Your submission got declined because of one or more of the following:
- It wasn't from a Japanese anime, game, or other media production.
- Nobody involved in the production of the song was from Japan.
- It was TV size; we only accept full size releases.
- It was low quality and/or a youtube/soundcloud/other bad source rip. Note that bitrate is not always indicative of quality. Anything below 192kbps is rejected either way.
- It was already in the database. Sometimes songs are mistagged, and that's our fault. You should still search as thoroughly as possible to make sure what you're uploading isn't a duplicate
- Someone had uploaded the same song, but it wasn't accepted yet, in which case the submission that's highest quality gets accepted and the others declined.
Your submission might have gotten declined because of one or more of the following:
- It had a bitrate below at least 256kbps.
- It was a bad transcode (for example, from 192kbps mp3 to 320kbps mp3).
- It's too niche (nobody wants to listen to it except you).
- If tags are in Japanese: you didn't mention source, artist, song title, etc.
"But there are songs in the database that don't follow these rules!"
Yes, and those won't be removed. They were accepted when there were not really any rules for accepting submissions. We just won't accept stuff like that anymore.
So what can I upload?
Any high quality music that's /a/ or /jp/ related, including doujin music, remixes, mashups, video game music, jpop, etc. Simply having Japanese influence doesn't make something /a/ or /jp/, and any such submissions will be declined.
Remixes and mashups are exempt from the "nobody involved in production is from Japan" rule, and are ok to upload, as long as the original song that was remixed or mashed up would have been accepted. There's a little more scrutiny with these, however; bad mashups or remixes might get declined even if otherwise acceptable.