Downloading Songs - wcko87/beatoraja-english-guide GitHub Wiki

This page is about downloading BMS songs in general, and is not specific to beatoraja. The information in this guide applies even if you are using other BMS players (like Lunatic Rave 2).

If you were looking for information on how to add songs in beatoraja, refer to Adding and Updating Song Folders in beatoraja.

Contents


Downloading Songs and Sabuns

When a composer makes a BMS, they generally make a couple of charts along with it (e.g. Beginner, Normal, Hyper, Another, Insane). These are the default charts that come with the song. Occasionally, a charter may also make an additional chart for some existing BMS song. An additional chart is called a sabun (差分).

While this is not a strict rule, sabuns typically add a subtitle to the end of the song name. For example, these may be the names of the default charts:

  • Calamity Fortune [NORMAL]
  • Calamity Fortune [HYPER]
  • Calamity Fortune [ANOTHER]

While this may be the names of the sabuns:

  • Calamity Fortune [F]
  • Calamity Fortune [SERPENT]
  • Calamity Fortune [INFERNO]
  • Calamity Fortune [MASTER]
  • Calamity Fortune [NANATHER LN]
  • Calamity Fortune [★★★★★]

Sabuns may be made to cover difficulties outside of the original charts, different play modes like 14K or 9K, or different play styles like scratch, LNs or gimmick charts.

Why does this matter to players?

When trying to look for charts (e.g. Calamity Fortune [F]), you'll find that many of the charts you need are sabuns. This is espcially true if you are playing in the insane difficulty range (★1 and above).

When trying download and play a sabun like Calamity Fortune [F], you usually will encounter two download links - one for the base BMS song (本体), and one for the sabun (差分). If you don't already have the song, you need to download both. The download for the base BMS is typically hosted by the composer themself. Also, the base song folder is usually large (easily 30+MB due to keysound files), while the sabuns, being simple .bms text files, are small (a couple of kilobytes). Add the sabun to the song folder to play it.

tl;dr
  1. Download both base song (本体) and additional chart (sabun - 差分).
  2. Add sabun to the folder of the base song.
  3. Now you can play the sabun in game.

If the chart you want to play is a default chart (not a sabun), then you'll only find one download link, for the base song.


Where do I find songs?

Warning: Please read about the possible locale issues when opening .zip files made in other locales.

Starter Packs

If you want to just get right into playing, there are a few "Starter Packs", to get started with. Starter packs are compilation packs of songs from various BMS events. Starter packs are not necessarily for beginners only. They usually contain songs covering a wide range of difficulties.

We recommend starting with the BMS Starter Pack 2022 and GENOSIDE 2018.

BMS Starter Pack 2022

GENOSIDE 2018 -BMS StarterPackage 2018-

  • Recommended starter pack with a very good selection of songs (from 2013-2017).
  • Note: There are two downloads, the original package and the append package. The append package is optional, and contains harder charts, or charts for other play modes (e.g. PMS charts). To use the append package, merge it into the original package's folder.
  • This starter pack contains essentially all the songs required to play all of the GENOSIDE 2018 dan courses.

GENOSIDE -BMS StarterPackage-

  • Older version of the GENOSIDE 2018 starter package, containing older well-known BMS songs (from 2012 and earlier).
  • Note that this contains a completely seprate set of songs from GENOSIDE 2018.

LUMINOUS

Pure White

Toy Musical Series

  • A series of PMS (9K) event packs. This link also contains links to a few other PMS event packs.

yamajet's BMS Starter Packs

  • A set of BMS compilations, from 2006 to 2009.

Korea BMS Starter Pack -polaris-

Korea BMS Starter Pack -Primrose-

endless music

Event Packs

Most BMS songs come as part of some BMS Event.

After the submission (registration) period for a BMS event is over, a song pack containing all of the submissions is usually created for the event. Otherwise, you can also download the songs individually from the event websites.

A detailed list of past and upcoming events can be found here:

  • BMS Event List/Schedule
  • The event schedule has links to the event websites. You can download songs from the events in these websites.
  • Check the date of the event first! Obviously, you won't be able to download songs from an event which has not yet started. You can download songs from ongoing or past events.

The event packs can usually be found in the respective event websites. However, larger events like the BMS of Fighters series may not have readily available event packs, as the song collection may be too large.

