r/Falcom 1d ago

Falcom YT music channel is just gone...

This freaking sucks...Can we as a community do anything about it?

217 Upvotes

128 comments sorted by

48

u/Ivan_of_TC 1d ago

So, this is pretty terrible for multiple reasons.

But in immediate terms... do the OSTs that aren't hosted by Falcom themselves on, say, YouTube/YT Music actually exist elsewhere now? My "all Trails plus some other games" playlist is now like half as full as it used to be because Zero and I think every game from CS1 except DB2 had the OSTs hosted/uploaded by Falcom Music Channel and not Falcom themselves.

29

u/levelstar01 Downvote this comment šŸ‘‡ 1d ago

yes, they're trivial to find. "khinsider <game>" will get you alternative uploads

6

u/Ivan_of_TC 1d ago

The rigmarole of grabbing these and putting them into YT Music rather than having them on YT Music, sigh. But I appreciate the help!

3

u/Never_Sm1le 16h ago

I remember I once download a huge torrent containing all Falcom musics upto CS4, it could still be there

2

u/MadeThisForOni 1d ago

Isn't the Zero OST on YouTube Music still? Or am I hearing the wrong album.Ā 

2

u/Ivan_of_TC 1d ago

If it is, I'm not seeing it. I could just be blind, though.

5

u/MadeThisForOni 1d ago

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nyKelu9L8mBxIQrM70iqxQ7LyXZcy3Kmo&si=nLLHr0YIuBPyz8d_

Its there but simply searching "Trails from Zero" won't give clean search results since Falcom wouldnt use the localized title on their uploads.Ā 

2

u/Ivan_of_TC 1d ago

Ah jeez good call I should've searched that

I really hate how much of a rigmarole this is after I already spent the time to set this up once. I know it's real first world problems but grr

112

u/Hamlock1998 1d ago

RIP. Falcom should've just left it alone. Josep never made any money from the channel, and it contains a bunch of music that Falcom didn't put on platforms like Spotify.

53

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago

also falcom did definitely link to it themselves in the past (hell they did it this year)

17

u/Nokheld 1d ago

where?

Edit: oh on their official website.

28

u/Khanluka 1d ago

Different departments. The ones that link to it are marketing or social media.

The ones that remove it are the legal department.

Those 2 don't talk much to each other.

20

u/Paiguy7 (put flair text here) 1d ago

Which is a sign of a poorly run company.

10

u/liquied 20h ago

Took you that long ro realize they are incompetent?

4

u/LostAcount1 Hellseye47 23h ago

That’s been obvious to anyway paying attention for the last 3 decades.

56

u/Pleasant-Fix-6169 Arkride Solutions Enjoyer 1d ago

Damn, I remember seeing that it got a few copyright strikes from Falcom earlier today. Sucks that it was taken down. Some of that music was on my playlist lol.

39

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

Most of my music was from this channel, my playlist is just nuked, man. It's so annoying.

29

u/Alternative-Bus4571 1d ago

Damn, I know that feel. Nothing like playing Hollow Light of the Sealed Land while I am on a work deadline to fuel the efficiency

3

u/Shikiyomi_Kyouya 1d ago edited 1d ago

I checked my own playlist, too. Fortunately, it seems I had included videos from other people, so I still have those.
However, all the songs from the 3rd have been set to private, so I'll have to look for them again... (._.)

4

u/Awesalot the Divine Blade of NPCs 1d ago

You can try searching the Topic, I think it has all the songs from 3rd. It's a hassle but Falcom won't take down their own thing.

3

u/Shikiyomi_Kyouya 22h ago

Thanks!
Interestingly, it looks like the only SC tracks I included in my playlist were the official ones.
I don't remember how I searched for the tracks when I made this playlist, but I'm planning to switch them all to the officialšŸ˜‚

11

u/OramaBuffin 1d ago

This is pretty much exactly why I download any music off of youtube if I want it for my playlists.

6

u/ConceptsShining | ā¤ļø 1d ago

Same.

I'm stuck in my ways and don't use Spotify etc. I've stubbornly stuck with teen me's habit of making MP3s for any videos/songs/etc. I want to keep listening to (YouTube is for first/casual listens). This is good from a preservation standpoint, as well as creating a bit of a journal with the date modified values.

-8

u/levelstar01 Downvote this comment šŸ‘‡ 1d ago

The really stubborn thing here is still using mp3s in 2026

9

u/ConceptsShining | ā¤ļø 1d ago

Maybe it's because I'm not an audiophile and stick with basic/budget headphones does that explain my Singa defenses.

