For some months, I’ve been training an anime music channel on Pandora… (Link leads to the channel.) I’ve mostly tried to use seeds and thumbs up, though I had to thumb down the Pokémon Theme. Not only was it in heavy rotation – I positively loathe that song. And really, it was the heavy rotation that was the problem. Pandora’s selection of anime music is rather thin, and their song selection algorithms are… odd. They choose based on how much a song is “like” something you’ve already seeded the station with or given a thumbs up. Since the algorithm has only a limited understanding of “genre”, that tends to result in homogenization. Since they don’t seem to have a large selection of non-mainstream music, that also tends to result in pretty short playlists. (Though to be honest between their limited catalog and the algorithm’s over-eager pruning my more mainstream channels often suffer from the same problem.)
Anyhow, to make a long story short, I’ve had a Wake Up Girls playlist on iTunes for a couple of years now. A week or so ago, iblessall tweeted about buying the Girls Last Tour OST on iTunes-Japan, and I decided to see what, if any, anime music could be found on iTunes… (Though I limited myself to the American version because I didn’t want to go through the hoop jumping that shopping iTunes-Japan requires.)
I actually came up with a pretty nice selection of music. I could probably have found more, but my lovely wife gave me The Look and inquired as to just how much I intended to spend… I only really made one mistake, I didn’t pay attention when I bought START:DASH!!. I ended up buying the version performed by μ’s full lineup rather than the Honoka/Kotori/Umi version from ep 3 (which I prefer).
Anyhow, between Pandora and my iTunes playlist I have a nice selection of music to play when I’m working on my writing. When one gets old, I can swap to the other.
Do you have an anime playlist? What’s on it? Drop a comment and let me know!
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
I love this, thank you for sharing! I’ll try and get my list all put together for you during the week. One nice bit about Pandora though, they have Wolf’s Rain’s music on there which Spotify does not.
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The problem is getting Pandora to play something you know it has… It’s inconsistent about playing seeds, and one ill chosen thumbs down can (in my experience) radically change what it plays. I’ve used it for years, but never been happy with it.
And that’s setting aside the larger problem that many US-centric music services do not have an anime section, or lump it in with games and/or J-pop. (At least for me, YouTube often tosses in K-pop too…)
Spotify for some reason confuses me, I’ve never been able to get it to work right.
Looking forward to your list!
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I just buy or download music, sort them nicely with my own offline player and do the thing!
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I have an iPhone, so iTunes is forced on me… As a desktop player it works decently, so might as well use it.
Back when I bought my 3, it was because an app I wanted was only available on the iPhone. My wife still has her 4 (.99 when the 5 came out), and I have a 5 (bought at a discount when the 6 came out) but refuse to upgrade further because they’re too big to wear on my hip.
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And before I forget, welcome to the Lounge!
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FYI, you can throw mp3 files into itunes
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Yep, knew that.
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That’s pretty impressive. I did some hunting around for anisongs on iTunes and only found a fraction of what I was looking for – and even then a lot of it was cover versions and “instrumental only” or piano versions. There are some very notable singers like Nana Mizuki who don’t seem to be on US iTunes at all except for cover/tribute/karaoke versions of her songs – I would’ve bought almost all of her OP and insert songs from Nanoha if they had the originals. Also, I have one of the “Best of” CD collections for u’s, so a lot of their songs I don’t need to buy digitally, and I imported the CD singles for Yuki Yuna’s OP, Gourmet Girl Graffiti’s ED, and Wish Upon the Pleiades’ ED, so no digital for those either.
Anyway, my actual iTunes playlist is very short as a result, only three songs so far:
Hikaru Nara (Your Lie in April, Goose House)
Tori no Uta (Air, Lia)
Arashi no Naka no Koi dakara (my favorite u’s song that wasn’t used in the TV series)
My YouTube playlist, on the other hand, is much longer (when YouTube isn’t yanking the songs down, anyway), and much more reflective of what my list would look like if iTunes carried everything I wanted. Here’s what’s on it right now (after clearing/replacing a few more dead links tonight): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeAwTkzCoLukkpb80a8eWxn2VMGQ1vI7s Any questions about any of the songs (series, performer, etc.), please ask!
