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Hello! Thank you very much for the time you spent commenting and for your constructive feedback:) Of course, the method is imperfect and I lack the tools to properly analyze the reception of these works on RUclips Music. The best would be to have access to audience retention (I'll tell you a few words about this at the end of my remarks). About re-viewing, it's a bit mysterious but all we know is that a re-viewing will count as a new view if the video is rewatched for at least 30 seconds (for example there can be no abusive re-viewing by reloading the page) and if several minutes elapse between each re-viewing (so if someone listens to the music on repeat without interruption of several minutes,the views will not be counted) This question of the time between two revisions challenges me a lot because I'm not sure that a few minutes are really enough. What I can tell you and what I have observed about popular osts is that if we mean by popularity the number of views, it is not enough to have a minimum of data on the appreciation of works. For example, it happens that between two songs with a high number of views (so that we could qualify as popular music like Lulaby for Mergo and Ebrietas) and with an almost similar number of views, we notice that they have a fundamentally different number of likes, which is why these songs are in very different places in my ranking. Also, music that is not very popular by its number of views (such as Moonlit Melody and Rom Vacuous Spider, which have a low number of views and therefore unpopular and with an extremely similar number of views) also end up in very different positions because of this number of likes. Popular music does not prevent you from having a very good ratio of likes/views, but the opposite is also possible. This also applies to unpopular music. That's why I decided to favor this ratio of likes/views rather than based on the popularity of the works. Finally, I'll finish by telling you that a good like/view ratio, regardless of the popularity of the music, goes hand in hand with a good quality audience retention curve (the curve is visible on youtube videos that have more than 50,000 views). For example, between Lullaby for Mergo and Ebrietas, you have a very different curve: for one, the curve is upwards, without dips, with a stronger engagement, and for the other, the curve is littered with peaks and troughs, with a lot of skipped passages. I hope you have understood my point of view and I thank you again for expressing your opinion calmly and respectfully. People like you are rather rare in the Dark Souls/Bloodborne fan community. Some will tell me that what I do sucks because their favorite music is not at the top of the ranking when it's not even my personal ranking :') Anyway... Have a good day ;)

@@ashen_scores Thanks for the explanation. Good luck with future endeavours, and don't forget: fear the old blood

Thank you for your comment and your time. Twin Princes is so well written with very good harmonies, I love it, it's clearly underrated.

Just a small example: Gwyn's theme: 942,481 views for 16,190 likes. Gaël's theme: 1,184,187 views for 10,123 likes. Does it speak to you now?

Hey thank you very much for your comment :) I like to know what experiences you have had with this music. Haha yes I agree it makes these music very original works I think we can salute the work of the musicians for the remake, because they mostly kept the main themes and embellished them so that the atmosphere corresponds more to the game.

Thank you very much for your appreciation, it means a lot to me. I still have the feeling that this music can be improved, that I could rework it a little more and improve the musical writing, but I am very happy to have found an original idea for this area of the game.

@@_zZzLite_ One of the most beautiful musical moments that I had as a gamer

@@jagermantis you mean "enjoyers" (it's not my personal rank, but don't worry I love this theme ;))

Oh yeah I just realised.

@@jagermantis 😉 thank you for your comment

wow thank you so much for your comment, this music is so old and you are the only one to have made a comment to me since I created it, it means a lot to me. I admit that sometimes I lose the motivation to create . For example, I thought that no one liked this music so I didn't insist on making others in this style: in fact it's a piece for orchestra that I arranged for synthesizer. Your comment gave me a little joy. I admit that I was very proud of my collaboration with Ambient Souls because I found that the music went perfectly with the atmosphere of the game. It's possible that if more people show interest in this synth style, I might release more videos where I arrange most of my pieces for orchestra. If you really like what I do, please use what you have available to get more people watching my videos, because I think this is the last year I'll be able to dedicate myself to this project. It's not easy to create original music and not even be able to collect 1 cent from it. I would have liked to be able to make a living from it, I even applied to the most famous video game studios in the world, without success :') If I managed to have 1000 subscribers at the end of the year, things could change for the future of this channel. This is also why I am currently making rankings on Dark Souls music, so that more people discover my channel and subscribe to it. Sorry for this long text, but at least it allows me to be honest with you. Thank you again for your support, it’s very important. See you soon :)

@@ashen_scores I understand. Doing passion projects is often a thankless endeavor. Sometimes finding joy in creating something and being proud of it means more than validation/views. The music does compliment the visuals perfectly.

