Very Good Days to Support New Artists

In the beginning, Very Good Days was solely an international Stereopony community and would remain that way for about three years until Stereopony disbanded in December 2012.

In 2013, AIMI began activities as a solo artist, and NOHANA and SHIHO formed the new band Draft King along with MAO (Stereopony’s former support guitarist) and new members Erica and Hiddy. Unwilling to choose just one artist to support, the community decided to support both AIMI and Draft King.

However, a little less than a year later, Hiddy made the decision to leave Draft King in order to pursue a solo career. A few months after that, AIMI teamed up with Arai Hiroki to form the band ALiCE IN UNDERGROUND. The addition of Hiddy and ALiCE IN UNDERGROUND doubled the amount of artists Very Good Days supported yet again.

AIMI, ALiCE IN UNDERGROUND, Draft King, Hiddy, and of course, Stereopony… Very Good Days has changed a lot in the last two years. But we’re not done yet!

In Summer 2012, prior to Stereopony’s disbandment, Arcluna and dereko92 expressed interest in creating a website that connected all the Japanese music communities. Basically, it was supposed to be a central hub of the latest artist news provided by that artist’s respective fan community. We got in touch with the admins from SCANDAL HEAVEN and YUI-Lover to see if they would be interested. While they were certainly interested, the plan never took off since both admins (as well as Arcluna) were already too busy to be able to contribute much. Eventually, the whole idea was abandoned when Stereopony announced their disbandment since VGD Staff had to focus on internal matters, as mentioned earlier.

As we approach 2015, interest in this plan has risen yet again. However, instead of creating a new website, it has been decided that the Very Good Days website will be the platform. It was also decided that we would limit the artists we add as best we can to the following criteria:

1. Artist must be a female solo artist, all-girl band, or a mixed band with at least one female vocalist (preferably lead vocals)
2. Artist must not already have a large amount of English coverage

The first criterion keeps Very Good Days in a niche position. Stereopony was a rock band that consisted of three 18-and-19-year-old girls when they debuted, and so we want to target similar artists.

The second criterion is to prevent us from creating too much content for already popular artists since that would be redundant. We are willing to make some exceptions though. For example, SCANDAL is popular and gets plenty of English coverage, meaning they fail the second criterion. However, since SCANDAL was friends with Stereopony (remember SCADALPONY?) and the SCANDAL HEAVEN community supported Stereopony when they were in the US, there is no doubt that Very Good Days would grant them an exception.

Please note that I’m not saying that Very Good Days is 100% for sure going to start featuring SCANDAL news and information. We would still need to contact SCANDAL HEAVEN about it, but that is only if the Very Good Days community desires it. At the end of this article is a poll where readers can vote on which artists they want VGD Staff to consider adding to the website. Open applications for new artists will begin in 2015. Until then, we will be selecting among the artists that are in the most demand by our readers.

Changes to the website have already been made to accommodate more artists, and a plan for collaboration with other communities or individuals to contribute content has been drafted. We are prepared to move ahead.

At the time of writing, we have already begun supporting the band SHISHAMO. We are also making plans to support another band in collaboration with its international fan community and will disclose that information at a later date.

Supporting more artists means we will need more contributors from the community. We are looking for anyone interested in volunteering their time for writing news posts, writing articles, and/or translating content from Japanese into English. While proficiency in writing would be desired, there are no requirements for volunteering. If interested in volunteering, please send a private message to RSNiteblaze on the Very Good Days Forum or send a tweet to @RSNiteblaze. Include the list of skills you bring, the artists you’re interested in supporting, and any other relevant information you wish to provide.

What are your thoughts about Very Good Days supporting more artists? Let us know in the comments below.