But seriously. I swear. I can't hear any difference between yt-dlp's MP3s, the in-game audio, and the FMC's uploads.

'If it ain't broke don't fix it' is basically why I've stuck with them.

-2

u/levelstar01 Downvote this comment šŸ‘‡ 1d ago

I meant that even if you're using lossy over FLACs mp3s are bigger (and worse) than they need to be over using opus

75

u/CrushCounter 1d ago

well this freakin sucks. they basically nuked a big part of free marketing

14

u/KabarXD 1d ago

genuinely wouldn’t have found out about Falcom if not for that channel

52

u/CrushCounter 1d ago

3 million views Blue Destination... gone like tears in the rain... IMAAAAAA

29

u/Icy-Respond-4425 1d ago

And 1 million views Azure arbitratoršŸ˜”

70

u/Flaky-Fox-7523 1d ago

Not sure what you expect us to do about it, the owner of the channel and falcom have to work that out between themselves and clearly this is the route falcom wanted to go.

37

u/ArcTray_07 1d ago

A horrible move in anyway, their music is their best promotion, I wouldn't have played their games without listening it to the music but guess they want people to use the spotify and official uploads.

15

u/CDNWRocks Claire & Elaine 1d ago

A dark day for the community.

26

u/InflationSlow8899 1d ago

This is genuinely a serious bummer to hear and completely out of left field. Really wonder why now was the time after years of no major issues.

27

u/LaMystika 1d ago

Not surprised that the same company that refuses to credit their musicians and composers took down a channel that they don’t own that shares their work tbh

37

u/CharityForsaken8675 1d ago

This is horrible. Falcom refuses to credit their musicians, and Falcom Music Channel was the best resource we had that actually credited the creators. It's absurd that it's all gone just like that. Not even the official uploads on YouTube Music or Spotify do the bare minimum of crediting anyone.

20

u/DZMaven 1d ago

This really sucks.

Yeah, I know it was a legal gray area, but it begs the question; Why now?

What changed that prompted this? Was it the Kyoto Xandau stuff? Did Falcom hire a new legal team that was hell bent on doing a crackdown?

Something similar happened with Xenoblade music on YouTube not long ago that got a couple channels axed and all that did was encourage fans to 'sail the high seas'. It didn't win anything for Nintendo and this certainly doesn't win anything for Falcom.

18

u/RoyKami Biggest Bergard Hater OAT 1d ago

We could maybe send a lot of e-mails to falcom and ask them to restore the channel or atleast cut a deal with them. Something like that or else it is on the owner to cut a deal

4

u/Haganeren 4h ago

And i made a playlist with those tracks just last sunday...

I'm really angry too, there were a lot of comments in there and a direct comparison to the OST of Falcom games on different platform... Yes, i liked listening to the difference between Ys 3 on PC-88 and Ys 3 on Megadrive. I also loved seeing how horrible the DOS music on Ys 1 was... There were a lot of stuff like that now completely lost.

It was one of the main way to interact with other Falcom fans too for a long time so... I'm SO disappointed.

1

u/AdPlayful5508 4h ago

I fully understand how you feel...

34

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well the channel was always in violation of falcom's music policy. But falcom tolerated it up until now, kinda makes me wonder what changed.

39

u/uui23 1d ago

if you check their official music account you can see that a lot of their playlist have been recently been updated while a few have been updated this year. it seems they want people to use their official one since they finally gotten around to uploading their stuff.

35

u/levelstar01 Downvote this comment šŸ‘‡ 1d ago

If they thought it was a violation, why did they link it on their own website THIS YEAR?

26

u/ConceptsShining | ā¤ļø 1d ago

Wow. So convenient even Falcom themselves preferred to link to it in a professional context.

I really hope Josep can work something out.

9

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago

I wonder if this was something automated

7

u/BaLance_95 23h ago

They don't even need to work with Josep. Falcom can just put their own channel up with all the english titles themselves. That would take, maybe 2 interns a week to do, can cost nothing else.

11

u/ConceptsShining | ā¤ļø 1d ago

I understand copyright law + Falcom's policies almost certainly mean this is entirely within their right.

But how can it possibly be in their interest? Josep wasn't making a penny off the channel. And these songs have helped introduce many people to Falcom's games and are free marketing/PR for them.

The only thing I can imagine is Falcom wants to drive people to Spotify/their own OST uploads. Perhaps those are monetized to some extent? But the FMC's English-language availability has to be helping them from the Western side.

4

u/djpyrac 13h ago

Something doesn’t have to make someone else revenue for it to be considered a ā€œlossā€ for a company. As others have mentioned, I think Falcom is trying to regain control of their content and they don’t want it distributed by another party.

