🌃 The Nightcore Phenomenon: How To Achieve International Fandom With The Help Of Manga & Anime Communities
Timebelle, a Swiss Romanian band, became hugely popular in SE Asia after its song, Apollo, received a nightcore treatment from one Youtube channel focused on nightcore music.
It’s pretty unusual for a typical European slow pop-rock song to find a certain level of success on other music scenes, especially in Asia. Timebelle, a Swiss Romanian band, did this without taking the already beaten path of promotion. Enter the world of nightcore, a community of people obsessed with video games and anime / manga series, who love to listen to fast paced music.
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With its origins tracked back into the early 2000s’ dance music scene, the Nightcore culture exploded with the help of underground anime subforums before eventually breaking into the mainstream with the help of Youtube. A true culture or a counter-culture? It doesn’t really matter, yet you cannot ignore it, as nightcore is now a pretty established genre, amassing tens of millions of plays on digital streaming services and also contributing to the original tracks’ popularity.
As every artist and record label tries to figure out new ways of reaching fans worldwide with their music, nightcore seems like an alternative way for doing this. And we have a good example: Timebelle’s Apollo nightcore version gathered no less than over 60 million plays on DSP’s, with the Swiss-Romanian band becoming increasingly popular in regions like SE Asia, regions otherwise pretty difficult to penetrate with Western music.
But what is Nightcore and how could an artist trigger the fanatic loyalty of the anime obsessed nightcore communities to their own benefit? This article tries to shed some light on this world, with the help of a couple of key figures in the industry.
The term “Nightcore” was coined by two Norwegian DJs back in 2001: DJ TNT and DJ SOS. Influenced by Scooter’s hardcore tracks, the duo started to mix tracks in their own style, speeding up the tempo by 25-30% to a 160-180 BPM. Similar to happy hardcore or eurodance, the nightcore has become a style of music, a way to make the music happier.
The subgenre started to take off with the help of platforms like Limewire and Youtube, even if the original nightcore creators disappeared. The introduction of nightcore to the mainstream channels happenned in 2011, when Rockefeller Street, a song performed at Eurovision, received the nightcore treatment. The Golden Age of nightcore started, with pop, K-pop and hip hop songs appearing everywhere on the internet in nightcore versions. Anime fans quickly embraced the nightcore grooves with their loud, brash, low-brow fun induced by heart-pounding chunks of gooey, candy-coated sounds. Now you can find youtube channels dedicated to the nightcore phenomenon, with anime and manga characters showing their exagerated smiles on top of sped-up pop songs with cheesy lyrics.
One of the best examples is Sinnon Nightcore, a youtube channel with a whopping 2.18 million subscribers base. The channel’s content revolves around nightcore, with clean graphics depicting manga characters. Born and raised in Denmark, Sinnon uploaded his first nightcore video back in 2016. I first encountered Nightcore when a friend of mine wanted me to listen to a 1-hour long video that had a bunch of Nightcore songs. I really liked it and started listening to it all the time while playing video games. I began clicking on other mixes that Youtube recommended, and I stumbled upon channels that uploaded regularly, not only mixes but singular songs as well. This was all back in 2014. I still go back to that one mix occasionally. Being right in the middle of the nightcore culture for quite a few years, Sinnon was able to sketch an avatar for the nightcore fans: Nightcore has been popular to listen to while gaming, and I often see in my comment section that the people listening to my uploads knows the characters used in the picture! Once a classmate of mine found out that I upload Nightcore. He told me that he used to have it running a lot while partying with friends. So Nightcore can be enjoyed in many different ways. […] The biggest portion of my community comes from the US, followed by the Philippines and India. I find it absolutely amazing how many people my videos reach, and I never expected for so many to love the same songs I do./
His 6 years experience with creating popular nightcore remixes has given Sinnon the ability to figure out what elements does a song need in order to resonate with the nightcore community. It’s hard to pinpoint which songs have potential, but from my perspective, it seems to be either already popular songs, EDM, or emotional music. A popular Nightcore video often has at least one of these three features. Down to the concrete case of Timebelle’s Apollo, that registered almost 40 million plays solely on Sinnon’s youtube channel (you can check the statistics here), Sinnon broke down to pin pointing what elements in particular contributed to the success of the track: It’s just such a beautiful song. Timebelle’s voice fits Nightcore well. Sometimes that is all you need, but the song is simply well constructed, and all parts are great! It could also have been pure luck. You can have a feeling if a video will do well or not, and at the time I made this, I thought it would do okay. Not bad but definitely not this well either. I believe both Timebelle and I lucked out with how much everyone loves it, and truly appreciate everyone’s sweet comments!
On the other hand, Timebelle, speaking through Miruna, the band’s lead singer, sees things this way, relating to Apollo: the catchy chorus in Apollo has this universal need for love, belonging, and finding purpose in life that combines in a harmonious, grand way with the melodic line. These elements must have somehow found their way to the listeners’ hearts, as they have to ours. The way people perceive music is most of the times a lottery. From our point of view, we think Apollo is such a success because the melodic line is very catchy, together with its strong message of never giving up your dreams. We believe people can relate deeply to this message because we live in a fast-forward society, where dreams or relationships for that matter change so often and so fast; to be able to stay focused and loyal to your dream becomes the main miracle today, and it is probably a need people have more and more.
Clearly, the songs need to trigger emotions, but some special ones, usually mirrored by the complex relationships depicted in anime or manga. It is not mandatory (to add a manga image to the remix), but the video often gets less views if you don’t do it. Cartoon images works too but is rarely used compared to manga or anime images, Sinnon told us.
The hardest thing, though, is to capitalize the popularity of the nightcore version to gain followers and awareness for the original creator. Timebelle managed to do this in the most organic way possible: It was unexpected because we were not so familiar at that time with this new genre. The nightcore success added to the success Apollo was already having, so we took it as a boost for our song. We see it as something very positive, because it can absolutely help and support artists in the beginning of their careers, but also creates new ways and perspectives of understanding a song. What matters in the end for us as musicians is that our music gets to as many listeners as possible, and nightcore definetly did expand our horizons.
A bit of luck, a lot of emotions nested into the music and a direct link into the nightcore community: these seem to be the key elements for transforming Apollo into a nightcore hit. The next step for Timebelle is to meet its fans: Because of the pandemic, as you know, it was quite difficult to organize a tour anywhere in the world, but as the situation will become more and more stable, we would be thrilled to hold concerts in South East Asia, especially since we have never visited this part of the world. Receiving so much love and admiration from people who come from there has been and still is extremely moving for us. If they want to see us, we will be there!
If you feel the need to become more familiar with the nightcore sound, check the Spotify playlist below