases down, but it’s a lot harder to actually access them.  And while there has been good strides for Japanese music to be obtained legally for foreigners, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

 

As others have pointed out, the erosion of the VK community is another contributing factor for the decline of VK. I’m specifically talking about the online community outside of japan. I believe the online VK community is what kept the scene invigorated with interest and a steady supply of new bands. As to why the community has been drastically reduced I’ll point to the first reason I made and the one written above. This along with the fact that many listeners probably either outgrew the scene, and those that remained retreated to refugees like MH. So you’ve gone from a widespread but scattered ardent community, to a centralized but much smaller passionate community.  

 

VK was always a niche market, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon. I do think it has reached it’s critical mass and what we’re seeing now is the implosion of the scene. It’s not it’s death, but a remission after being over saturated, and with no new bands pushing forward, it’s established bands retiring and it’s community mostly gone and unable to keep it relevant and interesting as it once was. I don’t believe  EDM, or K-pop or whatever killed VK, or even affected it. I believe this was the inevitable direction VK was always heading in, and those genres just happened to coincide with it’s downfall. 

 

I do think there are less people getting into rock and metal but that has to do with an age difference. I believe the majority of us here grew up and were exposed to some sort of rock, metal or genre that used actual instruments. While most of the newer generation today is primarily exposed to electronica or mainstream pop and thus they end up heading down that route and have less of a chance of discovering rock, or something like VK. This wouldn’t be so bad if the electronica or pop they listened to weren’t soulless vapid unoriginal turds. It’s not impossible, but a lot harder for younger generations to get exposed to rock music in general.

 

I don’t think VK is dead or that it ever will be. Yes genres and styles fade into obscurity, some much more than others, but I think VK will definitely always stick around. Part of the reason is because bands like Luna Sea , and X  Japan, among a few others,  have made enough of a significant impact on the Japanese music scene to remain relevant and inspire younger generations, either directly, or indirectly.  The other part is that VK is super diverse in terms of  aesthetic appearance and in terms of genres, so it allows a ton of creative freedom, and makes it more likely and appealing for musicians to take part in it.

 

Another benefit from that genre diversity is that it keeps the door open for VK to enter different realms. While a strictly metal band would only have certain paths or opportunities in which to grow, just like pop would only have certain paths, VK has the advantage of covering a wide base of opportunities. Of course you still need a band that can actually makes good music and can play.  

 

On a side note I do think EDM and electronica get’s a bad rep. Like everything else there’s a lot of good and bad  in every genre and electronica is no exception. There’ s a ton of mainstream crap, but a lot of amazing stuff that has come in recent years too. And although it may be a different skillset , it still takes lots of skill and talent. You’ve got to synthesize lead synths, and sound design elements,  select or create your drum tones, know about music theory since everything is still based on chords, notes, and rhythms, be good with programming and on top of that do your own mixing and mastering. Kinda dislike this idea that electronica is just pushing one button, or that it requires no music theory or talent at all.   

 

Then again there's always those exceptions.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by Panda_bear

[-NOVA- 3027]

Earlyer Vk was this new, fresh thing that no one knew or had done before... as the years go by people get used to these kind of things...

 

Guys with make up are becomning a common thing so the Shock factor that guys with makeup used to bring is kind of dissapearing

 

The flashy clothes still grab attention but with so much stuff online its just one of those things people find out about once and then disregard it and move on.

 

We get so much crap thrown at our face via phones, social media, ads, tv etc. its harder to focus on one thing and easyer to just shift your attention 

 

Here a quick lesson for you all:

 

"Attention Economy" is an pproach to information management. It states that people's "attention" is like currency, theres only so much of it to go around once we use it all up we can't give two fucks about anything else.

 

In simpler terms our attention will always be shifting especially to people that dont know about vk. Once they find out what it is if it doesnt grab their attention as much they will just move on.

 

I feel like this could explain why vk is declining in japan and around the world. Maybe its not the only reason but i feel its part of it, atleast thats how i see it 

Edited January 9, 2017 by -NOVA-

[TadakatsuH0nda 64]

The thing with visual kei is that like many scenes it will inevitably fade in and out of popularity. Might it hit an alltime low? Sure it could, but chances are it would rebound in a few short years, just like how the musical styles they play fade in and out of popularity. I wouldn't be worried about it at all, heck, visual kei even met a similar decline in the early 2000s before exploding again.

