The result was delete. as several passing mentions are not enough to demonstrate independent notability, so the nominator's original concerns were not overcome. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 14:04, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
This article should be deleted because this is not a genre with enough exposure and is pretty much dedicated to strictly a fan base with no strong Third Party sources. As shown on the talk page by a user who objected to the original idea for deletion. Even talk page reasoning for keeping the page fails WP:RS, WP:OR and WP:SUBJECTIVE. There is not a strong enough definition of the genre from any serious academic or even popular culture source nor is there any third-party sources describing their sound in this way. Just because people are using the term, doesn't mean we can hold onto it until we get some actual back up from real sources. Not just bands promoting themselves, internet message board conversation about sub-sub-sub genres and so forth. Andrzejbanas (talk) 02:25, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
These include the guardian, pitchfork, rateyourmusic, la times.
Is that good enough? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.231.47.100 (talk) 22:30, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
Synthwave, no matter how relatively unknown to mainstream audiences, is no less legitimate than any other. This applies to all music genres, for that matter. While I could understand it being deemed "questionable" if it was difficult to find any trace of the genre, this is obviously not the case. A simple search conducted on SoundCloud, a website second in popularity only to Youtube when it comes to music hosting, produces more results for the term "Synthwave" than it can number individually. That's over 500+ tracks uploaded under the Synthwave banner. Are you telling me these musicians and producers aren't qualified to label their own music? Hundreds of artists under the banner, and they're ALL wrong?
The term "Synthwave" on soundcloud lists 222 artists. That's 222 artists on the Soundcloud platform alone. So to say that the genre is "questionable" is to say that the existence and credentials of each of the artists who produced under this genre are also questionable. What credentials do YOU have to question the collective product of hundreds of musicians songs? What credentials do you have to tell thousands of fans (over 2000 in the Synthetix Music Facebook group) they are simply wrong?
I'd put far more trust in a musician defining the genre they are dabbling in than a Wikipedia editor with no perceivable background in music. Actual music production and performance experience trumps your 10,000 hours of article editing.
Now if we assume each song within the Soundcloud search results is an average of three minutes long (which is a conservative estimate), and we stick to only the initial 500 tracks on SoundCloud, then we're talking about 1,500 minutes of music that you say doesn't exist. This is an insult to any artist who defies mainstream expectations and tired artistic pigeon-holing.
I would also like to point out that the artist Power Glove is a synthwave duo. They created the SYNTHWAVE soundtrack to the critically acclaimed Far Cry 3 DLC "Blood Dragon." According to the Blood Dragon Wikipedia entry: "At gamescom 2013, it was revealed that the game had sold over 1 million copies, and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated that physical copies of the game may be available at some point.[29] The game is the fastest selling downloadable title in Ubisoft history.[30]" This means that the genre of Synthwave has reached over 1 million people. Did those 1 million gamers hear imaginary music since the synthwave genre is supposedly questionable, and non-existant? Many fans of the game and music genre, myself included, became interested in the game after hearing samples of the soundtrack.