@@venomsnack Thank you very much

Thank you so much At your service :) The ranking for bloodborne will arrive in a few weeks ;) Another ranking will arrive in a few days before.

Yes, it's completely crazy, and It is clear that some do not deserve their ranking in our eyes. But some of the DS3 tracks are still quite high in the ranking, with a good audience retention. The disparity between Vordt's theme and the other DS3 music is very interesting especially since Vordt's theme is one of the only ones from DS3 with such a high ratio and a poor audience retention.

Hey ! Thank you very much for sharing your music preferences with us :) I am very happy that you appreciate Mr. Takenouchi's music, it is also for me my favorite dark souls1 music and it is in my top 3 of all dark souls combined. I love this musician so much that I included another one of his songs in the introduction to this video. We owe him all the sounds of Demon's Souls (he was the audio director) as well as many of the sounds of Dark Souls 1 (he worked on it as sound designer) I think he was one of the best musicians that fromsoftware had on their team. I'm sure his music would have given a lot of freshness to the games that followed Dark Souls. We don't know the precise reasons for his departure...I would have really liked to interview him one day but I don't know if I'm capable of it lol. In any case I'm sure he would have done wonders on Elden ring for example.

@@ashen_scores yes very beautiful compositions!

@@Junebug879 😀🎶

@@Voidkin_ thank you very much for your compliment, it means a lot to me. this piece is starting to age but I think I have found an original idea for the sanctuary . Although there could be thousands of different musical offerings for this area, I'm glad to have produced something that appeals to you and I hope to do even better in the future. And otherwise, welcome to this channel :)

Hey thank you for your comment :) Demon's Souls tracks were very original in my opinion, in particular through the use of the instruments and I think a lot of people reacted emotionally to that music (more than with Elden Ring except for a few). The quality of the writing of the music of Demon's Souls is difficult to dispute for those that people particularly liked.

