Seibu had nothing to do with it. BicCamera started in Ikebukuro and was influential in building up the area. The jingle change is a campaign as BicCamera is doing a cooperation with the ward to build it out more. See [1]
It stood very much in contrast with all the other jingles, and I simply loved it.
kmorg · 16m ago
Unfortunately JR East has phasing out the custom melodies and have been standardizing the Yamanote line to always play the same tune. They are saying labor shortages are the reason since they need to press a physical button in the station in order to play the melody.
0xWTF · 18m ago
How do I get them as ringtones?
austinallegro · 2h ago
This is up there with the Hard Off in store music. Magnificent!
Yeah I'm not sure about some of these. Some are duplicates too, is that accurate?
ekianjo · 1h ago
When you get this, I believe the actual song is missing
bluecoconut · 2h ago
The first time I got off at and heard Komagome's tune I mistakenly thought it was some halloween special because it was late October at the time, and the song felt so distinct and unique.
mc32 · 1h ago
There used to be an OS X widget that had all the station melodies… It’s been a while.
Interestingly this one seems it is from before 高輪ゲートウェイ (Takanawa Gateway) station which opened in 2020, but the numbering shows the gap (JY 25 -> JY 27). That led me to looking it up, and turns out that they introduced the numbering in 2016, and that already came pre-planned with the gap ready [1].
In the street where I grew up they had to renumber most of the houses one year because a row of new buildings were built, so everyone that was further down the street than the new houses had to have their numbers increased so that the new houses could be given numbers that were in order with where along the street they were built.
I wonder if that sort of renumbering is common or not, and if Japan is better at planning that sort of thing also.
I was too young at the time to know if this lead to any mail delivery issues, and I imagine the postal delivery service was made aware of the change. But I would think that even if they were notified it would sometimes be the case that if your house used to be say number 53 and now it’s 73 that mail that was intended for you ends up in the mail box of the house that used to be 33 and is now 53.
Even if not at first then at least like 3 years later when some random company still has your old address on file and most other mail for everyone in the street is usually addressed to updated numbers.
modeless · 1h ago
In Japan house numbers are based on construction date rather than position along the street.
makeitdouble · 1h ago
I'd assume most countries don't bother remapping when it comes to Street numbers ?
France has a suffix system, so you if a buildings are added between 24 and 25 you'll get 24 bis, 24 ter etc.
Japan doesn't care about the ordering in the first place, so a block added between 24 and 25 and 26 will be 32 without any issue.
ranger_danger · 3h ago
How are these audio tracks not copyright violations?
Animats · 2h ago
Good question. The composer and artist of most of them in Japan is Minoru Mukaiya.[1] He's also the CEO of Ongakukan, which builds train simulators for both games and training.
He's done over a hundred original station jingles.[2] Many of the Yamanote Line jingles are classics, though.
By the way, Ikebukuro’s melody isn’t this one anymore. Bic Camera, an electronics retailer, acquired Seibu, and now their song is played instead. https://youtu.be/9Emi-ZAnnlc?si=G8iazo945capvT5T&t=221
It’s fun, isn’t it?
[1] https://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1573062.html
It stood very much in contrast with all the other jingles, and I simply loved it.
https://youtu.be/yFLYuKUKXoY
The station is named after a beer company that operates there, and they used their beer CM song for the station chime as well.
[1] https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2016/20160402.pdf
I wonder if that sort of renumbering is common or not, and if Japan is better at planning that sort of thing also.
I was too young at the time to know if this lead to any mail delivery issues, and I imagine the postal delivery service was made aware of the change. But I would think that even if they were notified it would sometimes be the case that if your house used to be say number 53 and now it’s 73 that mail that was intended for you ends up in the mail box of the house that used to be 33 and is now 53.
Even if not at first then at least like 3 years later when some random company still has your old address on file and most other mail for everyone in the street is usually addressed to updated numbers.
France has a suffix system, so you if a buildings are added between 24 and 25 you'll get 24 bis, 24 ter etc.
Japan doesn't care about the ordering in the first place, so a block added between 24 and 25 and 26 will be 32 without any issue.
He's done over a hundred original station jingles.[2] Many of the Yamanote Line jingles are classics, though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya
[2] https://www.ongakukan.co.jp/en/business/music/#melody