About Kaerumusic

EST.
2009

Our recommendations are just that - recommendations.

We're not here to sit through and write reviews about music we don't enjoy! When you find music on Kaerumusic, you know that someone already likes it.

We want to share music we like, regardless of whether that music was discovered during our childhood years or just yesterday.

We want to continue to discover new music - both in genres we already love and those "outside our algorithms".

We're humans, and we want to let other humans know why our favorite music is special to us.

What makes our music recommendations special?

Each has 3 tracks handpicked by humans.

Choice paralysis is real. And time is the most finite of resources.

Our contributors do the hard work for you and spotlight their favorite 3 tracks in every recommendation.

Love 'em all? (We're glad you do!)
Only liked one? (Still a win!)
None of them for you? (It happens!)

No matter the outcome, we try to make at least trying new stuff easy.

It's okay... we're busy, too.

What makes a contributor special?

Nothing in particular... we're all just music lovers.

Heck, none of us are professionally anything close to reviewers/writers/journalists, etc.

Each contributor has a passion for music... enough of a passion that they want to share their music by writing commentary for the topic of their recommendation as well as their 3 featured tracks. Specific cool facts and personal stories are encouraged in their commentary - info that could be easily found on Wikipedia or an AI summarizer is not.

(Our format was created so that any contributor can add a meaningful new recommendation in about 20 minutes... low time commitment, but not low effort!)

Do you like music and want to tell others about your favorites too?
~~Join us~~
...Eventually, when an 'application form' opens up.

Pre-Emptively Answered Questions

Why "Kaerumusic"?

...oh, and this site was created when the owner was in middle school. (Shallow naming is to be expected, yes?)

Fast forward an undisclosed number of years later, the site owner realized that "Kaeru" is the pronunciation of a few other words in Japanese...

帰る, meaning "to return".
変える, meaning "to change".

In this attempt at reviving the site, those words have some extra meaning regarding the site title. Namely...

Attempting to return to a more human way of finding music.
Embracing the change in personal preference and even insight that occurs when discovering new music.

This site is from 2009?

Will anyone who signs up be able to contribute to the site eventually?

Never say never, but there are some technical reasons as to why the admin isn't very interested in opening the site up to "anyone". Security being one of them. There's also the matter of quality control. For this to remain a relatively curated experience, contributors need to be vetted to some degree.

At minimum, it's sort of a "stretch goal" of the admin to at least allow people to "save" and "bookmark" items on their own, or "follow" contributors that they agree with. But it's likely that the number of times a recommendation is bookmarked or the amount of followers a contributor has won't be a public number for everyone to see.

Why discover music via a site that doesn't even know my music/have an algorithm?

We won't keep recommending you music that's too same-y.
Some excellent music just isn't on the mainstream streaming platforms!
If you're here already, you're probably a nerd. We have plans to allow for a decent range of filters that mainstream services don't seem to have (such as language, country, mood, etc).

Most importantly, we want to try and capture the fun that is "sitting down with a friend and getting to share some cool music with them".

(We do think that algorithms have their place! We also think this site can be used to enhance your experience with them - often times you can find even more cool stuff if you indicate to the algorithm that you're interested in something new.)

Why the emphasis on personal opinion/stories?

This is a passion project, and everyone involved has limited time. Writing our own bios for artists and histories of albums requires research time we don't have, and already is limited in usefulness...

There's already a pretty definitive place for complete info and objectivity - Wikipedia. Even if we tried hard and were paid to research more to make a Complete Music Encyclopedia type site, we wouldn't do a better job.
Getting quick good-enough info on popular-enough artists and albums is getting easier and easier with the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.

Nowadays, the lack of information isn't the issue - it's knowing something exists in the first place. By keeping our commentary short in length (no more than 3 paragraphs) and giving readers specific tracks to check out, we think we can be much more useful as a "jumping point in someone's musical journey".

We also know that music is an incredibly personal experience for many people - context surrounding a song (memories good or bad, the music video, a concert, etc) certainly can change someone's enjoyment. We want to be a place where that genuine enthusiasm can be shared and perhaps even celebrated.