Hey! Thank you very much for your comment. I made this video for this reason as well, which is to make people think about how we could most effectively manifest our musical preferences (on youtube or spotify, or via polling sites etc.) and how we can interpret the little available data that we have access to at the moment. You are absolutely right to criticize my ranking system. I'll try to explain why I didn't use the number of plays (or views) for my ranking method, and that in the end, I preferred to use the "likes/views" ratio. Please excuse me if I am misunderstood because English is not my native language : I will use a traductor to respond. At first, I said to myself: obviously, I have to use the number of listens as a criterion of appreciation. First problem, as you said, people listen to their favorite music in loops: but this is not observable on RUclips (you can only leave one view on the video despite all your rewatching, and I wasn't sure if it was the same for Spotify...) Then, like movies, people are sometimes also emotionally affected or have really enjoyed much less famous music than the ones everyone is talking about and that they came across on youtube by typing "dark souls ost" and that appear first in their results. I then told myself that "likes" were a more sincere way that people had available to express their emotion and show that a piece of music had made a pleasant impression on them. You yourself have probably put a "like" to some music and there is probably a better chance that you have listened to the music on which you have left a "like" than those on which you have left nothing. If you're like me and you don't necessarily have the reflex to put "likes" or comments to music that you like a lot, imagine how much the listeners were marked to make this effort to express their appreciation. So I thought that the action of putting a like puts all Dark souls music on an equal footing regardless of how many times they are listened to and I established the hypothesis that if a song was famous, it might have a number of likes for a high number of views. But while doing my analyses, there were surprises for some works, I then wondered: if these music are so famous (for example Gael's theme), why don't they have at least as good a ratio of "likes/views" as others less famous? It was very surprising to me to see that, for example, a lot of the unfamous boss music in Dark Souls II (like the "royal rat Vanguard") has a higher "like/view" ratio than more famous boss music (I mean "famous" that has been seen or heard a lot of times) from Dark Souls III. I'm sure there are one or more reasons for this (as well as the fact that some people find Dark souls II much better than the III for example) and these reasons can be musical or extra-musical. Moreover, what explains that music as famous as Gael's theme as well as Sif's or Majula's theme is much higher in the ranking? At that time, the number of listens didn't seem very relevant to me anymore, while using the number of likes would allow me to have a slightly more reliable method to analyze the listeners' appreciation. Obviously, if the title of my video had been "what are the most listened to (or "most famous") Dark Souls music?, I would have chosen the number of listens as a criterion. But I had the impression, for example, that some of them, like Vordt's theme, became famous because of extra-musical reasons (this one appears a lot in Internet memes for example) or because of the fact that the boss fight marked the listeners rather than a real appreciation of their quality of musical writing. Musical works like Vordt's theme may have provoked emotional reactions in listeners that depend not so much on the music itself but rather on its referential context. I don't reject referential meanings (game or film music is inseparable from its context and its visual support and this necessarily comes into account in the listener's final reaction) but I think that they can distort the appreciation of the true musical quality of a work: that's why I would have loved, for this ranking, that the number of plays analyzed comes from people who have not played Dark Souls. Indeed, in my opinion, it would have been much more interesting because in this case their reaction to the music would not have been conditioned by the game experience => I'm pretty much convinced, having experienced it with my family, that if you play Gwyn's theme and other boss themes to people who haven't played Dark Souls, there is probably a greater chance that they will prefer Gwyn's theme to the Ceaseless Discharge theme for example, because from a musical style point of view, Gwyn's theme is more easily accessible to listen to for the majority of listeners. Choosing a ranking method is very complicated without precise tools: at the beginning I thought that the best way was to have audience retention. (Having observed a few of them, I can tell you that generally, the music with the highest "likes/views" ratio is the one where audience retention appears the highest => you can observe it when you watch a RUclips video with more than 50,000 views: a kind of curve appears, superimposed on the timeline, try it with Majula compared to Gael for example) In the case of those music that have a low "likes/views" ratio like Gael or Malenia's theme for Elden Ring, people mostly listen to a specific passage, sometimes phase 2 of the boss, the moment when the choir appears, a climax, etc. Also, there are very famous music whose likes/views ratio and their audience retention is very high (like "A moment's peace"). We can therefore see that music as famous as Gael's such as the theme of Gwyn or Sif is objectively more appreciated if we observe their audience retention and their "likes/views" ratio. Unfortunately, audience retention is not precisely accessible to viewers and I could not simply rely on visual observation to make my ranking. One tool I would have liked to have had at my disposal is the number of "dislikes" which could have changed this ranking somewhat, but I think that people can't see these famous "red thumbs" anymore for a few years, and it's quite a shame for the case of our video. I hope that I have correctly shown you why the number of listens alone is not enough in my opinion to show the music that people prefer, but this is only my point of view and you were totally right to open this debate which is the heart of why I made this video: I too did not understand why some music was so low in the ranking, But I prefer to think that there is an explanation at the level of the appreciation of musical quality and that, even if people are not musicians, they have the means to appreciate or dislike music for sincere and understandable reasons. For me, the action of liking or not liking is not trivial and shows that the listener has reacted to the music rather than having listened to it passively. Finally, I would like to add that for this ranking, I took care to analyze music from a single source: namely RUclips of course, but above all, I analyzed those that were distributed on RUclips by the composers themselves. (Because the problem is that a lot of people reupload Dark Souls music, and I can't go looking for all these "likes" and all this number of listens that would take me weeks to list to add them together). So, if the listeners are people who have stumbled upon these songs officially uploaded by composers (the very famous ones usually appear first in the search results, especially those from Dark souls 1), then I think that, for the less famous music, there have been listeners who have voluntarily searched for the music they wanted by typing the name of the title and the composer to leave a like (which for me could imply that the listeners have made an extra effort to show their appreciation for these unfamous music, maybe because they know that they deserve to be highlighted despite their low celebrity). My ranking system is imperfect and I wish I had other tools to make it more accurate, but I hope I've at least offered a glimpse of the music that has made a pleasant impression on players. I hope that my argument has not been too confusing, and I hope I have nourished your reflection on this subject. iIn any case, thank you very much because it is very exciting to be able to discuss it directly with you even if the comment format is not very adequate. If you still find that the number of listens is a primary criterion, you could make your own ranking (with Spotify for example, because on youtube I don't believe that you add a view every time you listen to a video) according to this number of listens: you will then have a very different but interesting ranking on which we can discuss. (And maybe we could reflect on why Gael's theme would probably be high in your ranking and low in mine). See you soon !

@@ashen_scores thank you for explaining! That’s a really well thought out method of analysis!

@@ashen_scores A few things. First one account can leave leave multiple views one one video by rewatching for over 30 second (at least when I looked it up). Also with DMCA takedowns hitting a lot of the popular DS songs, this make using youtube in almost any way really unreliable as a ranking system.

