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Yamanot.es: A music box of train station melodies from the JR Yamanote Line
- ranger_danger 1y agoHow are these audio tracks not copyright violations?
- cammikebrown 1y agoPffft, this is fair use
- gruez 1y agoI know "fair use" gets bandied about quite frequently on youtube uploads, but offering full verbatim downloads of any work is highly unlikely to be considered fair use if a court were to rule on it. The only reason such sites are still up is that the rights holders don't care enough to sue.
- kmeisthax 1y agoYes, and this is also the real tragedy of automated copyright enforcement. All the funny grey area uses get marginalized.
- fair_enough 1y agoWe need adverse possession ("squatter's rights") for intellectual property. I'm surprised copyright trolls are not buying IP from defunct game/film/music companies and suing youtubers left and right for uploading video game music and anime OSTs. If I were a sociopath and didn't care how I make my money, I draft some legit-looking legal threat letter template demanding $10,000 to avoid a civil lawsuit worth millions, fill in the blanks with a name, IP address, and title of pirated content, then mail out the letters by the tens of thousands using USPS-subsidized cheap mail. If you mail out about 20k of these threats, you only need 3 of them to pay up to come out on top.
- kmeisthax 1y ago[dead]
- kmeisthax 1y ago[dead]
- hnthroay22312 1y agonot the same under Japanese's copyright law.
- fair_enough 1y agoYou should figure out who owns the copyright and report this infringement. Someone in Japan will surely be indignant about the all the lost revenue from people who are not buying a CD full of train station jingles.
- Animats 1y agoGood 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya [2] https://www.ongakukan.co.jp/en/business/music/#melody https://www.ongakukan.co.jp/en/business/music/#melody
- ekianjo 1y agoSeems like he has nothing to do with the Yamanote line melodies though.
- unleaded 1y agoYou Wouldn't Download a Train Station
- layer8 1y agoThere is some joke involving audio tracks in here.
- ranger_danger 1y agoAnother one: https://yamanote.app/ https://yamanote.app/
- bluecoconut 1y agoInterestingly 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]. [1] https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2016/20160402.pdf https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2016/20160402.pdf
- QuantumNomad_ 1y agoIn 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.
- makeitdouble 1y agoI'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.
- ajb 1y agoEbisu has the "Harry Lime" theme from "The Third Man"? Wasn't expecting to recognise any... I wonder who was a fan of that film.
- makeitdouble 1y agoYes, it's that song. The station is named after a beer company that operates there, and they used their beer CM song for the station chime as well.
- bluecoconut 1y agoThe 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.
- Dragonai 1y agoIt's a rendition of Sakura Sakura, one of Japan's most famous (if not the most famous) folks songs :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpFjsMtCb0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpFjsMtCb0
- Zee2 1y agoWhy don't I remember the Ueno station being an electronic office telephone ringtone...
- modeless 1y agoYeah I'm not sure about some of these. Some are duplicates too, is that accurate?
- ekianjo 1y agoWhen you get this, I believe the actual song is missing
- zelliot 1y agoHere is the correct Ueno melody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGaCcvBcDQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGaCcvBcDQc
- kelnos 1y agoAccording to someone in the comments, the ringing thing did actually exist, but was replaced by this new tune in 2021.
- austinallegro 1y agoThis is up there with the Hard Off in store music. Magnificent! https://youtu.be/yFLYuKUKXoY https://youtu.be/yFLYuKUKXoY
- mc32 1y agoThere used to be an OS X widget that had all the station melodies… It’s been a while.
- haunter 1y agoI'm playing JR EAST Train Simulator with the Yamanote Line DLC and I need these station melodies asap as a mod somehow! So good
- pigpag 1y ago[dead]
- okonomiyaki3000 1y agoTakadanobaba has always been my favorite. The Tetsuwan Atom theme song.
- eloisant 1y agoYes I was living in Tokyo in 2003 at the day when, according to the original comic, Atom was created. That's when they started to use this melody at Takadanobaba.
- marsavar 1y agoMy favourite, when I lived in Japan many years ago, was the Musashi-Koganei melody in Tokyo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT2xTUPveCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT2xTUPveCw It stood very much in contrast with all the other jingles, and I simply loved it.
