As the discussion in the last thread died almost two years ago, I'm posting a new proposal regarding the (Sped Up Ver.) and (Nightcore Mix) markers as the RC is pretty misleading and outdated. (sorry btw if I was supposed to just resurrect the old thread instead)

TL;DR: It's misleading to force the usage of these markers based on just the genre as non-electronic stuff can be nightcore'd, and electronic stuff can be sped up without pitch change.
Tempo change only: use (Sped Up Ver.)
Tempo + pitch change: use (Nightcore Ver.) (or stick with current (Nightcore Mix) marker)

The problems:

- Having to use (Nightcore Mix) marker when an electronic song is only sped up is misleading, as the vast majority of people identify nightcore as the song having both tempo and pitch increased (and as far as I can tell, that is the actual definition for it). Couldn't find any ranked examples for this though as all edits I found are nightcore edits anyway.

- Currently you can have nightcore edits of non-electronic songs, but you cannot use the (Nightcore Mix) marker because it's not electronic music. (example 1, example 2 etc.)

- The RC isn't perfectly clear on the genres that should use (Nightcore Mix) marker. While "Techno, Trance, Dance, or other similar genres" encompasses at least most electronic music, it's also not precise.

- Lastly, I think the word "mix" in (Nightcore Mix) sounds a bit odd and I'd replace the marker altogether with (Nightcore Ver.). This one is the smallest issue here and honestly can be unchanged if desired (due to the long-standing tradition of using "mix" in the marker), but using the word "mix" just doesn't sound right (why is speeding the song up without pitch change a "version" and with pitch change it becomes a "mix" instead?)

Currently, the RC is written like this:

If a song has been edited to have a higher tempo, use a (Sped Up Ver.) marker at the end of the current title. If there is an existing sped up version marker in the title, replace it with (Sped Up Ver.). Sped up songs in Techno, Trance, Dance, or other similar genres must use a (Nightcore Mix) marker instead.
Note: For tracks which are both cut and sped up, combine their markers into (Sped Up & Cut Ver.) or (Nightcore & Cut Ver.).

Similar to rosario wknd's old post on this topic, I would propose to change it to something like this:

If a song has been edited to have a higher tempo, use a (Sped Up Ver.) marker at the end of the current title. If there is an existing sped up version marker in the title, replace it with (Sped Up Ver.). If the song has been edited to have a higher tempo and a higher pitch, use (Nightcore Ver.) instead.
Note: For tracks which are both cut and sped up, combine their markers into (Sped Up & Cut Ver.) or (Nightcore & Cut Ver.).

There's also been mentions of using alternative markers such as (Nightstep Mix) in the case of dubstep + nightcore etc., but I believe those are unnecessary, both because it kinda goes against standardisation in general and also because those subgenres are very niche.
We can discuss what to do if the artist uses a marker like this though (because I suppose by extension, if existing sped up markers need to be standardised, nightcore-like markers indicated by the artist should probably also be standardised to some extent)

Wouldn't this mean that basically everything has to use Nightcore then? Because it's very uncommon for a song to be sped up without a pitch increase.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

Wouldn't this mean that basically everything has to use Nightcore then? Because it's very uncommon for a song to be sped up without a pitch increase.

yes, it seems the majority of ranked maps with sped up songs have pitch change, but some maps do not, examples:
beatmapsets/1799031#taiko/3688027 - this should have the nightcore marker instead of sped up ver according to current RC (which is kinda silly because it has no pitch change as far as i can tell)
beatmapsets/1735033#taiko/3755259
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/70137#osu/434536

but yeah, that's basically what i mean with my post - if it has both properties edited, it should have a nightcore marker
and if it's only a tempo change (like these examples above), then sped up ver

it's up to discussion of course if some genres/instances should keep sped up marker even if there's a pitch change but currently it's just not right

I disagree with this. Current standardisation is already enough with defining what songs are suitable to have "(Nightcore Mix)" moniker.