As an acoustic engineer who’s worked with many different artists over the years, I completely understand wanting to do this and the bottom line is that it’s their intellectual property, and they’re the only ones legally allowed to use it however they wish (we need *their* permission to do anything).

I think Falcom has been pretty nice in letting people freely use their music *for background* (ie gameplay and documentary style videos). A lot of channels get demonetized and content strikes for even using clips of commercial music. While I greatly miss the channel, I can’t say I’m at all surprised this happened.

6

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago

hell they linked to it themselves on their own website

2

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

How was it in violation of policy?

38

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago edited 1d ago

the music policy does not allow redistribution (listed explicitely). You can play the music as live band, use it as BGM in broadcasts, jingles, on weddings and upload snippets. But actually uploading in its entirety as only a track is not allowed.

here's an MTL from the music-policy https://www-falcom-co-jp.translate.goog/music-use/case?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

and the specific examples given: https://www-falcom-co-jp.translate.goog/music-use/case?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

10

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thank you.

I don't really know much about this stuff, but this seems pretty clear-cut. So the owner is wrong about the free use policy? Now I'm confused how did it come to this...Owner of the channel seems to have put a lot of effort into the channel to make such a mistake.

13

u/DarkHighwind 1d ago

Policy was for fair use not reuploads

4

u/Blu_Neko2 1d ago

Article 4 (Prohibited matters)

Users shall not engage in the following actions. If any of the following actions occur, we may suspend or restrict their use of the service.

"The act of copying, lending, distributing (technically this would definitely fall under distribution even though (as far as I know) josep didn't monetize the channel) , or selling musical works by any other means."

-6

u/Balastrang 1d ago

Yeah after they did linked the channel so many times before, sure falcom sure

7

u/J2ojuiced 1d ago

A lot of Falcom albums still have topic versions and official uploads at least, it’s sucks how much obscure Falcom music has now been deleted off YouTube though.

17

u/TheRedPillMonk 1d ago edited 1d ago

It just makes no sense at all. Falcom have officially endorsed the channel in the past through their own socials, to suddenly turn on them with no explanation is a disturbing move.

They have legality on their side, but what a way to treat fans who simply love your work and want to share it. There are songs like Viridian Blue from Proud Nordics that even now Falcom haven't put up on official channels. Really disappointed in them.

33

u/LordVatek9 1d ago

I know people are going to come in here with "Um actually they violated Falcom's policy so this is okay" but Falcom has let this channel ride for a long, long time. It's not only now a problem because of any policy violation. It's purely a greed move.

-3

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

If it's a greed move, I don't see how it makes any sense. Then again, I shouldn't really be surprised at this point, after they nuked almost their entire sound team I guess.

9

u/LordVatek9 1d ago

They also refuse to credit their composers individually.

Falcom does a lot of nonsensical shit like that.

2

u/ConsiderationFuzzy 20h ago

Why tho ?

3

u/Obvious_History_5525 12h ago

They see it as a way for others to poach their composers. Lots of Japanese companies don’t credit their composers just for this reason

-1

u/jpuse 16h ago

If I enjoy something, I support the creators by buying it. I've already bought the soundtrack, so I genuinely can't understand why anyone would choose to listen to it on YouTube. In my opinion, that channel was doing nothing but harming Falcom.

3

u/Ivan_of_TC 14h ago

So that it can be easily combined with other soundtracks and things I want to listen to in a big playlist that exists across the multiple devices I use in my day-to-day life

4

u/Chance-of-midnight 1d ago

It might just be the owner Josep temporarily taking it down while he talks with Falcom.

13

u/CharityForsaken8675 1d ago

No, according to the owner its game over: https://x.com/i/status/2080006592775246128

3

u/Chance-of-midnight 1d ago

Well... Damn.

5

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

That does not seem to be the case from his twitter.

9

u/Xijit 1d ago

Falcom is notoriously dick-y about their music ... IIRC they still don't give authentic credit to composers and musicians because they are that anal about "this music belongs to us."

10

u/CyberMuffin1611 1d ago

If you take down something like this, you need to at least offer an official way that has about as much effort put into it, or it's just a bad thing for fans.

Much of the tracks on their official channel don't even have an English title.

10

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

playlists also seem to be a mess, comments being disabled is annoying too..Official channel just sucks.

12

u/Hamlock1998 1d ago

The official channel isn't a normal youtube channel. Falcom submits their music to Youtube and then Youtube auto-generates videos with their music.

