Why the lack of popular songs?

[goodtimesddr]

The popular songs are stupid and silly. Many of the popular pop music in American culture is nonsense anyways. But on the other hand, playing DDR to Paul Van Dyk does seem very interesting. But Britney and Nsync music don't match at all!!!!
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I took the path least taken. Now where the hell am I?

[Pantera]

[FriedKane]

[Nightime]

WJ1M. DDR is FULL of popular songs. Even US versions. You're telling me, between...

-RHYTHM & POLICE (KOGG3 MIX)
-Synchronized Love (RHM mix)
-ORDINARY WORLD
-Sandstorm
-DREAM A DREAM
-DRIFTING AWAY
-Heaven
-IN THE NAVY '99
-LET'S GROOVE
-LONG TRAIN RUNNIN'
-Love at first sight
-SO DEEP (Perfect Sphere Mix)
-Take me away (into the night)
-The Whistle Song (Blow my whistle baby)
-TWILIGHT ZONE (R-C Club Mix)
-Castles in the Sky
-Do That Thang
-Ready Steady Go
-Believe
-BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE
-Diving
-HIGHS OFF U (Scorccio XY Mix)
-Kids In America
-LADIES' NIGHT
-Like A Virgin
-Move Your Feet
-Music (Bostik Radio Edit)
-NEVER ENDING STORY
-Planet Rock (Swordfist radio edit)
-Simply Being Loved (Somnabulist)
-THE REFLEX
-THERE YOU'LL BE
-WAITING FOR TONIGHT
-Y.M.C.A.
-Brick House
-DAM DARIRAM
-DREAM A DREAM (Miami Booty Mix)
-FLASHDANCE
-Jam on it
-Moonlight Shadow
-NIGHT IN MOTION
-Rubberneckin'

...etc.
...that none of these are popular songs? GTFU. And H2G, there are those of us who'd rather play LET THEM MOVE or Forever Sunshine than that BoyBand/PopTart crap. Sure, some of it'll squeal it's way in somehow, but no way DDR should be dominated by it.

Okay, so it's not Forever Sunshine bad, but still...

[figgy20000]

There are already a lot of American songs in there, as Nightime pointed out. Just not mainstream boyband garbage. I'd rather listen to some real music, personally, than a person who can mutter out lyrics with his 3 tone voice.

Ordinary World is my favourite song though. I knew about Aurora before I played DDR .

[dlm]

Honestly... I'd have to say that it's pretty hard to put much DDR music in the "masterpiece" catagory.

There are exceptions... but most of it is written in a particular way. It's very good at what it does... but there's all of half a dozen KO's from DDR that I like to listen to outside of the game (and mostly from the same few artists... Outphase and Asletics, for example, do excellent work).

Konami uses KO's because they're easy to crossover to various Bemani games and they're cheap to produce and use. Additionally, since they're specifically written with a 1:30-2:00 length in mind (some a bit longer, some a bit shorter), they can be structured musically to work specifically in that time frame. When using a licensed song, it *has* to be edited. This can be very difficult, especially in genres like trance where a typical song length is 7 minutes, and no 2-minute subset of it tends to make much sense. Therefore choosing licensed material and making it work in the context of DDR as a game is an added difficulty.

Were it not for the fact that licensed songs help attract players to the game, I doubt that Konami would ever use anything except KOs at all. Licensed tracks are great advertising, but in every other respect, they're a pain in the ass. Almost impossible to transplant, expensive to use, hard to integrate.


And to the person that said it should be possible for you to use music off your XBox hard disk... that'd just be stupid. There are two reasons why it's a bad idea.

a) It's financially unsound. Instead of every buying another mix again, players could simply upload all the songs onto their hard drive and edit in the steps. It'd be illegal, but it'd also likely be a big source of revenue loss.

b) It's very difficult to impliment in practice. When you're dealing with music that has no tempo changes, generating a click track and setting a gap might not be too difficult. However, for songs with tempo changes or god forbid, live recordings... generating the click track is very, very difficult, which makes syncing a nightmare. Additionally, unless someone has the software necessary to edit songs, most non-KO's that someone could potentially use would be very long. Very long songs tend to get repetative and boring in DDR. That's why long versions were scrapped after one mix. This goes back to part a... because a large number of the best songs to actually put on your hard disk are already owned by Konami... thus promoting piracy against their own company.

Overall, I honestly think that b is a bigger factor than a. I remember a Konami rep said once that they did have a game that allowed you to use your own music... and that feature was very clunky and a total flop... thus they never bothered pursuing it again.

So yeah... end rant.

[Guinness]

The day they put a Justin Timberlake or Britney or N Sync song in a DDR mix, is the day I stop playing... the Karaoke cover songs in Extreme were bad enough. When they put that level of american pop crap in it however, you know the game has sold out to the 'MTV Generation' and that would just suck. The point of the game is to be cultural and expose everyone to new kinds of music you normally wouldn't hear. If it wasn't for DDR I never would of been blessed hearing Dj Taka, RevenG, Dj Simon, Naoki, 2MB, De-sire, the list goes on..... these are some of my favorite musicians now and I listen to them all the time even when not playing DDR. I have to agree with Nightime DDR is full of popular songs. just look at the MAX series. If you were going to put a few mainstream dance tracks on it..... Paul Van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Voodoo & Serano world be cool, or if you really wanted to get crazy, you could put in PPK - Resurection, thats just waiting to be put in a DDR mix, or Zombie Nation - KernKraft 400! Hell yea!! I'd dance to that!!! Good dance music without being pop. Thats the key. Stick with that.
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[SetsunaKira7]

u rock
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Thanks goes out to Fizzywix.

[RadMooseKiller]

i would defiantly not want to see nsync and britney spears in DDR.
However i wouldn't mind seeing more licenced techno DJs, such as more Paul Oakenfold, John Digweed, Chrystal Method, DaRude, and Paul Van Dyk.
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ITG>DDR

[tist006]

i wouldnt be playing this if most songs were american.. all these gay buttocks pop singers.. jap rules.. techno rules