@@hullos1082 Hello, thank you for your comment. You're right to criticize my ranking system, and it's always very interesting to discuss it. I was myself very surprised to see some music ranked so low, while others at the top didn't surprise me (or not totally). I'll avoid repeating what I've said earlier in my response to calebgriffin, but please know that I initially considered ranking based on the number of views (or listens) but eventually changed my mind and looked at the number of likes in relation to the number of views. I thought long and hard before making this decision, believe me. But I noticed something curious while listening to the music on RUclips, and that's what made me change my mind and focus on the "likes": it's the famous audience retention curve that you can observe on every RUclips video with more than 50,000 views. I then noticed that the music with the most views (like Gael's theme) didn't always have good audience retention (while most popular music with a lot of views, like Gwyn's theme, or A Moment's peace , has excellent audience retention) and that music with a higher "like/view" ratio generally (I say "generally" because this is not the case for Sif's theme and I think he's the first on my rank for non-musical reasons) had better audience retention than music with a lower "like/view" ratio (typically the case with Gael's or Malenia's theme for Elden Ring). So I decided to use RUclips because it's the only platform with a tool that allows you to gauge audience appreciation: obviously, my ranking system isn't perfect, but I tried to be careful and have a consistent method, in addition to offering a ranking that I think is more interesting than simply going on Spotify and ranking based on the number of listens and therefore popularity (even though what's popular is generally appreciated, that doesn't mean we don't have a deep preference for less popular things: in general, fast food is popular and appreciated, but fine dining can sometimes leave you with an incredibly stronger and more pleasant experience). I specifically made sure to analyze music posted by the composers themselves on RUclips through their distributor because at least those are not at risk of being removed. I'll just share one thing I observed with you. Let's take two very famous pieces of music from Dark Souls: for example, "Slave Knight Gael" and "Gwyn, Lord of Cinder." Both have around a million views on RUclips, but the proportion of "likes" is much higher for Gwyn's theme than for Gael's. Additionally, their audience retention curve is extremely different: with one, you see a thick, ascending curve with no skipped sections, meaning the music is listened to from beginning to end, while with the other, there are many dips with fewer listeners hearing it from beginning to end, instead focusing on specific parts like the second phase of the boss fight, for example. So you can clearly see that Gael's theme, despite being famous, probably replayed on loop by its fans, didn't have as much impact on the musical experience of listeners as Gwyn's theme. Moreover, the audience retention on Gael's theme video is fundamentally worse compared to Gwyn's, and this is something everyone can observe on RUclips. So, how can such a difference be explained? It's not just the number of views that can tell you which one is more appreciated (yet that's the precise aim of my video, not to rank the most popular music): the number of likes is the only available tool that allows for a more in-depth analysis. As mentioned earlier, what's popular and famous isn't necessarily the thing you've had the most incredible and enjoyable experience with: this is true for music as it is for many other things. You can love very famous music, but you can also love less-known music just as much. Even between two unpopular songs (like "Covetous Demon" and "Bearer of the Curse") the like/view ratios are very different. Regarding what you said about views and replays, that may be true, but again, if I compare Gael's theme to Gwyn's theme: both tracks may have been replayed 10 times by 100,000 people to reach 1 million views, or it could be 1 million people giving a single view to the video; it doesn't change the fact that both have a million views but a very different number of likes. (Moreover, if we knew, for example, that 100,000 people replayed both Gwyn's and Gael's themes 10 times to reach 1 million views/listens each, it would mean that these 100,000 people left fewer likes on Gael's theme than on Gwyn's theme: we would reach the same conclusion no matter how the views were obtained and how the music's popularity was achieved.) I hope you understand my choices, and I hope I haven't been too confusing in my explanations. In any case, if you're not convinced, I invite you to create your own ranking to find out which music is the most liked (and not the most listened to) in the Dark Souls games. Thank you again for your time.

I totally agree, we should rather make a top 5 of our favorites on each game rather than choosing one ;). (But if I really had to choose one, I think it would be the theme of the main menu of Dark souls II) I see that you have very good tastes too, I really like all the ones you have listed (DeS is a delight, I need to rank it lol). Oh my god, all this music made us travel so much. Thank you for sharing your preferences with us, I'm very interested in what my followers like 😃

Omg I don't know how I forgot about ds2 menu. Such a weird song but I love it a lot too 🤩

@Woopinah I'm so sorry, I don't know if you saw my answer on the Demon's Souls video... I was thanking you for your comment and for the time you took to write to me, I was going to tell you about Maiden In Black, the work done on the remake and when I answered you I realized that this music was missing in my video (it is ranked 7th but I just forgot to insert it). So I put my video in private the time to upload the corrected video but unfortunately your kind comment will no longer be visible :''(( I'm very sorry

​@@ashen_scores No worries 😅

@@Woopinah :'((

Oh yes! What is your favorite? 😀

@@ashen_scores ornstein and smaugh for sure

@@Vinimano99 Very good taste. A real harmonic and melodic work, full of catchy modulations, superb transitions between sections, a heavy and mastered sound texture, a very original theme: an iconic piece

@@Woopinah wow thank you very much for your appreciation! It touches me, because I know that I don't have a high level yet although I put all my soul into it. One day I hope that my works can make video game professionals want to work with me. In any case, it motivates me a lot to know that you like my works and that you react to them positively so I will continue to try to improve.

