SquareSound
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| URL | http://www.squaresound.com/ |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes (store only) |
| Type of site | Video Game Music |
| Registration | Free |
| Owner | Tim |
| Created by | Tim, Chris G., Dave G. |
SquareSound is a website dedicated to the music and composers of games created by Square and Square Enix. The site features album and sheet music book information about soundtracks and music scores published for Square and Square Enix. Also featured is composer biographical information, album, game, and sheet music reviews, fan-arranged sheet music and MIDIs relating to popular games, album and sheet music samples, and a retail store. The site focuses heavily on arrangement submissions from regular contributors and site visitors. The focus of the site has recently changed to focus more on arrangements and the mainstream album and sheet music releases. Several former staff members have created a separate site, Square Enix Music Online, as a thoroughly comprehensive musical resource for Square Enix and many other developers, composers, and musicians.
[edit] History
SquareSound was founded in July, 2002 by Tim, and was 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, 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, 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 game series pages, arrangement submissions, and setting up a store, which covers mainstream albums, sheet music books, 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.
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, 2005, a change aimed to create a happy medium.
Further changes took place place in later 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.
Some disagreements between staff members provoked a site split in April, 2006. Chris, Dave, Harry, and the majority of the rest of the staff began work on Square Enix Music Online (http://www.squareenixmusic.com): a highly ambitious project aimed to bring about a comprehensive resource for not only Square Enix music, but music from many other developers as well. As of December, 2006, the project is ongoing and should be completed very soon. In the meantime, a regularly-updated archive of SquareSound (prior to July, 2006) has been posted in that web space in anticipation of the new site launch.
Meanwhile, in July, 2006, SquareSound was relaunched with a new design and focus on mainstream albums/sheet music, fan-arranged sheet music and midi submissions, and music-related competitions. It is updated weekly with new album/sheet music information, weekly MP3s, and new arrangement submissions.
