DanceDanceRevolution (AC) (Japan)

surprisingly, the post above you only applies to licensed song (perhaps the phrase "songs aren't free to license alludes to it?)
neither Kind Lady nor Gamelan de Couple are licenses, so Konami gets to keep them as long as they want, unless complications arise, which then they'd have to remove it. So far all I've heard about originals getting removed involves vocals or something (Matsuri Japan... End of the Century? Dynamite Rave? Kind Lady??).
but in any case no one knows for sure.

i don't think you understand the difference between konami originals and licenses.

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If it means anything, NAOKI was involved with all four of the songs (although he was also involved with MAX 300, so I'm guessing they have some way of keeping the song in DDR and IIDX).

Sota was involved with Kind Lady not NAOKI.
@Silverhawke
I meant for my post to allude to the other post that talked about how the DDR team monitors what people play.


I know he talked about liscenes but that would apply to KOs as well, since Dynamite Rave got removed due to lyrics issues.

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okay i get what's being implied but no
1. Naoki had nothing to do with Kind Lady - that was Sota
2. the other three songs mentioned were removed in DDR X, released while Naoki was still with the company
3. all of these removals were because of the license of the vocals ran up. MATSURI JAPAN is still being used in pop'n music as that version always had the vocals removed
4. KONAMI owns the right to all KOs as long as no complications arrive. this explains why things like e-motion is still around despite e.o.s not doing anything for the company in years. MAX 300 will never be removed, and given how popular the song is with players, if any problems arise, KONAMI will pony up the dough to solve the problem.

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1) Correct.

2) Sort of. End of the Century was still on JP X machines, just with no vocals. It was fully removed in X2. Dynamite Rave was re-arranged, and the remixes were removed because they could not be re-arranged in the same manner.

3) There is no evidence that this is truly the case. It has been repeatedly speculated, but that's it.

4) There are 2 different ways in which songs get into DDR. Songs can be licensed (even by in-house artists!), which gives Konami temporary rights to use the song, but the original creator still owns the rights. Songs can also be outright purchased by Konami, which means the original creator no longer has any rights to the song, and Konami now completely owns it. The creator cannot do anything with the song ever again, including releasing it via any method or performing it without Konami's approval.

really dude

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Is this true? Perhaps my memory's bad, but I was following DDR very closely back then and don't remember this at all. Also, the few videos of END OF THE CENTURY being played on a DDR X machine I can find on YouTube feature the vocals.

right, so DYNAMITE RAVE receiving new vocals from people affiliated with Konami and MATSURI JAPAN still being on pop'n in its instrumental form... it's all just a large coincidence that the songs removed happened to have vocals, and the above two things happened...

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To be fair, there were lots of examples of songs that got new arrangements/vocals that didn't up getting removed. Brilliant 2U, keep on movin' and CELEBRATE NIGHT are some examples of songs that received new arrangements/vocals but were not removed in AC versions. During the last couple years NAOKI was active in DDR, he expressed a lot of interest in interviews of re-doing a lot of his old songs with new arrangements/vocals, so it's possible it was just something that NAOKI was interested in rather than something he was forced to do for licensing reasons.

And to go even further down the rabbit hole, a lot of the songs that were removed for rumored "licensing" reasons (The original DYNAMITE RAVE, END OF THE CENTURY etc.) actually appear in their original form in DDR Classroom Edition, a game that was released long after those songs had been removed from the AC game.

But DDR Classroom Edition was devloped by Konami USA. Not Konami JP. What about that? Its possible each division has different rights stuff, but that is just my guess.
Also for songs like Look to the Sky and Midnite Blaze, I doubt those had to do with rights issues and stuff.
And more like switching out for new songs, a la IIDX.

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man wtf, I could've sworn it had no vocals in the US version

probably should've checked before posting

Probably you have mistaken it with After The Game Of Love/After The Game? The song does have 2 versions: one with vocal and one without vocal.

As far as we know, it's nothing to do with the vocals, and more to do with the lyrics.

Dynamite Rave, for example, was created by 3 people :

Music / Arrangement : Naoki Maeda
Vocals : Aaron G
Lyrics : Argie Phine

All 3 of those people would have been contracted in a completely different way. We don't know the specifics, but we can assume that Naoki was employed by Konami, and that anything created by him while working at Konami is owned by them, forever. Aaron G may have been on a similar deal, or may have signed over the rights for his vocal performance. He may be still getting paid a small ammount of money every time Konami use one of his songs in a new game. We may never know why, but Konami are obviously still able to (and choose to) use Aaron G's work on their games.

We don't know Argie Phine's deal. She was much likely paid less than the other two artists, but she DID write the words to Dynamite Rave. Konami can play the music to Dynamite Rave, but they cannot use the words to the song, without her permission. The assumption at the time is that when Konami started bringing in American vocalists and artists to write or sing the English words to songs, they didn't fully understand the ins-and-outs of musical copyright laws.

For example, we know there are instances in the Konami office, where artists have helped each other out on each others' songs. There's a famous story about Des-ROW being tasked with creating a cover version of Hone Hone Rock, and stuggling for days on how to sing the chorus in a way that made it distinctive from the verses. One lunch break, Sana walked past his office, saw how he was struggling, and jumped into the recording booth to sing the song in different ways, and give Osamu some ideas. Sana's quick, un-rehearsed recording demo ended up being the chorus used in the final song.

We don't know how Dynamite Rave was written, but something like this could very well have happened. Argie could have EMailed Naoki song ideas, or written some words on a napkin. Either way, all we know is that Konami probably have no problem with Aaron G's vocal recording, but don't own the rights to the words of Dynamite Rave, and had to change them several years down the line, having to re-record the song in the process.

Argie Phine is assumed to be the reason End Of The Century and Dynamite Rave had to be changed. In some of the other cases, we have no idea. When Forever Sunshine or So In Love are removed from the DDR series, we may be able to make some educated guesses regarding Kind Lady, but until then, the prevailing theory is just 'Nobody plays it, Konami don't want to pay for something nobody plays'.

Is there a place I can check to see all the songs that have been removed over the course of this mix? The recent 2013 ones, kind lady, etc.?

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Try www.remywiki.com. That's what I use

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Bemaniwiki.com

They have a very comprehensive removal list and breaks it down by when each song was removed (i think; I know most other series do)

EDIT: hit reply early oops

This thread is now removed from Quick Links, but will be kept stickied, just in case.

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RIP, 2014, we hardly gave a shit for thee.

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Especially since DDR A comes out tomorrow.

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http://bemaniwiki.com/index.php?DanceDanceRevolution%282014%29%2F%BA%EF%BD%FC%B6%CA%A5%EA%A5%B9%A5%C8