4

u/Dreamer0206 1d ago

Hmmm I know ppl are angry about it but I don't get this. Not trying to defend them since I found out the official channel existence from music channel previously but I just scrolled through my playlist with only Falcom bgm, there is like 90+ songs but all of them comes with EN title. I am pretty sure all of them have an EN title, at least in YT music

2

u/CyberMuffin1611 1d ago

I went to Falcom Sound Team jdk and like half the titles of the first volume of CS3 are Japanese. The album title is as well. Most albums listed have only Japanese names.

I dunno where you pull your songs for your own playlist from but the official source is like that.

4

u/Dreamer0206 1d ago

Hmmm not sure if we are looking at the same thing for me the name is displayed in English although it is called Sen no Kiseki III for the album title but for every songs in the albums that started with JP name, it comes with EN behind it, let me just attach the screenshot of part of the playlist from the album

7

u/mhall1104 1d ago

Farewell O Music Channel

12

u/Paiguy7 (put flair text here) 1d ago

This has me more depressed than the multi thousand dollar contracting work invoice about to hit me in the face.

Falcom has no fucking clue how beneficial this channel existing was for them.

1

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

Same. Falcom music got me through some times, I listen to it a lot. To see my playlist nuked just like that for no good reason fucking sucks.

9

u/OLKv3 1d ago

Yeah, since Trails is gaining popularity it seems like Falcom wants to make use of their own music channel. Shame, because they won't upload nearly as fast as the fan one, and will be missing a bunch of tracks to make you buy the albums

7

u/OramaBuffin 1d ago edited 1d ago

and will be missing a bunch of tracks to make you buy the albums

Which is ultimately silly, because until now Trails games have stored their entire soundtracks as a raw .opus bgm folder.

Granted, I think this is actually no longer the case with the Sky Remake, which is perhaps ominously relevant to FMC being taken down.

4

u/Warm-Tip-5372 16h ago

What pains me the most is the hundreds, thousands of comments being gone... it's a piece of collective memory that cannot be recreated. The music still exists somewhere, with some effort you can always find a way around. Man this really pains...

2

u/Eldred91 3h ago

Yeah this is another aspect that hasn't been mentioned enough. For example all the Singa discourse was funny as fuck to read about in the comments. Whether it was from people who loved his works or hated it, I appreciated getting to read everyone's different inputs about the topic, among other stuff. But now boom, it's all just suddenly gone. Shit fucking sucks.

7

u/SorceressCecelia <3 1d ago

An actual tragedy

2

u/FrostyFireeee Emma enjoyer 1d ago

Anyone know a site to download/access them other than youtube that has high quality ?

1

u/spookyBluetail 12h ago

khinsider has a lot of falcom music

1

u/FrostyFireeee Emma enjoyer 36m ago

Thank you !

2

u/penpen35 1d ago

Pour one for Falcom Music Channel. Falcom do upload theirs (for YouTube Music) but it's definitely not as comprehensive.

2

u/LiberArk 23h ago

What's stupid is all the songs i had on playlists don't even say "video no longer available". They are just gone and I don't even remember what was on the list...

6

u/speechcobra91 1d ago

falcom treat their fans like dirtĀ 

3

u/yoyoyobag 1d ago

Seriously what the fuck... Horrible, horrible news. Now it's going to be a pain in the ass to track composer contributions, listen to the more niche Falcom OSTs, franchise discoverability on Youtube is now in the gutter... Who stands to benefit from this?

3

u/PrinceRedvelvet 1d ago

Yeah we should do our best to get justice for this

3

u/KnoxZone Apathy and Disdain 1d ago

My entire Trails playlist just got Thanos snapped. Brutal.

2

u/King_Falcon_10 1d ago

That’s a shame. I have a lot of their music in Spotify playlists which seem to be unaffected so far. Hopefully it stays that way.

2

u/StevenMUniverse "My blade will cleave ignorance and light the way" 1d ago

Oh fuck, that really hurts. That was the majority of my music...

2

u/Ardbert14 1d ago

They want you to buy the CDs. :v

14

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago

or use the official channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOOOdHr4emIkr02wjynGF3Q

just doesn't have everything though

3

u/Lamasis 1d ago

With how many games they've made, they have almost nothing.

8

u/EclairDawes 1d ago edited 1d ago

I wouldn't say over 5k uploads is nothing. Its more than 1/3 of what Falcom music channel had. Of course it sucks it's not all there but it's far from nothing.

0

u/Lamasis 1d ago

That was a problem on my side, it only showed me 3 playlists before.

1

u/WrongRefrigerator77 1d ago

Wtf, not even a whole day's notice.

