BEMANI Sound Team: Difference between revisions

[[Image:BEMANI Sound Team logo.png|thumb|BEMANI Sound Team logo, first used in [[BEMANI PRO LEAGUE]] 2021 Finals.]]

On November 1st, 2017, KONAMI started branding all of its in-house musicians' BEMANI contributions with the moniker of '''BEMANI Sound Team'''. But why did KONAMI do this after over 20 years of not doing so? Well, let's look back a little earlier in time and find out why.

In 2013, Hideo Kojima announced that he was beginning work on '''Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain''', and was planning to leave KONAMI after completing the project. While he had made this claim on multiple occasions in the past, he seemed more serious about it this time. In response, KONAMI removed all references to his names in promotional materials for the game, including posters, and started hiring new staff to work on new projects.

In December 2015, after months of speculation and rumors, Hideo Kojima officially left KONAMI. But this was far from the last time KONAMI and its employees would clash, and it's speculated that KONAMI's clash with Kojima was the genesis of what was to follow in BEMANI two years later.

In early 2017, out of the blue, KONAMI suddenly removed ''all'' of its BEMANI artist names from the [https://p.eagate.573.jp/game/bemani/fansite/p/artist/index.html BEMANI Fan Site artist page], with the sole exception of top beatmania IIDX player [[DOLCE.]]. At the time, this wasn't really noticed by the BEMANI community, but later that year the first cracks began to show.

Episode 173 of the ''BEMANI Namahousou (kari)'' (BEMANI生放送(仮)) stream show, which used to feature in-house staff talking about the latest upcoming news in BEMANI, was the final one to feature in-house staff, as well as its original host, on-screen. Following this episode, which aired on April 19th, 2017, the next few episodes afterwards featured the camera near exclusively pointed to a table with black cloth, with a card for BEMANI生放送(仮) and its bunny mascot visible; any announcers would only be heard talking off-screen. Only outside artists, like [[Yuki Nakashima]] or [[MAD CHILD]], or top players like DOLCE., appeared in-person afterwards. Following the last numbered episode in the series - episode 178 - the show went on a month long hiatus. When the show resumed, Nakashima took over hosting duties, with a rotating set of guest hosts outside of KONAMI tied to BEMANI appearing, most notably MAD CHILD. No in-house BEMANI staff have appeared on the show since Nakashima took over hosting duties.

In 2017, KONAMI announced a contest in [[AC SDVX IV|SOUND VOLTEX IV HEAVENLY HAVEN]] for vocalists titled ''Continuing the Seniors! The Second Vocalist Contest'' (先輩に続け！第2回ボーカリストコンテスト) [https://p.eagate.573.jp/game/sdvx/sv/p/floor/vocal/03/index.html whose details can be found here]. The website cryptically hinted at having "sound professionals" working on the songs without mentioning any of the artist names.

The infamous moniker came when the songs later debuted in the game on October 13th, 2017.

Only the vocalists were credited on the jackets and in-game for the ''Continuing the Seniors! The Second Vocalist Contest'' songs. To this day KONAMI has not officially revealed any of the musicians for the songs; it wasn't until HDD ripping months later that any artists were confirmed. The [https://p.eagate.573.jp/game/sdvx/iv/p/music/detail.html?list_id=27 SOUND VOLTEX website] however, makes the first known mention of an entity simply known as '''BEMANI Sound Team''', crediting the contest songs to them.

On November 2nd, 2017, three new songs were added to [[AC pnm Usaneko|pop'n music うさぎと猫と少年の夢]]. [[Monkshood]] was done by a commission artist, while two others - [[Dance to Blue (Respect Style)]] and [[Mychronicle]] - were credited to BEMANI Sound Team. [[GERBERA]], a SOUND VOLTEX song added for the [[Tenkaichi otogesai|Dai yon kai Tenkaichi otogesai]] (第四回天下一音ゲ祭) event, also had its artist name - [[Yasuhiro Taguchi|TAG]] - removed and replaced with simply BEMANI Sound Team on the official website, with only its song name listed on the final jacket. KONAMI wouldn't credit the artists for these songs until late into December, now listed as '''BEMANI Sound Team (artist name)'''. KONAMI even went so far as to censor the jackets of songs even before the BEMANI Sound Team change on BEMANI Fan Site CHECK!SONGS Monthly Ranking lists, as seen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4vsnStmeR4 here].

KONAMI themselves have never given any official word for the BST branding, but at least two reasons for the change have been speculated:

** According to KONAMI's 48th annual general meeting of shareholders, the reduced public appearances of BEMANI artists was made so "they can focus on making content" [https://img.konami.com/ir/ja/stockbond/stockholderinfo/generalmeeting/48/questions_and_answers.pdf] (link down).

The resulting effects of the BST branding were more than a simple artist name change. Here is just a few of the ''known'' changes the name change resulted in: