Hello people! It has been a while since the last KodamaNews and Kodama Direct. We won’t be doing another Kodama Direct any time soon, as the one we did early this year took a significant amount of time to produce, and we don’t think we are nearly popular enough to be doing things as ambitious as those. Though I guess you can call that the Kodama touch and seal of quality as well… Instead, I hope you’ll enjoy reading through our plans for the coming year. I know I’ve been saying this every year now… But 2025 can’t get busier than it will. We have major plans not just for our usual planned compilations, but we’ve got a brand new sub-label to present to you, we’re still working on Stellar Sanctuary, a game soundtrack planned for release in that same timeframe, our fifth anniversary celebration at KodamaSounds, and so much more amazing things… But let’s go at it bit by bit!

New terms of use

Our terms of use have gotten a significant overhaul, with more explicit phrasing, more information about rights and the use of music to protect both the intellectual property of the circle and our artists. Please check them out there, especially if you are a participating artist - and think about giving us your feedback!

COUNTERFEST RECORDS

What’s probably the most important change to KodamaSounds lies in COUNTERFEST RECORDS - there’s too much to write about it that isn’t already covered on the website itself, so please check it out here to learn more. The most important thing you have to understand about it is that all of our “Tribute Albums” are now set to name your price, which means they are basically free to download. All of our future Tribute Albums will release under COUNTERFEST RECORDS instead of KodamaSounds too, so do keep that in mind. Make sure to follow all of the social media of this brand new sub-label which was a very necessary step in our workflow to ensure consistent releases. We have a lot of hope and love to pour into this new project! Don’t worry, all of our ECLECTIC RESONANCE and Gensokyo Party releases will remain on KodamaSounds, and all of the previously released tribute albums will remain as KodamaSounds releases. But you’ll find the new project pages and future albums on the COUNTERFEST RECORDS page, so keep an eye out!

Delays

Of course, we can’t announce this many albums without some hardships. Border in Stasis had a lot of issues with artists who unfortunately had too much on their plates back on the initial deadline, so we decided to push it down to Reitaisai Spring of 2025 instead. We already have finalized the cover art and got a handful of completed songs, and it’s already looking like our best ever Gensokyo Party yet. So stay excited! We also unfortunately had to delay Vanilla Parfait for a summer Comiket release in 2025, due to the lack of interest from artists - but we hope that the extended deadline and new scope as a release under COUNTERFEST RECORDS means that we can get more people interested in it.

SpeedSTARS -a Ridge Racer tribute album-

While talking about tribute albums and COUNTERFEST, we have a brand new official tribute album to announce, coming in hot for NAMCO’s 70th anniversary with a Ridge Racer themed arrange/remix album set in April. Read more about it on the COUNTERFEST RECORDS official project page!

ECLECTIC RESONANCE PARADISE & ECLECTIC RESONANCE Escapism

This spring will bring a smile to your face with two albums focused on uplifting and upbeat sonorities! PARADISE will focus on genres circling around House, Funk, Jazz & Fusion, or an atmosphere around upbeat or tropical vibes. Read more about PARADISE here. If you’re into more refined sonorities, Escapism will cover this ground with more longing, progressive and uplifting sonorities focusing on genres like Trance, Progressive House, and songs that evoke a sense of elevation, contemplation and closure. Read more about Escapism here. Both albums are planned to release on March 23rd for M3-Spring 2025.

Solo Albums

We got solo albums (mainly from KodamaSounds in-house artists) planned in the future, with one album already being nearly completed! We hope to release this secret album sometime in 2025, so stay tuned for that, and more down the line!

ECLECTIC RESONANCE UPRISING 3 & ECLECTIC RESONANCE Memories 2

We plan on releasing those two anticipated bad boys for M3-Fall 2025 with a deadline set to September 13th! And with those, we also plan on doing…

Physical Items

At long last! And we plan to be there in the flesh to distribute CDs of ECLECTIC RESONANCE UPRISING 3 & Memories 2 at our own booth during M3-Fall 2025, if all stars align the way we planned them to. We also plan to start out by rereleasing Gensokyo Party Vol. 1 in early 2025, with brand new package art and illustrations, courtesy of our talented artists and designers. KodamaSounds will make its first dive in the physical market with CDs, which hopefully you will be able to get through physical events, as well as through Diverse Direct, though negotiations are still ongoing thanks to a collaborating circle located in Japan which will help us tremendously. It’ll take a while to catch up on our massive catalogue, but we’ll get there! We also have another surprise courtesy of yet another kind publisher, but more about that later ~

Ko-fi / Donations

However, CDs do mean a lot of manufacturing costs. Even with independent & self published prints, printing albums costs a lot of funds that we don’t necessarily have, among other things. This is why, in hope of your generosity, we have opened up a Ko-fi which you can access here, to accept donations completely outside of the scope of our album sales. Those donations will help us tremendously in printing more albums than we could initially afford to, as well as supporting more massive album projects which would require expensive commission fees for said occasions, and supporting KodamaSoft / KodamaSounds / COUNTERFEST RECORDS with operational funds. We need all the help we can get to break even, and we hope that your endless generosity can help us out.

“YGGDRASIL” Project

Speaking of massive album projects, we have “YGGDRASIL”, our KodamaSounds 5th Anniversary album project planned to release for our 5th anniversary which will happen on Winter Comiket of 2025. We’re choosing not to disclose too much information, as it’s a very “in-house” made album, specially crafted with love from as many artists as possible, to craft what they can do best, as a giant collaborative effort. More about that sooner or later!

KODAMA COMET -Stellar Sanctuary-

Still in development, 2024 was still a quiet year for the project - we still plan on releasing the game in 2025, but a delay for 2026 is not unlikely either, especially as we plan on remaking the entire game so far on a new and more appropriate engine to smooth out the development process which was immensely slowed down due to limitations in our currently used engine. We plan on working out this new workflow as early as January, but considering the core of the story and visuals are all there, it should be a much smoother sailing from there.

Touhou Fractured Transience

This one of a kind Touhou fangame still has an unspecified release window, but we plan on finishing our part of the project in early 2025. We already have more than 15 completed songs for the game & album, which is planned to be released at the time of the formal release of the game itself. It’s been going great with a lot of artists of all places, and we’re very proud and excited to hopefully release this soundtrack sometime next year, and make this our hopefully first of many game soundtracks!

And with this… Phew! I think we got through it all! We always have a lot of surprises planned for KodamaSoft / KodamaSounds / COUNTERFEST RECORDS, and I’m so happy to always be this busy with so much to show and anticipate. Thank you so much for taking the time to read all this, and I really hope you’re as excited as I am to see it all unfold! See you all very soon for more, and remember - #KODAMASWEEP