



About

Nightcore is the glorified term to describe the style of speeding up Eurodance, Hands Up and Trance, which emerged in the mid 2000s on YouTube. It is characterized its high-pitched vocal and tempo of between 160 and 180 beats per minute. It originated in 2002 from the Norwegian DJ duo of the same name.

Since 2011, Nightcore has been massively misused to describe sped up versions of various music genres.

Origin

In 2002, Norwegian students Thomas S. Nilse (aka DJ TNT) and Steffen Ojala Søderholm (aka DJ SOS), both born in northern Norway in 1986, started on their first track for a school project. After presenting the song to their teacher (Tor Bjørnar Henriksen), they received a 4 (C on the international scale). The format of the school project is unknown, but for what can be considered the second round of the project they decided to make their first CD Energized, which consisted of 13 tracks using the software Dance eJay 3. According to Thomas himself the album was praised as "sounding as if made by professionals" , and "naturally they scored a 6 [highest grade] in their school project" (both quotes translated from Norwegian).

Thomas S. Nilse and Steffen Ojala Søderholm named their duo 'Nightcore'; "Nightcore means that we are the core of the night, so you'll dance all night long". After their first CD release in 2002, they released four more albums using more advanced software. The CDs were given to local DJs and anyone who showed interest in their music.





History

Nightcore on the internet can be summarized into the following:

Original Nightcore songs which emerged on the internet (2006-2007)

Nightcore Dance MV & AMV (2006-present)

True to original, fan-made Nightcore songs (2008-present)

Misunderstood genre of Nightcore songs (2011-present)

Nightcore slowly recognized by the music industry (2011-present)

LimeWire is the known first platform of distributing original Nightcore songs. However, as LimeWire‎ was shut down in 2010, the origin of Nightcore songs on LimeWire is lost. During 2006 and 2007, only few Nightcore songs were uploaded to YouTube, including Dam Dadi Doo, Don't You, Where Are You Now, all of which are used in Kingdom Hearts AMVs.

Since late 2006, Nightcore songs began to be used in various AMVs (Anime Music Videos) and dance MVs uploaded to YouTube, slowly gaining interest.

From 2008 to 2010, both original Nigtcore and fan-made songs gradually became more popular, and more songs were made. On the 9 February, 2008, Maikel631 started his channel. Another early fan-made Nightcore song uploader, who goes under different aliases, is Nasinocinesino (aka VortexVK, Nasinocinesino1 and Nightek1 ). His accounts were suspended several times, respectively, to which he has stated that he will "move on Dailymotion to find some peace from the copyright of Youtube." – as of 2015, he has yet to follow up on his initiative. In 2008, one of the remaining major fan-made Nightcore songs-uploader oShyGuyzo uploaded 17 fan-made Nightcore songs on YouTube labelled "Nightcore II".

In 2009, more fan-made Nightcore channels started to appear. This included YouTube users Svetlana89, NightcoreVIIFan, MuffinWolf, 174005, LILMUFFINGIRL1, Linus Persson, Michel van Ravestein, Indyapa Productions, kimchi4fun and Ralphie Cee. Svetlana89 has one of the longest running Nightcore channels, having been active until April 2013, and has a count of 201 uploaded Nightcore and Trance songs.

In 2010, Lanta111 made his appearance on YouTube uploading 81 Nightcore songs labeled "Nightcore III". The account went inactive in mid 2012.

In 2011, the next big Nightcore uploader was AliceBloodRabbit appeared, who uploaded a total of 45 Nightcore songs to YouTube. That same year the most popular Nightcore uploader, Maikel631, had his YouTube account suspended due to copyright infringements after which he started his second channel Maikel6311. His new account has reached over 66,000 subscribers and 37 million views.

Ever since the first fan-made Nightcore song emerged on YouTube, an insignificant amount of sped up non-techno/dance songs were uploaded to YouTube with the label "Nightcore". However, since the midyear of 2011, the amount of sped-up pop, rock, hip hop/rap songs wrongly labeled "Nightcore" on YouTube increased rapidly. Some of the songs became great hits despite their false labeling, and accumulated millions of views. This became the bloom of "fake" Nightcore songs, which ultimately led to confusion of Nightcore as a genre, resulting in the misconception of Nightcore as being any song of any genre sped up and high-pitched.

Dance MV

The first fan-made Nightcore Dance MV on YouTube is unknown due to the video getting deleted years ago. However, one of the earliest uploads is known to be Dancing With WASSABI! by Wassabi Productions (note: the links provided are reuploads of the original videos).

Dam Dadi Doo AMV

The first AMV is considered to be Dam Dadi Doo- Powerpuffgirls Z which was uploaded on August 26, 2006. The audio is of bad quality (playback recording) and the video source of the AMV appears to be of different origin as the video quality and resolution seems to change throughout the video.



Despite being the first Nightcore AMV, the "Powerpuffgirls Z" didn't gain quite as much attention as later uploaded, also using Dam Dadi Doo: Kingdom Hearts AMV which was uploaded on September 20, 2006.



Official Releases

The first use of "Nightcore" for music release is The Nightcore Files Vol. 1, released by German producer Akira Sun on August 5, 2011. The reception was generally negative from the Nightcore community Nightcore Universe. Two moderators of the community replied to Akira Sun's thread about the release, stating he "completely missed the idea of what Nightcore is". DCX is the second artist to have released Nightcore versions of their songs: his first release Fortune & Fate (Nightcore Version) come out on July 20, 2013 followed by 8 more (Nightcore Version) and (Nightcore Speed Mix). His official Nightcore'd versions are generally slower and lower pitch than the usual Nightcore songs.

Releases By Other Labels

The first album to become popular is Dreamworld, released by DeathNetStudios on February 07, 2013. No original artist is credited, and all artists are credited as "Nightcore". The album includes songs both true to the original Nightcore genre and non-Nightcore genre including dubstep and rock. It is unknown whether the album is released by the actual Norwegian DJ duo, Nightcore, or if they are being impersonated. There are more labels using "Nightcore" as artist selling seemingly random songs that have been sped up, including Rexo, Nightcore, Maxi Bass and Nightcore Haven. Some audio qualities of the songs sold by the above labels appear to be even worse than the ones on YouTube.

Full Nightcore channel spreadsheet indexed over 400 channels and more

Derivatives

After the success of fan-made Nightcore music on YouTube, different genres/styles of EDM started to be uploaded to YouTube under the "-core" suffix.

Search Interest

Search queries for Nightcore have risen steadily since 2011, likely as a result of the overwhelming number of sped-up pop, rock, hip hop/rap songs labelled "Nightcore" that have emerged on YouTube.

Know Your Meme Store

External References