[Ikna 1225]

tbh, VK has already hit that all time low in the 90s. It's popularity in Japan is debatable. As many others have noted, VK isn't totally obscure there (though I guess it has a bad rep, so many people wouldn't ever admit to like it) but not really as popular as it was. And no, I don't think Visual kei was always as niche as it is now in Japan. Back in the old times when VK wasn't such a widely used label bands of that caliber used to fill stadiums and had regular TV and radio exposure. There's a reason why some describe the early 90s as the band explosion era, particularity in regards to the Nagoya rock music scene.

 

But yeah, those days are long gone. hell, most of us gaijin folks have no real clue about it, since the time we got introduced to Vk it was already old hat in Japan. You had to be there for yourself in the early 90s to really see and feel it – but how many foreigners, save for a few, had the privilege and luck? When bands like Luna Sea started to kick off and Malice Mizer rose to fame I was in friggin' kindergarten. Sure, I like to diss the modern scene a lot (because I simply don't like the type of music the bands are playing now), but even I know that I am not a special snowflake and a "trvuer" fan.

 

But to get back to the core of the thread: it's true that in the west VK has lost attention and Fans. people in this thread have offered enough explanations and hypotheses for it's fade in popularity. I am just here to give my two cents on the extinction of the local VK scene in my country (if you can even call it that way):

 

As with others, it all started in the early 00s with the Manga and Anime boom. I really doubt any one in Austria and Germany could have known about VK without either moving to Japan, getting introduced to it via websites and communities specializing in Glam- or Japanese rock or Anime/Manga. Most of us peeps were too young and too poor to go to Japan and most of us had no internet at home. So that leaves us with Manga and Anime. I remember I used to buy these Anime magazines of which there were plenty on the market and many of these papers tried to market japanese culture to us impressionable youths. So they had lots of articles about japanese food, society and of course music. 

 

And some might also remember that Neo Tokyo's (a japanese Manga store in Germany) founded their music publishing label (?) Gan-Shin, which brought to us some of Dir en grey's discography. Only shortly after (or before? I don't remember that well) they started playing in Germany. And as stated before in this thread, due to the Anime fad being so closely related to the J-Pop and VK boom many Manga/Anime Conventions went a great deal to get some bands, including bloody the Gazette, to play at their conventions. And it was a self fullfilling cycle that simply worked: people got to japanese music via Anime and Japan culture based media, they participated in local communities; these were lured to leave their money at the conventions and these in turn invited bands to play to bring in the fans.

 

Then there were online communities like Animexx, where we weebs gathered en masse and talked about our bandomen all day and night, spent all our time drawing and writing shitty slash fanfics and Mangas. It was like paradise. But yeah, around 2009 the German and Austrian scene started to crumble like an old ruin. Suddenly all the people crazy about Moi dix Mois (of which there were MANY here. They even called it a "Manamania") switched from VK to JPop and what they deemed "more sophisticated" music. They also sold all their previously well treasured Moi-Même-Moitié dresses and Sexpot Revenge clothes to go either "normie" or "gyaru". I noticed weblogs of people who loved VK previously popping up with lamentations about how stupid they were for liking it, that it was just a phase and that VK is actually really dumb and shitty.

 

And of course there was also the huge amount of people bickering about how the post 2009s scene wasn't as good. Tbh I can kinda related to it, because in that timespan I also stopped giving shit about newer bands. But I still like to listen to my oldies. Many others for whom it was really just a short fad, stopped caring about it entirely. 

 

Indeed, Social media and the way we consume media and music today, compared to ten years ago, factor in this as well. But the once really big German-speaking scenes, which were infamous enough to be featured regularly in sensationalist  TV formats and press, already died before all these changes could have affected the decline of interest in VK. The truth is simply that liking Visual kei was a fad and it's success in the western world a short-lived hype. Most people have since moved on or hopped on the newest trendwagon.

 

And if I am honest: I do not miss it. I think it's just fine if VK stays obscure. I have moved on and no longer care about old skewl VK being dead. As already said, many music scenes have died and never came back, and that's a fate you have to accept . Though I disagree with the notion that the current goth revival is so bad. It's not the same as the 80s, sure, but it has some fun and redeeming qualities and it's not mainstream. So, if it comes back, it will probably never reach it's former glory. And that's okay too.  A friend of mine also once said that certain eras of VK needed a certain Zeitgeist. And that Zeitgeist is just strongly tied to that specific era. If that era is over than the atmosphere that made it special in the first place is gone too. Hence some of those old music styles no longer work outside the context of so called retromania. Of course, VK has the benefit of being a patchwork genre, it can and has to adapt to survive and it will probably carry on existing in some way (or will influence something else that exists in the future). But it will never be the VK we used to fall in love when we discovered it (and that counts for all eras).