These pages contain collections of event pack downloads:

Do note that the number of BMS events (and event packs) can be quite overwhelming. For starters, I recommend starting with the more recent BMS of Fighters (BOF) events like G2R2018, as BOF is the biggest event held each year.

Difficulty Tables

It might also be worth looking into Difficulty Tables if you are looking for a more curated list of songs+charts, especially for difficulty levels above Normal ☆12. Popular difficulty tables include the Insane scale and the Satellite scale. Do note that difficulty tables are simply lists of charts, not the actual song download links. A difficulty table would have to be filled up by the user by downloading the listed songs+charts.

There are some (unofficial) packages here that may make filling up some more popular difficulty tables a little easier:

Downloading Individual Songs

As mentioned before, if you are looking to play specific sabuns (e.g. for a difficulty table), you may need to look for both the song and the chart separately.

To find a specific song, one way is to first find out which BMS event it originated from (you can usually do this by searching for the song on BMS Search, Google or YouTube). You should then be able to find the original submission page for the song in the event's venue (website).

Example: Submission page for Calamity Fortune. Event: 東方音弾遊戯5

If the download link on the original submission page is broken, you might also be able to get the song by downloading an event pack for the event the song is in. Also see download trick for broken Dropbox links.

  • If the song has a chart in a popular table, the song download might be mirrored here: bms.kyouko.moe\BMS Library (These song download mirrors contain some sabuns as well).

You might also be able to find a download link to the song by searching it on LR2IR. See the section on finding songs on LR2IR below.

To look for the sabun, there are a few places to check:

  • Look up the chart on LR2IR, to see if it has a download link. Tips on searching on LR2IR
  • You may be able to find it on BMS Sabun Uploader or Stella Uploader. This is especially true for more recent sabuns.
  • If the charter has a website, you may be able to find it on their website.
  • If the charter has uploaded an autoplay of the chart to youtube, the youtube description may have a link to the chart.
  • If the chart is part of a Difficulty Table, the table itself may contain the link to the chart.
    • In beatoraja, if you select a song/chart you don't have from a table, beatoraja will open download links for the song/chart in your default browser.

Finding BMS songs with bmssearch.net

BMS Search can be used to find/discover BMS songs by genre, artist etc. (note: the website is in Japanese)

Using LR2IR to find songs/charts

LR2IR has a search box that allows you to look up the leaderboard pages for any existing chart that has been played on LR2. When you visit the leaderboard page for a chart, the chart metadata may contain the link to the base song (本体URL) and the sabun (差分URL). Example: Calamity Fortune [F].

Not all charts will have links to the song and chart in their leaderboard pages. These links are manually updated by users (anyone with an LR2 account with >= 20 plays), and so you are more likely to find working links on the more frequently played charts (i.e. click on the charts with the highest playcounts). Some charters also consistently update their charts' LR2IR pages with working song and chart download links.

Download trick for broken Dropbox links

Some old Dropbox links may have been backed up by the BMS Dropbox Mirror Project. How to use:

  1. Suppose you have a broken BMS download link like https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37251493/MilK.zip, perhaps taken from the original BMS entry page.
  2. Replace:
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/
    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/
    
    with:
    https://dropbox.bms.ms/u/
    
  3. If this BMS was backed up by the mirror project, you will now have a working link as such: https://dropbox.bms.ms/u/37251493/MilK.zip

Locale issues when opening zip files

When extracting a .zip file, your PC's locale must match the locale of the person who made the .zip. If not, any non-ASCII filenames will be garbled after extraction. This is a common issue as many packs were made in the Japanese (or sometimes Korean) locales.

One solution (other than changing your PC's locale) is to use Bandizip to extract these archives. Bandizip lets you choose which locale you want to extract the files in.

Note that .7z files do not have locale issues. This refers to the .7z file format, not the 7zip program. You will still face locale issues if you are using 7zip to extract .zip files.

Note that this issue only affects file/folder names, not the contents of the files, so most songs will still play fine as long as you are on UTF-8 mode.

Illegal BMS

Illegal BMS is a generic term to refer to either unkeysounded BMS, or converts from other games like beatmania IIDX. We do not condone the distribution or usage of such BMS files. Also, playing illegal BMS can get you banned on IR. Please do not ask about where to obtain them. There are way more than enough BMS songs created internally by the community to go around.