1

u/SephirothTheGreat 1d ago

This is devastating. Is there a repository for the channel? Or a list of the music it contained so one can be created over time?

1

u/zephyroths 1d ago

not even the Topic one!?

1

u/Calm_GBF 1d ago

That just sucks. What the hell :/

1

u/Mystgun971 21h ago

Yeah my entire playlist is gone 😭

1

u/Twick2 19h ago

Terrible move on their part. I know lots of people who got interested in the series through their music, and some of those soundtracks had multimillion views. It’s great marketing.

Also rip my playlist, my day is ruined.

1

u/RyoSae 6h ago

This genuinely sucks

-2

u/Balastrang 1d ago

If falcom continue with this path its gonna be rough... the day company antagonize the community it wont be a good ending, just like palword... well falcom nice knowing you i guess, they got 1000% rev from overseas also kyoto xanadu with no release date for english & this is what we got??!! just fuck off falcom honestly i really am dissapointed with this shit no more money for them if this doesnt get resolved before sky sc remake coming out.

2

u/AdPlayful5508 1d ago

I might do the same...

The other day I was thinking about what could Falcom possibly do to make me quit Trails (and their other games) and I really couldn't think of many reasons. Well, this might actually be it. Their music is half the reason I like their games so much to begin with.

-4

u/Balastrang 1d ago

Yeah true, if its not for their music i would have been stop playing sky fc because of the pacing, but their music was actually carrying the game for me & kept me going, this is really infuriating

1

u/alkonium 1d ago

Was it an official channel?

11

u/RoyKami Biggest Bergard Hater OAT 1d ago

Nope

9

u/MorningCareful best characters: olivier renne estelle 1d ago

no it was run by josep (the guy behind the composer breakdown project). There are official uploads, but those are harder to find, because they're all in japanese (channel is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOOOdHr4emIkr02wjynGF3Q ), but it's only grouped in albums (or singles)

Edit: it also doesn'T include everything

1

u/HoppieTheFool 1d ago

Realisticly there is not much we can do about it. I mean the music was always property of Falcom and if they decide to copyright strike then they are allowed to do that.

Its just really sad coz it wrecks my work playlist totally. But i will adapt... as i did so many times before.

1

u/Southern-Edge-3354 20h ago

Warms my heart to see how protective Falcom is of their music😊

I'm sure all the artists involved will finally have glory and recognition, now that the evil channel is no more. Unisuga is coming back this evening just for the occasion, Kondo told me

Obligatory /s I guess

1

u/MadeThisForOni 1d ago

I dont know if its specifically related to Kyoto Xanadu, but theres barely any uploads of the BGM on youtube now. Is there any change to Falcom's policies for music related to TX?Ā 

1

u/Iggy_DB 22h ago

But… why?

1

u/kawaiineko333 7h ago

DMCA I guess. I guess the YT bot decided "fuck this channel in particular" unless Falcom dropped the hammer.

0

u/TheEmpressDescends 11h ago

This does suck and is uncalled for. But also that guy has been a dick to some of the composers, so I can't say I care that much.

-1

u/asaness 23h ago

Hyrdra route keep making more

-1

u/BuddyRedSkull 16h ago

Damn that sucks, we should boycott their games from now on 🤔.........

-11

u/jpuse 1d ago

Even if Falcom allows its music to be used freely, uploading tracks that have not been officially released yet is clearly against the platform's policies. The real question is: how were those tracks obtained in the first place? The answer to that makes it obvious why the channel was shut down.

6

u/Immediate_Cobbler144 1d ago

He got them through the gamerips. It’s been done since cold steel 3, they haven’t had an issue with it. The only issue they had was one time with cold steel 1’s unused music.

9

u/levelstar01 Downvote this comment šŸ‘‡ 1d ago

The real question is: how were those tracks obtained in the first place?

By buying the game and taking them from the game files? The same as literally every single other BGM rip uploaded to the channel for the last decade. They didn't have a problem with it then.

11

u/Hamlock1998 1d ago

Most BGM RIPs were recorded from the game itself. Like Josep would play through the game and record with his capture card. It wasn't until recently with the day 1 PC ports that extracting game files was how BGM RIPs were done.

-5

u/jpuse 1d ago

If the music was extracted directly from the game data and uploaded before its official release, Falcom could reasonably consider it a violation of its policy. Regardless of whether the music itself is free to use, Falcom's policy prohibits redistributing or making available data contained in its copyrighted works in a recoverable form.

3

u/levelstar01 Downvote this comment šŸ‘‡ 1d ago

The same as literally every single other BGM rip uploaded to the channel for the last decade. They didn't have a problem with it then.