- ronyeh 1y agoIs that a fancy dancy version of Sakura Sakura (probably the most famous Japanese folk song)? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpFjsMtCb0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpFjsMtCb0
- jrockway 1y agoIt is. There are possibly-recognizable tunes throughout the system. Vivaldi's Spring comes to mind. I think at Ooimachi.
- ekusiadadus 1y agoI listen to them every day. 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 https://youtu.be/9Emi-ZAnnlc?si=G8iazo945capvT5T&t=221 It’s fun, isn’t it?
- rootnod3 1y agoSeibu 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] [1] https://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1573062.html https://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1573062.html
- ekusiadadus 1y agoAh, my mistake — Bic Camera didn’t acquire Seibu’s site. Seibu Ikebukuro was actually sold to Fortress, and then the property was transferred to Yodobashi Holdings, which is now planning the redevelopment. Bic Camera started in Ikebukuro, so it’s influential locally, but it wasn’t part of the acquisition. Sources: Wikipedia – Sogo & Seibu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogo_%26_Seibu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogo_%26_Seibu SBbit – Seibu Ikebukuro redevelopment: https://www.sbbit.jp/article/cont1/144891 https://www.sbbit.jp/article/cont1/144891
- NalNezumi 1y agoThia give me PTSD flashback. My first job out of high school was bic camera. Those melodies are fun at station because they only play it when train is coming, but full blasting it 24/7 (including rest room) makes your brain go numb. I go in to a trance state of corporate drone mode with a 営業スマイル(sales smile) and bendy-hip when I hear that tune
- ehnto 1y agoI can imagine. I have the Yodobashi Camera jingle permenantly seared into my brain, and I am only a customer! When I worked at a gym, they played the same 10 or so songs all day every day. My heartrate rises when I hear them.
- 0xWTF 1y agoHow do I get them as ringtones?
- agnishom 1y agoBy going here: https://github.com/morgansleeper/Yamanotes/blob/main/lines/kt.html https://github.com/morgansleeper/Yamanotes/blob/main/lines/k... and here: https://github.com/morgansleeper/Yamanotes/tree/main/audio https://github.com/morgansleeper/Yamanotes/tree/main/audio
- kmorg 1y agoUnfortunately 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.
- cbhl 1y agoHuh. https://kaisercougarconnection.com/2784/news/musical-trains-jr-east-changes-iconic-departure-melodies-on-yamanote-line/ https://kaisercougarconnection.com/2784/news/musical-trains-... My impression is that all of the Yamanote line stations are above ground -- I'd have expected it to be possible to have "one button plays the right sound at each station" if you used a standard phone's GPS to figure out which station you were at.
- kmorg 1y agoIts most likely not worth it to JR East to support it anymore since they have had a labor shortage recently.
- justsomehnguy 1y ago> GPS Kids these days... Not only you don't need a GNSS to determine a fixed in place railroad station but actually you don't want to use a GNSS to do that. A simple radio beacon working on ~400MHz is more than enough to solve this difficult technical obstacle. Of course, this is totally ignoring what the trains do already know where they are because they need to display the current/next stations on the passenger information displays.
- numpad0 1y agoCommuter trains always knows where they are by various means. Braking distances for trains is airplane scaled, and so knowing where they are programmatically with accuracy on both trains and at central control stations is important for safety.
- iggldiggl 1y ago
- presentation 1y agoThey changed the melodies for a lot of the stations recently, I’ve noticed.
- positron26 1y agoAwww. I hadn't been to Tokyo since Covid and the tunes I remember have all changed. Used to like the Shibuya one. I honestly need to pop up there to some Rust meetups. I always wind up discounting Tokyo, but I've met some smart people at the wrong times.
- presentation 1y agoOther lines have some bangers too - used to live in Koenji and Asagaya, love those. https://youtu.be/wpw1MWH0AZI?si=ELfOL6QdgYCxHRyU https://youtu.be/wpw1MWH0AZI?si=ELfOL6QdgYCxHRyU https://youtu.be/4qFHVCMUrto?si=daYuWZWK_aQizbha https://youtu.be/4qFHVCMUrto?si=daYuWZWK_aQizbha
- aa-jv 1y agoLived in Asagaya for a year .. this sure brought back memories. I'd often walk to Koenji for the nightlife .. what a wonderful neighborhood. I remember the beautiful moments in summer when the school jingle played out over the region - that was another example of Japanese appreciation for aesthetics that I've carried with me all my life. Sad to see the recent development of Asagaya, though. Some classic old Japanese dwellings, now gone ..