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Yah, despite the number I found, there are many that I wanted but didn’t find. Googling for “iTunes anime music” was a vast help. (That lead me to Hare Bare Fanfare, a song I would never have thought to look for even though I loved it.) Hikaru Nara was actually on my list of songs to look for, but my search was cut short before getting through my list. I think my only real regret is not buying Zenzensense before showing my collection to my wife. But in a month or two I can spring for another twenty bucks or so… (And d*mmit, inspired by your YouTube list, I just found that iTunes has Dream Solister…)
Speaking of your playlist, that’s a pretty impressive collection. There’s lots of good anime music, legal and no, on YouTube… But I found that maintaining a playlist was just too much work unless I maintained a text list to cross check against to identify and replace dead links.
But you just had to include Gourmet Girl Graffiti‘s preview tune…. and I just had to listen to it… and now it’s earwormed me. (Taberuuu… Taberuu…)
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Oh good god, and now you passed it on (that earworm I shall not name).
The last time I made anything resembling a playlist was from vinyl to tape, so no anime music. Would be interesting to think one up for anime.
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rubs hands together Ah, the worm has been spread, my work here is complete! :) :)
I’d be interested to see what kind of list you come up with… YouTube is always an option.
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I don’t really have the time to get them into the proper order, but here’s a few I’d probably be including:
Lilium (Opening from Elfen Lied
Glass no Mikazuki Special Ending/Insert song from Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge
Mugen no Ai Mouretsu Pirates OP (Momoiro Clover Z) (Does this sound accelarated to anyone else?)
Kill me Baby – ED
Dango Daikazoku clannad Ending
Dragon Crisis – OP
Dantalian no Shoka – OP
Denpa Onna – OP
Sadame (Recurring Theme in X 1999)
Mikakunin de Shinkokei – OP
Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai Light – OP
Flip Flappers – ED
Kyousogiga – OP
Uchouten Kazoku – OP
Rolling Girls – OP
Platinum Disco (A Nisemonogatari ED)
Joshiraku – ED (Once again Momoiro Clover Z)
Sora no Woto – OP (Kalafina)
Seto no Hanayome – OP
And probably a few others.
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@Dawnstorm:
Only recognized a couple of those… But did some quick listens and sounds like some good tracks.
I don’t know if Mugen no Ai has been sped up, or just had it’s pitch altered, but yeah it has been changed. Both are common tricks to avoid YouTube’s bots.
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Yeah, that’s always the problem. I used to have around a 20-song playlist that was just K-On songs, mostly more obscure stuff like alternate takes, remixes, B-sides, and image songs (basically the stuff I didn’t already have on CD), and I finally ended up deleting it and moving the stragglers over to this list because it got to a point where there was hardly anything left – YouTube were taking down the videos faster than I could replace them.
That Gourmet Girl Graffiti song actually has a full four minute version, of which the earworm used in the preview is just one very small part near the end. It’s called “Shiawase Graffiti” and it’s one of the bonus tracks on the CD single that I have. I’m quite happy to have it, because I like the song a lot and I’ve never seen the full version uploaded anywhere – every “Shiawase Graffiti” video I’ve checked that’s close to the right length is just a long loop of the preview music. But anyway, I really wanted to end my list with a “Coming next episode” jingle, and that’s one of the best out there.
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The Other Side of the Wall rocks my world. I’m still looking for similar sounding and just as awesome.
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Probably the best OP song of 2017, and one of the best OP’s (tied in my mind with Abyss).
Thanks for dropping by, hope to see you at the Lounge again soon!
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I did not know about Angel Beats or Nana music being on there! Spice and Wolf as well… it is always a fun treasure hunt lol. And yea, I love having some anime music to listen to and put me in the mood while attempting to write about it.
Might have to blow a few more dollars today…
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A couple of those are MP3’s I got elsewhere, but most are iTunes… Yeah, I need to spend a few more bucks too. I know there’s several songs I didn’t get the first time around. (Dream Solister, a couple from the Kimi no Wa OST, etc… etc…)
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