Merci pour ce commentaire très constructif et gratifiant

C'est vraiment dommage qu'elle ait pas un meilleur départ les gens ratent quelque chose :,)

Merci beaucoup ;) et oui c'est une bonne idée, il faudrait que je continue à composer pour Anor Londo, j'ai envie de continuer la forêt de Noiresouche aussi

@@LolitaBrion C'est gentil , j'espère qu'elle aura plus de vues oui mais c'est compliqué d'être dans des recommandations :(

Hey ! Thank you for taking the time to comment on my video, it helps me a lot and makes me happy. I'm glad you enjoyed it :) When I made the rank I was surprised too lol. A few days ago I made a similar ranking for the music of Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3 (which I compared with each other) and I can tell you that it's also surprising ;)

Me neither ! haha Thank you very much for your comment, it makes me very happy and helps me a lot!

시간을내어 음악을 듣고이 멋진 리뷰를 작성해 주셔서 감사합니다.) 그것은 나를 매우 행복하게 만듭니다!

Merci beaucoup pour ton commentaire très constructif ;) ça m'aidera à avoir plus de vues! (hésite pas à lâcher tes plus beaux pouces bleus sur les autres haha)

N'hésite pas à tout moment à rédiger un aussi qualitatif commentaire, cette fois-ci d'écoute, sur cette œuvre si bon te semble! ;))

🖌🖼❤

Oh yes... Mister takenouchi is a master in video game audio/music. I think that many Souls players like his music without knowing him (many like the character creation music of dark souls 1 for example, which we thought was created by motoi sakuraba). I dream that he will redo the sound design or the music for future RPGs from fromsoftware: I am convinced that players need calmer and more dreamlike music even in Elden Ring. Moreover, he was the sound director for the production of Demon's Souls and we probably owe him the creation of many sound assets used in Dark Souls (sounds in the menus, summon sounds, etc.)

@@ashen_scores I agree completely with everything you said. I even found this video in the first place because I went looking for his work. The man truly is a genius and I would absolutely love for him to compose more for FromSoftware because, as you said, we definitely need a lot more variety as most of their recent titles have had very similarly sounding music. It would do them good to have his pieces as a contrast.

@@AntiRiku I couldn't have said it better! It's a real pleasure to see that we had similar experiences with those games music and that we both note that the current artistic direction of from software's rpgs tends towards something too homogeneous (maybe since Dark souls 3) even if the music of Elden ring is, for example, always very worked (but more on the texture than on harmony in my opinion). In short, I'm sure that a large majority of players would be happy to hear more ambitious and original music like King's Field or Demon's Souls ones. By the way, I'm glad that you found here what you were looking for. Thank you for your support ;).

Hey ! Thank you very much for your appreciation :), I hope that my music will not be too experimental for you (especially this one which is very unstable and very frustrating for some listeners). In any case, I wish you a great campaign ;)

Thank you very much for your comment and for your appreciation, I am very happy that you liked the work and that it made you think of the decrepitude of Oolacile.Thank you for your support ;)

Good evening, and thank you very much for your thoughtful comment. Reading it, I'm glad to see that you felt exactly what I created this RUclips channel for. Feel free to share what you like most here and thank you for taking the time to express and share your feelings. Thank you again for your support ;)

Thank you very much for your comment ! Your opinion is precious to me. This is quite an old piece, and I know that it can be frustrating for the listeners, so I'm very happy that you found something interesting. Indeed, I tried to express what I felt in this area : I was absorbed by its magnificience and it was also a painful experience as a player. Consequently , it was a big challenge for me to compose something that could mix all of those feelings. The results are not perfect, but I hope you found it original. Thank you again for your comment and I hope you will appreciate my other works :) Have a good day !

The drawing was inspired by one of the trolls' caves scans but also inspired by Bloodborne :)

Thank you very much ! ;) She is talented

Thank you :)🎶🎵⚔🏰