The Klassic Note Spirit Part 9 – The Year 2015 and the Initiation Plateau
Saturday, 24 November 2018
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Previously, we mentioned about how after the 5th anniversary I became serious about wanting to give more songs that are different in melody. Something more towards what I truly liked, instead of giving many songs off the bat. And so, I kept setting requirements and introduced measures to enforce them. Also, I created a new home to display all of Klassic Note and I had a wonderful first year on Twitter. Let's see how the setting of standards will set some pros and cons for the year ahead.The Klassic Note Spirit Part 9
"The Year 2015 and the Initiation Plateau"
THE MELODY JUDGEMENT
As mentioned in the previous part of the series, it was hard to give songs off the bat after listening to this many songs and only giving a fraction of them, so requirements had to be set to give songs more objectively then to be swayed by various aspects of the industry to attract people to listen or buy their releases. Idolism and Anime are two easy examples I can think of, and I'm sure I'll mention them in future posts, but here I'll talk about how it impacted me giving songs for the year. Being more judgemental than intinuitive, it ended up making me reject more songs which buffed up the 2.99 Stars Project list. This blog post which I boldly posted criticises on what I dislike about some of the songs I reviewed, which is also a small fraction compared to those who aren't even worth of mention. Furthermore, not giving based on first impression also affected later years as I struggle to give songs more promptly compared to the past, where songs are easily given or rejected. 5-star ratings are also harder to give, which you will see next year, that I had to come up with a way to make sure I can force myself to give songs I know are good but underestimated due to this judgement.
CORNERING THE PLATEAU
Because of a more objective opinion of giving songs after the past few years, this has led to a decrease in the number of new songs in the song list for the year, reaching levels of Klassic Note 2011. This is likely also due to me trying to give other artists which are further from what I listen, mainly on female vocalists and Collection Artists which I normally just give off the bat. Speaking of Collection Artists, since most of them have already been around for at least 5 years, the number of best albums I see released for the year has also increased over time as they "mature", including Aqua Timez, sphere and ClariS. This year has also been the first year that I noticed that it was hard to give the Top 20 rankings in Klassic Note history, as I spend less time to listen to songs and more time giving new artists and finding new melodies out of what artists I know of now.
THE GENDER UN-BIAS
Also affected by the objective opinion is the increase of male vocalists in new artists appearing in Klassic Note. Investing time in listening to them and finding new songs and creating strict requirements to artists I've known which are primarily female, I've managed to draw the ratio of female vocalists from the previous year's 4.5 to 1 female to male solo vocalist ratio to 2 to 1, which was astounding as my continued recognition of artists and vocalists from both sides continue to grow. New male-only artists which affected the change for the year include KANA-BOON, THE ORAL CIGARETTES, Yoru no Honki Dance, amazarashi and Cocoro Auction.
| This was the first from Yoru no Honki Dance, with strong rock dance beats you'll never forget. |
| This is THE ORAL CIGARETTES< with so much power you'll fall in love with. |
| Later in the year they also released one of their most popular songs till date. |
MORE CHANGES IN SONG AWARDS
After spending more time from the past couple of years refining methods to automate the yearly process, by this year I have effectively dropped the buffer period from more than two weeks to within a one week period. This is likely due to me spreading the data collection over the year (Songs of the day, song list update to label song ratings and the day they were added) to allow a more consistent update then deal with everything by the end of the year, which I had plenty of time for since back then I was a student. I had to find an easier way to then based on this, bring in more Excel skills to auto-compute Song of the day data collection, data references in statistics, and more. In addition, the Song Integrity Survey was tested after increasing much criticism on songs after the 5th anniversary, which brought a concept of allowing songs to be promoted or demoted in song ratings to expand the range of ratings I can give despite by narrow, more flat opinion of songs now, if you get what I mean. This ended up being the standard of what would determine how I give 5-stars and 3-stars every year.
Commendations also got more recognition this year compared to Song Awards, which kind of led to me thinking about how Klassic Note Song Awards should be viewed in general in terms of outside of Top 20 rankings. Commendations, as you may not have known, are songs recognised for being unique, different, or significant in contribution to Klassic Note, and everything in between we can't give as an Award, for example, Klassic Note Review and let's say, songs with the same song name (of course, compensated for pronunciation because translations), and so on. These got more recognition as I re-arrange how they are represented as seen from the Song Award Results page of the year, giving artists and songs alike a new level of mention due to what they have brought in to Klassic Note.
GETTING RECOGNISED ON TWITTER
Ever since the start of the Twitter account I opened for this and an avenue to share what I'm listening which will eventually turn into a news column, I find myself strangely amazed back then when I got recognised for even posting a Tweet violating all the rules of post... posting. You see, if you did see my Tweets, they are neither on hashtag, doesn't have any catchy lines, is in English (compared to Japanese if you ever see my own Twitter feed), and is designed (I thought about it) to make sure I get as little social media attention as possible. However, this does not deter some artists from finding me because I still have to put their names in, and searching without the hashtag isn't as tough as you think. Apparently some of them just camp on the search term and find interesting Tweets to re-post. This is seen even more clearly in future years where artists like mol-74 and nano.RIPE get on the retweeting fever. But first on the line of many encounters, as I have mentioned in this blog back then was yucat, also YUKARI from RYTHEM. And with this, I must say I felt more of the need to speak up my mind (still without hashtags) whenever I listen to music. Of course, criticism won't be on my Tweets, I assure you.
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| RT with comment instead of replying? Seriously? She placed the hashtag in btw |
Next up: The Klassic Note Spirit Part 10 – The Year 2016 and the Smooth Return and Rise
(After years of being more and more like a robot, I had a realisation...)
(**All linked references ago were active at time of publishing this post. They are meant for educational purposes and not are not taken directly from any intellectual property)