 

I also do not think I ever want the local VK scene being as big again, because I remember that it was mostly a large collection of the most immature, hysterical and downright creepy individuals I have ever seen. Some of these self-called "Visus" looked cool, but were really uncomfortable to surround you with.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Ikna

[UseReddit 0]

move to reddit, problem solved. Did you know what makes babymetal fans so rabid ? just go to reddit.com/r/babymetal . the fans are connected to each other and huge sources of information. the subreddit become the center of the fandom, it connects the spread out fans from facebook, vk.com, twitter, IG and information sources like the official accounts, youtube, fansite, and even translating japanese sites and videos. Theres no gap between generations there, because both old and young people use it. It creates the perfect community, believe me

[Biopanda 2675]

Time to pack it up and leave MH. Reddit is the future, I guess.

[nekkichi 6043]

7 hours ago, UseReddit said:

Did you know what makes babymetal fans so rabid ? 

adolescent human poossee, and the simulacra of my lady's touch that bbmtvl fans covet?

[cvltic 1482]

what kind of inelegant shill? the only good thing about reddit would be downvoting u tbh

[nick 10212]

UseMH 

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

I think it's time to close registration again

[desparejo86 160]

What was once cool and new is destined to become uncool and old.

 

ANY movement is going to peak and then decline at some point.

 

It went from a huge movement/style down to a small niche thing in Japan. And like how there are still sleaze and hairmetal bands forming in Hollywood and playing the Whisky on Tuesday nights, just because there are new bands and an audience for it to a degree doesn't mean it isn't a dead genre. It said what it had to say.

 

Fans in the west were 5-10 years behind the times. We discovered Visual at the turn on the century, and spent the decade not only getting into the bands that were around, but all the cool VK bands from the previous two decades. Needless to say, there was a TON of great shit to discover.

 

But, eventually, the well ran dry. 

 

For most people I've met that were into the genre, VK was like Kiss: a gateway drug into music in general but for weaboo/nerdy kids. Some people got into goth stuff (guilty!), some got into screamo and numetal, some got into prog rock, whatever. But the common thread is that 99% of them left that shit (visual kei/kiss) behind once they discovered more music and refind their tastes.

 

What's left is us: the creepy Kiss fans still painting our faces and shit to come out and see Gene Simmon and Paul Stanley phone it in for the millionth time at our local casinos. Arguing about weather Kiss would have been better off to keep Ace around, speculating as to the whereabouts of Vinny Vincent, and debating what is truly the worst track on 'Hot in the Shade.' It's  the way things go. If you don't believe me, pop on over to the MetalSludge.TV message board and see old 80s rocker guys, now in their 50s, doing the same thing we're doing here.

 

I'm here because Visual Kei changed my fucking life, man. Defined who I was, what music I listen to (I own David Sylvian's Weatherbox FFS), how I dressed and wore my hair. Every smoking hot girlfriend, every cross country tour, damn near every good thing that happened to me can more or less be traced back to getting some shitty .asf and .rm files of Luna Sea, L'arc, and Malice Mizer music videos  back in 99 or 00. 

 

Look, we were there for it. Love it, accept it, talk about it, listen to the old albums that meant so much to you, maybe even find a cool new band or two (I like Xaa-Xaa), etc. but there is nothing sad about that graph. This thing, it was our thing. 

 

 

And that's all I have to say. Gotta get back to making fun of Yoshiki.

 

Edited February 10, 2017 by desparejo86

[qotka 433]

On 2017/1/9 at 3:35 PM, plastic_rainbow said:

With the transition to tumblr, like most people mentioned already, it's only reblogs and it feels a lot less interactive, making it hard to find/talk to new friends. (thankfully there's still MH though :>)

Yes! I also almost feel frowned upon when I try to communicate with people by adding comments when I reblog or adding my own thoughts on content I post. It's ridiculous how shallow the communication there can get.

 

On 2017/1/9 at 3:35 PM, plastic_rainbow said:

It wasn't until I went to Japan when I attended my very first vk live, which was AvelCain, that I regained all that vk-ness back in me. After seeing such an amazing and fun performance I realized how much I still loved vk, and that was pretty much how I woke up (and here I am now). It's probably different for everyone, but I feel like those who say that it was a fad might just a need a little something to make it all come back again, as it did for me.

I can totally relate to this. VK for me was a nostalgia until I went to Visual Japan Summit a couple of months ago and everything just resurfaced. Damn was it glorious.

 

-----

 

I'm really glad I've read this thread even though I don't have much of substance to add. My friends who were into VK back in the day think I'm going to some weird mid-life crisis (I'm not old enough for that!) and keep slagging me off and asking where I got machine to go back to 2005. I totally understand them though, for many it was a fad and something we did as edgy teenagers who loved the aesthetics and wanted to feel speshul.