- presentation 1y agoTo be fair, most homes are replaced everywhere in Japan, since houses themselves are depreciating assets with all the earthquakes and everything. It is how things go here.
- thomashop 1y agoI'm also a fan of the Yamanote Line. I made a psychedelic AI audio-visual collage inspired by it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwUSzUvShqcaa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwUSzUvShqcaa I made field recordings during my last stay in Tokyo. From those, I made a song for each station of the Yamanote line, using the Jingle in the prompt. The visuals were made similarly. Used mainly Suno, Udio, Runway and Ableton Live.
- hn111 1y agoLove it! Thanks for sharing
- seasongs 1y agoAbsolute bangers for 2 and half hours straight
- vladimirralev 1y agoLOL this is unexpectedly well done.
- titanomachy 1y agoThis inspired me to go make some music. Awesome set! I like the beat and bass line on “tabata”.
- phantomathkg 1y agoWhat interesting is, the implementation is completely simple multi pages HTML5/CSS/Vanilla JavaScript. No framework. And it just, works.
- searls 1y agoDoes it? On iPadOS 26 and even with Silent Mode disabled I still can't hear anything.
- Shadowmist 1y agoWorks fine for me on iPadOS 26. Click on the station names?
- krenerd 1y agogood old days
- 0_____0 1y agoWhy...would this ever need a framework? I haven't done any website design since the early 2010s, what would a webdev even pull from the modern frameworks to achieve what this site is doing?
- agos 1y agoit's really really buggy at least on Safari - text overlapping, spaces changing, etc. not exactly a poster child!
- tanjtanjtanj 1y agoNot to create a boring back-and-forth but the page loads perfectly fine for me on safari (both mobile and macOS) and looks exactly the same as it does in Chrome.
- tkgally 1y agoA couple of months ago, riding the subway through Ginza Station for the first time in a while, I noticed that the door-closing melody was from the 1949 song Ginza Kankan Musume [1, 2]. I’m normally not very familiar with Japanese pop music, but I happen to have the song on a playlist I listen to together with my five-year-old grandson. It brought a smile to my face, as it’s a cheerful, very slightly risqué song from the early postwar period, when Japanese popular culture was enjoying renewed freedom. It was fun to hear it in a subway station in 2025. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYpdBcso3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYpdBcso3A [2] https://g.co/gemini/share/d584c36b99ab https://g.co/gemini/share/d584c36b99ab
- ipnon 1y agoI don't know how to describe this, but Japanese enjoy putting a little bit of joy into every thing, like Ronald McDonald, but real.
- reedf1 1y agoThis probably has a philosophical underpinning in Animism, almost everything is anthropomorphized and given a "soul", personality. This has the affect of humanizing the most utilitarian parts of day-to-day life, commuting, a tax office, etc.
- toyg 1y agoI think it's more to do with the fact that the official ethos is all about staunch sacrifice in the face of continuous suffering and inflexible rules. People end up trying to get some relief any way they can, looking for a bit of joy in every corner of society where they won't feel judged harshly.
- wanderer_79 1y agoAs the rare Japanese on here who speaks English, the amount of theory-crafting from English-speakers about how and why Japanese do this or that is borderline hilarious. Just shows how different our cultures are. Most people don't realize that the way they view the world is through their own ethnocentric lens.
- osu_Vanilla 1y agoExtra resources: - https://w.atwiki.jp/trainmelody/pages/273.html https://w.atwiki.jp/trainmelody/pages/273.html - https://www.te2do.jp/contents/category-n3/?attr=1&cid1=1&cid2=9&xid= https://www.te2do.jp/contents/category-n3/?attr=1&cid1=1&cid...
