SquareSound
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| URL | http://www.squaresound.com/ |
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| Commercial? | Yes (store only) |
| Type of site | Video Game Music |
| Registration | Free |
| Owner | Tim M. / Chris G. |
| Created by | Tim M. / Chris G. |
SquareSound is a website dedicated to the music and composers of games created by Square and Square Enix. The site features album information for all soundtracks published for Square, Square Enix, tri-Ace, and Basiscape, as well as coverage of the soundtracks that many current freelance composers produced after their employment or collaborations with Square and Square Enix. Also featured is a composer compendium, a significant number of album reviews, fan-arranged sheet music and MIDIs relating to popular games, and a music news service. The site relies considerably on submissions from staff members and contributing visitors, though is partly an information site as well. It will be split in coming months and considerably reduced in size due to internal frictions between the site's owners.
[edit] History
SquareSound was founded on July 2, 2002 by Tim M. Initially dedicated to official and fan-arranged sheet music for Final Fantasy games, copyright restrictions meant that the official sheet music had to be removed. In March 28, 2003, the focus of the site expanded following a significant redesign, with the new additions of the Weekly MP3, album reviews, and a limited amount of composer information compensating for the loss of the sheet music. The navigation was organized by game, with the popular games from the Final Fantasy series receiving coverage in addition to Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts, Xenogears, and the Xenosaga series. It was also at this time when the site introduced a formal submissions procedure for album reviews, fan-arranged MIDIs, and sheet music. SquareSound became more popular during these times, with its ever-growing forum acting as an interface for visitors to interact in.
2003 was a period of modest growth for SquareSound following its redesign. With weekly updates, visitors became more regular and numerous, while the user-voted Weekly MP3 introduced an additional layer of activity and a sizeable compendium of arrangements and reviews was gradually established. After Tim became busy for work reasons, he introduced Jared as a co-webmaster to the site in July 21, 2003 to maintain the pace of growth. Jared was temporarily responsible for all submissions and also introduced a lyrics section to the site. Chris G. eventually took over these responsibilities in March 5, 2004, adding coverage of early Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, in addition to making frequent updates. While the focus of the site wasn't especially widened during this time, it is generally regarded that the site grew in quality and size considerably.
Increased bandwidth expenditure due to the site's growth caused considerable problems in July 2004. Despite Tim upgrading the site to a semi-dedicated server, these problems only continued, meaning the Weekly MP3 and hosted piano recordings were removed. In response to this, Tim looked towards redesigning the site so that fewer images constituted its main layout. This proposed simple redesign ended up being much larger, resulting in the project SquareSound (v.2). Chris continued to update the site until April 2005, when the combined pressure of both weekly updates and a major redesign eventually became intolerable.
Tim's role on the site redesign focused principally on the layout and graphics, which underwent several major changes before the project was complete. He was also responsible for dealing with arrangement submissions and set up a store, which covers mainstream albums and has an anti-bootleg policy. Chris' principle role on the site design was adding new content and editing what previously existed on the site. This lengthy process encompassed formatting and editing 200 album pages, 80 album reviews, 50 composer biographies, and a number of new lyrics pages using HTML coding. Eleven months after the project began, the two-man project was completed on August 1, 2005 after considerable anticipation. Chris subsequently became the co-owner and webmaster of the site, later introducing his brother Dave and new contributor Harry S. to help with site updates. Tim now focuses on the store.
Following the redesign, the site's long-term goal became focused on addition of Enix coverage, reflecting how Square became merged into Square Enix in April 2003. This was initially reflected by inclusion of Motoi Sakuraba coverage from October 2004 onwards. Coverage of Yuzo Koshiro, Noriyuki Iwadare, Koichi Sugiyama, Akihiko Mori, and Kohei Tanaka will follow this. Some have criticised this expansion for moving away from the original purpose of the site, while others have reflected that it may be a necessary expansion that will serve to satisfy a wider audience. In response to the mixed criticism, it was decided that site updates should be split into mainstream and non-mainstream updates as of December 16, 2005, a change aimed to create a happy medium. Its success is not yet known, though most are hopeful.
Further changes have also taken place in recent months. Yoshitaka Hirota and Basiscape coverage was added, while interviews of Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoshitaka Hirota, and Jeremy Soule also took place. Christmas day 2005 also brought the addition of SquareSound Radio, hosted by Live365, which includes a selection of original and professionally arranged music from most Square Enix games and composers, focusing especially on music from the Final Fantasy, Chrono, and Kingdom Hearts series. The site's webmasters have anticipated that 2006 will be a year of considerable growth, yet intend to also improve current coverage by creating more regular mainstream album review updates, improving game pages, and reviewing the quality of all fan arrangements on the site. A graphics overhaul is also currently underway, together with the addition of album samples.
[edit] Forum
The SquareSound Forums have been available since SquareSound's founding. Unlike the forums of many similar music sites, SquareSound's forum combines discussion of Video Game Music with more general topics, including those related to other music and types of entertainment, political issues, and composing and arranging.
The forum's frequent contests and competitions have inspired certain members and increased popularity. Examples of competitions include three dedicated to review-writing, several piano performance ones, and even a competition dedicated to arranging Nobuo Uematsu's Chocobo theme. One of the most memorable events during 2004 was the Best Square Theme of All Time Contest, which resulted in Uematsu's "FFXI Opening Theme" from Final Fantasy XI and Masashi Hamauzu's "BT 'ultimate'" from Unlimited SaGa going head to head, with Uematsu winning. SquareSound has also conducted forum awards for its members in 2004 and 2005.
Rules are generally enforced fairly and efficiently at the forum. The forum frowns upon flaming, spam, offensive language, and advertising, but is usually open to free speech about most issues, unless it results in some form of discrimination. The current forum supermoderators are Celes, K'62, Merziloss, Rave, Soapy, and Totz, while Tim is the administrator, and Mhuang and Mr. Maul (Chris) are moderators for functional reasons. Previous forum staff members included Mandy, ^___^, Lefty, Id, and Aharon, who were all voluntarily removed due to long-term inactivity.