 

But it's a great scene and I'm glad to be back. Granted, about 95% is crud, but there are too many gems out there for me to give up.

 

Also IDK if dead or not -- I think that really depends on where you're looking. I've seen enough indie bands (not just v-kei) that barely have an audience of 10 (and sometimes you realise most of the people sitting around you at the club are the other bands playing that night), but then again you still have bands like MUCC who have almost sold out their current zenkoku tour and are doing two Budokan days this June (I'll have to wait for the general sale to see if they manage to sell it out though, though I bet they will). They're the only 'major' band I'm closely following at the moment but I'm sure there are more examples to this. Sure, the underground is where you wanna look for the future of a scene/genre,  but as long as bands keep forming and bangya keep... doing their thing, I'm not worried.

 

PS. @desparejo86 LEAVE YOSHIKI ALONE he's just a human being and it's OK to express yourself through taking 100 selfies a day!!1111 Also the new X album is totally happening. (sadface)

 

 

 

Edited February 12, 2017 by qotka

[Ikki 807]

On 2/10/2017 at 9:42 AM, desparejo86 said:

For most people I've met that were into the genre, VK was like Kiss: a gateway drug into music in general but for weaboo/nerdy kids. Some people got into goth stuff (guilty!), some got into screamo and numetal, some got into prog rock, whatever. But the common thread is that 99% of them left that shit (visual kei/kiss) behind once they discovered more music and refind their tastes.

 

What's left is us: the creepy Kiss fans still painting our faces and shit to come out and see Gene Simmon and Paul Stanley phone it in for the millionth time at our local casinos. Arguing about weather Kiss would have been better off to keep Ace around, speculating as to the whereabouts of Vinny Vincent, and debating what is truly the worst track on 'Hot in the Shade.' It's  the way things go. If you don't believe me, pop on over to the MetalSludge.TV message board and see old 80s rocker guys, now in their 50s, doing the same thing we're doing here.

 

As someone who is a Sludger, I choked on water for how true this statement is.  It's rather sad the most interesting thing on Metal Sludge right now is the whole Bobby Blozter/Ratt lawsuit trainwreck.  Otherwise, it's just a bunch of "Kiss is a crappy band", "How many version of Great White/L.A. Guns are there right now", "Warrant's Dog Eat Dog/Motley Crue's Motley Crue '94 are the most under-rated albums of all time", or "Steve Summers of Pretty Boy Floyd spam posting random crap no one cares about" threads.

 

----

 

For me, I never knew that many people who were into visual kei.  My best friend in high school stills listen to VK, but she only follows The Gazette, Dir en grey, and A9 as all of the other bands she liked disbanded and she never got into other bands to replace those disbanded bands.  My boyfriend only likes to listen to the late '90s/early 2000s VK bands when he is in the mood for visual kei, but sometimes likes newer bands once in a blue moon.  He moved on to listening to Japanese alt. rock bands.  All of my other friends that were into VK are still living the weeaboo life, but are into artists like Perfume, Babymetal, or AKB48 now.  One of them is super into local/indie idols that that no one has ever heard of and probably only have 5 fans.  TBH, I never got into visual kei bands to have something to talk to my friends about or to make friends, it was something I got into because I grew up listening to glam rock/glam metal bands and thought it was cool that there were bands that still wore heavy make-up/crazy outfits.  As long as there are bands with crazy outfits and make-up, I will still follow it regardless if it's VK or some other glam rock sub-genre.

[desparejo86 160]

3 hours ago, qotka said:

 

 

PS. @desparejo86 LEAVE YOSHIKI ALONE

 

 

 

You have no idea how harmful that would be to him.

[seikun 317]

I know that at least in the mid 90's there were already people in my country who knew about Japanese bands, among those bands Visual Kei bands. In those days obviously Japanese music was less accessible and mainly people with enough money and contacts had the means to acquire it. It was more like an exclusive thing.

 

My first serious contact with Japanese music was 1998 when a guy lent one of my friends a cassette with Japanese music that we listened to. I remember during the late 90's in my country the otaku culture was growing really fast to the point there was a TV show dedicated to anime and manga which means the trend was already established among the youth of the time. Visual Kei was included in the trend just a smaller niche.

 

Visual Kei is not new anymore but neither is gothic or punk. It all relies on a band's ability to capture people's attention.

 

I'm seeing an old organization here is still organzing Visual Kei events just like in the past and they still include music form the old bands like XJapan, Malice Mizer, Psycho le Cemu, etc.

The subculture is still alive.

Edited February 13, 2017 by seikun