- notpushkin 1y agoNit: if you scroll down a lot, the stations at the top disappear (and get appended at the bottom, which makes sense – it’s a circular line after all!), but the space remains, so when you scroll back there’s a ton of empty space. Maybe remove that empty space after the scrolling has stopped? (Would be nice if you could scroll backwards, too!) And just to throw in a wild idea, it might be nice if the UI was a variation of the in-train display interface: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Series-E131-500_Inside_LCD.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Series-E131-500_Insi... Naturally, it’s not as clean and sleek, but incorporating some elements of it might make this site look more authentic. Maybe something like this? https://files.catbox.moe/8cpp76.png https://files.catbox.moe/8cpp76.png
- maybe_pablo 1y agoVery interesting! I made just yesterday a track with Yamanote's Shinagawa melody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haV1O8hqaaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haV1O8hqaaE (using Suno)
- djtango 1y agoI'll plug a youtuber who has played them live for fun: https://youtu.be/4V6Q5l2S7Co?si=k1M5F6WD3y05wIN2 https://youtu.be/4V6Q5l2S7Co?si=k1M5F6WD3y05wIN2 He also has done live reproductions of SNES music which are well worth a view
- kelnos 1y agoI was just in Japan a few months ago. It was my fourth visit, but the first for my partner, who found the different departure melodies notable and a really nice, cute, joyful thing. We made a point to listen to them whenever we were taking a train somewhere (which was of course very often, multiple times per day). In a way it feels like a funny thing to have near top-of-mind when it comes to memories of a trip that was packed with so many fun activities. Noticed the Okachimachi and Uguisudani (and several other) melodies are the same... is that correct, or is that a mistake on the site? I imagine it's hard to have a unique melody for every single station, so I expect there are some repeats throughout the transit system, but those two stations are so close together, it's a surprise that they'd be the same.
- kmorg 1y agoThis year they started the process of replacing all of the melodies with the same standardized one. This site has the older melodies.
- zimpenfish 1y agoGoing off [0] where Okachimachi, Uguisudani, Nippori, Nishi-Nippori, Tabata, Sugamo, Otsuka, Mejiro, and Yoyogi are covered by the same lesson, I guess they must be? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNs2Ka0C_w4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNs2Ka0C_w4
- numpad0 1y agoThere are multiple independent wiki sites on Japanese WWW documenting these things including historical changes and standard protocols as observed, for obvious reasons, in case anyone needs some data... https://w.atwiki.jp/trainmelody/pages/273.html https://w.atwiki.jp/trainmelody/pages/273.html https://wikiwiki.jp/sta_melodys/%E5%B1%B1%E6%89%8B%E7%B7%9A https://wikiwiki.jp/sta_melodys/%E5%B1%B1%E6%89%8B%E7%B7%9A https://atosmatome.wiki.fc2.com/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E9%A7%85 https://atosmatome.wiki.fc2.com/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E9%A...
- cedws 1y agoLeaving Japan next week after living in Tokyo for 6 months. This website is going to hit different very soon. ドアに注意下さい
- fransje26 1y agoThe best of luck with this next upcoming chapter of your life!
- kitallis 1y agoI made a similar flutter app (to test our main product) that plays the in-train announcement instead of the station melody. https://github.com/tramlinehq/ueno https://github.com/tramlinehq/ueno – it's downloadable from both app stores.
- Philip-J-Fry 1y agoWhy can't train operators in other countries take inspiration from things like this? It takes very little effort to implement. You could hold melody competitions for local communities. It is a nice thing which sparks joy and it's also something that people would want to travel and experience. You could hold a competition with local schools every year to develop a little 5 second melody. I just think of this from a UK point-of-view. It's like we completely forget what makes life interesting and everything has to be boring and mundane.
- liampulles 1y agoThis led me down a rabbit hole, and I found a Japanese youtube channel with various departure music compilations: https://www.youtube.com/@Musashino-Rapid https://www.youtube.com/@Musashino-Rapid
- torcete 1y agoI can imagine how much this can boost the nostalgia factor if you used to live by a certain area and conmute from/to there everyday. Then you move somewhere else in the world and one day you hear the same tune you used to hear twice a day.
- jama211 1y agoI can’t seem to get this to work on mobile safari, is it just broken for mobile or perhaps I’m doing something wrong?
- andredurao 1y agoI wish there was something like this for Tozai line so I could remember the station melodies
- ainiriand 1y agoIt is also very cool the infinite scroll of all the stations as this is the circular line. Top class!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- almostdigital 1y agoSuper disappointed it didn't have Chūō Line, had to go find them :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nkEfZKMEnw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nkEfZKMEnw