I’m back like your monthly check-in with your visual-kei therapist that says mean things and makes you think. I’ve also been thinking about this for a while, and it’s a sensitive topic so I need to choose the right words, but it’s important that I use my soapbox for saying things with good intentions. Also, I’m calling out a mentality, not any person in particular. You may have read this somewhere else but it’s important enough to repeat.
Trading gotta go.
Find an equivalent to JRO that isn’t visual-kei based, then come back here because it doesn’t exist. The fans of that scene of the 00’s and the 10’s had a very different culture than the visual kei scene at that time. I can only speak as a secondary source who hovered on the outskirts because that scene was so impenetrable. You had to know someone who could introduce you to the bands others would listen to and who could feed you files for free before you could get accepted into the fold, and even then there were layers. Private servers where certain things were shared, bluffing like you had more than you did so you could get clout and inner connections, listening to things you don’t even like so that you appear informed about everything, it was easily ten times more work to get into that scene than this one. Without a connection, your introduction to the scene began and ended at bands who did anime themes. This may not be true now, but it was true then, and it matters. It’s why I think there was a mass migration from VK to K-Pop, and why for a long time there was a mental barrier between VK and the rest of Japanese music. That barrier came from somewhere, and now I’ve just given an explanation of what I see.
The layers and servers relied on lots of trading from what I could infer, but they could never conquer the infamous Catch-22 of “in order to acquire some rare release A you need an equally rare or rarer release B. But if B is rarer than A, than whomever has B will likely want C, which is rarer than A”. The chain continues for quite some time as the odds of these stars aligning are very slim. These releases are by definition rare, and therefore hard to acquire! But the bar for where “rare” was for this scene was set so low Satan was playing limbo with it in hell. To me, it felt like everyone wanted something for nothing; getting into new non-visual Japanese bands was so hard because they weren’t on Bandcamp, YouTube wasn’t as mature, there was no Spotify, and few were promoting. That scene imploded on itself. There was no new blood coming in, the old guard aged out, and the people that remain are reading this because there’s nowhere else to go.
This is in stark contrast to visual-kei, and I don’t want that to happen to us. We did a damn good job of promoting, preserving and pushing the music wherever and whenever we could for the last 25~30 years? That was/is our culture. Vk.gy is a mammoth database and that’s forever awesome that fans were motivated enough to do that. Our music cameos in the weirdest YouTube react videos. It’s not the cultural export that K-Pop is, but I don’t think I want it that way. But this whole thing only worked (and continues to work) because we were so willing to freely share and talk about it, despite how alienating and difficult it could be in person, and that flies in the face of trading. If the future of the scene feels grim, then raising the bar to entry for new people to discover these bands past and present is the opposite of what we want to do.
Remember that behind every person who hoards their files was someone willing to promote them freely. I firmly believe it’s your money and that you are free to share or not, but in my 20+ years in the scene I have never seen a visual-kei band that wasn’t promoted do well. Never. I can think of an easy 3-5 songs that I know I will never hear because no one is trading or selling it. That hurts everyone. The “perceived value” of how rare something is eventually falls off. Eventually rarez become obscure, and then the amount of people that would care about the band depletes rapidly. So if you really want to flex, people have to know (and care) about the band and then you have to “cash in” before the release loses its luster. I’ve learned goodwill is the kind of currency you earn in small portions and burn all at once, and I’ve rarely met a trader with a surplus of goodwill. Also, if you buy all your rarez secondhand then the scalper gets all your money, so the band was not supported in that transaction, so the amount of money spent on acquiring rarez means nothing to me most of the time.
I think the impact of our consumption is a double-edged sword but more good than bad comes of it. This community is undeniable proof of that. So yeah, trading gotta go, and I’m talking from the perspective of someone who doesn’t consume as much as I used to. I’ve always seen trading as annoying, but now it’s in direct opposition to what I see as best for the community, so I gotta say something.
oh my… some of those stories are especially just… the hell??? The hell is wrong with people?!?
… f*n damn. That’s… that’s something else.
I’m picky with streamers on top of that but there are times where I come across one that clicks for a while !