Gendou.com
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Gendou.com, Gendou's Anime Music |
| Owner/Maintainer: | Gendou |
| Dates: | 2000-present |
| Type: | Music host |
| Fandom: | Anime |
| URL: | http://gendou.com/ |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Gendou.com is a major host of anime music downloads. The site had a radio station hosted by different DJs, and allowed for a request system along with user uploads and edits for lyrics in romaji, kanji and English. Users could provide songs that had been requested, but all songs were uploaded to the site by Gendou himself and moderators like Tamatsu. There are also forums and a chatroom hosted on the website that were active up until about 2015. The site had a section for Java games, some of which are still functional.
Beginnings
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Decline
[...]Since I started the site, in the mid-Napster days, other services like YouTube and BitTorrent have gotten popular. It could also be that anime music, in general is not as popular as it used to be, with the rise of K-pop, for example. As for the chat, it's reliance on Java is a poor choice on my part, because some people don't have that plugin installed.[...]
I think of the Gendou community as having a lot in common with towns along highways. People pass by the town on the road, and have to stop to get gas. People are log in to download music, and can click on the forums or chat while they're here. But take away the highway, or the music downloading, and it turns into a ghost town. I haven't done any quantitative analysis, but it certainly seems the gradual quieting of the community has followed in step with fewer downloads.
By the way, I'm alright with this. It's sort of a lonely thought, but I've expected the site to decline in popularity over time. I've made my peace with it.Gendou, in 2013[1]
The last song upload was around 2016,[2] and the site has since been inactive, but songs can still be downloaded and the site's copyright has continued into 2022.
I know it has been a long time since you heard anything from us on this site. Unfortunately, as you might be able to see, it is slowly reaching its end. However, if you miss talking with the people of your past, many of us have joined a discord server and it is quite active most of the time. If this is something you are interested in joining, please message me and I will send you an invite to the server.An update posted to the main site on July 22nd, 2020, by moderator Tamatsu (inuyasha on the Gendou forums) [3]
The forums were noted to be slowing down around 2013,[4] and uploads were starting to slow down as well.[5][6]
From 2017-07-23 to 2022-03-11, a thread in the forums titled "Anyone who logs on to gendou, reply here !!" logged 351 posts from users checking in.[7]
Blogger and cosplayer Amanda.Actually posted an essay in 2019 about her experiences with the Gendou.com community.
Gendou has two features outside of the huge library of music and that was radio: a radio station hosted by different DJs and a chatroom.I don’t think I entered the chatroom until 2007. And when I was I was suddenly no longer alone. Let me give you a little primer on what it meant to be an anime fan back then. Sure, there were fans everywhere but it certainly was not popular. I had my anime club, sure, but I knew very few people in the real world that loved anime as much as I did. Gendou was full of people who loved anime just as much as I did. And more importantly, I could be myself, a truer version of myself. It was on Gendou that I got comfortable working through male pronouns and nouns, something that’s stuck around with me. Gendou helped me form better arguments when it came to anime as far as what I liked and what I didn’t like.[...]
[...]
It warms my heart when I still get called by my old SN or and now we do regular calls when we can and sometimes it almost matches the frantic energy of a busy chat room. We’re all older now. Some have families now. Most of us have office jobs now but there’s one thing that connects us all: we’re all Gendounians; now and forever.The Legend of Gendou.Com, posted May 10, 2019
References
- ^ Gendou forums, 2013-01-31. Re: what happened to gendou?
- ^ Gendou forums, 2016-05-17. About Gendou!!: "seeing that the last post of tracks was from October 2015... is there a chance this site will still post new ones?"
- ^ Front page archived 2021
- ^ Gendou.com forums, 2013-01-31: what happened to gendou?
- ^ Gendou.com forums, 2014-07-12. Suggestion: Putting ads on the site: "[...]in light of the decline in uploads for the past year or so, [advertisements] might facilitate the upload rate to the site. Many people (including myself) have inquired about the decline and those in charge have been kind enough to answer...."
- ^ Gendou.com forums, 2014-08-18. No more new music ;-;: "No more new music for like 2-3 seasons already. is the admins busy?"
- ^ Gendou.com forums, 2017-07-23: "Just an update to keep track of the gendou and the forum status and hits."