A more suitable approach is to append "(Nightcore Mix)" suffix only if the results are deemed to fit so, such as modifying the beat intensity. Simply speeding up and pitching up a song doesn't make it automatically 'nightcore', if the rhythms doesn't fit so.

that's fair, but that's just one issue out of many (e.g. the case of having electronic genre with tempo change with no pitch change - RC requires nightcore marker which doesn't make sense in that case)

also i do feel like a lot of people at least nowadays associate nightcore with sped up + pitch change, no matter the genre (and "older" folks are more "gatekeep-y" with what constitutes nightcore in their opinion)

so even something like using nightcore mix marker when it's electronic/whatever sped up WITH pitch change, and sped up marker if it has no pitch change would be a change towards the better tbh (although this would be a pretty minor change and wouldn't probably affect a lot of upcoming ranked maps)

Plausible idea. You're right when mentioning the issue that 'songs that just basically speed up but has electronic/related genres hurted with this rule'.

How about this change instead?

If a song has been edited to have a higher tempo, use a (Sped Up Ver.) marker at the end of the current title. If there is an existing sped up version marker in the title, replace it with (Sped Up Ver.). Sped up and pitch up songs in Techno, Trance, Dance, or other similar genres, or songs that has been mastered so that it's distinguishable from its original genre must use a (Nightcore Mix) marker instead.
Note: For tracks which are both cut and sped up, combine their markers into (Sped Up & Cut Ver.) or (Nightcore & Cut Ver.).

This alleviates the issue where some songs has proper Nightcore remix after mastering the song.

i feel like that's a bit too clunky, at least i don't understand exactly know what the part

songs that has been mastered so that it's distinguishable from its original genre

would mean exactly

It's basically non-electronic songs but it's mastered in a way it can be perceived as 'Nightcore' song. I doubt if there is any, but we need to also define this just in case something like this appears.

Or simply forget about including these markers in the metadata and use badges instead. It looks very silly for some remixed songs to have this form of marking e.g: Artist - Title (ft. Someone) (Another artist Mix) (Sped up & Cut ver.)

(For Hands up / Trance & techno songs, the traditional metadata tagging would be retained.)



Cut version & High pitch / Slow Down, Distorted version, manipulated bpm etc... badge

Or at least the cut version could be marked in this way.

It requires implementation both on website and the game. I think lazer has this implemented on spotlight, FA, and explicit tags, but stable has none. I don't see this is a feasible option for now, which is why a simple redefining should satisfy it for now.

+1 to the initial proposal - reasoning is that it makes it way more clear what counts as nightcore and what doesn't and I'm over the fact that there are mod posts on NC mix sets all the time, just cause genre is debatable.

Actually, there can be a slight rewording on your proposal after rereading it multiple time. How about this:

If a song has been edited to have a higher tempo, use a (Sped Up Ver.) marker at the end of the current title. If there is an existing sped up version marker in the title, replace it with (Sped Up Ver.). If the song has been edited to have a higher tempo and a higher pitch, the marker should be (Nightcore Ver.) instead.
Note: For tracks which are both cut and sped up, combine their markers into (Sped Up & Cut Ver.) or (Nightcore & Cut Ver.).

This also alleviates the issue I mentioned earlier. Regarding whether the song qualifies to Nightcore or not after speed and pitch the song up, modders and BN can discuss about it further.

i'm a bit 50/50 about that wording - it would give some freedom which is a good thing, but it might also head to inconsistency which can be a bad thing

about the flags mentioned earlier - not a bad idea but i don't see it happening

also just to recap a little bit, i'm honestly fine with just changing some parts of the proposal in the RC, the points in my original post are pretty much listed in order of importance/severity (the first one is just annoyingly wrong and last ones are more subjective)

we'll take the main takeaway from this (distinction should be clearer as to when to use which) into consideration for the first round of revisions for community/forums/topics/1894663?n=1

though i think due to the history of this tag usage i dont think nightcore ver is happening