[qqwref]

IMO, attracting new casual players is about song choice.

1) Get songs people like to listen to, even if YOU don't like to listen to them (or step them). Anime openings, mainstream rock/pop music, popular Newgrounds techno, dubstep.

2) Make more easy charts to these songs. I don't mean 1-2 - anything in the 3-8 range is probably fine. Understepping is fine, and low technicality is fine as long as the chart is fun. In fact, it's better to have plenty of available easy charts to songs that don't feel slow and quiet and boring. If you can keep people interested at the lower levels, they'll continue to the higher ones.

3) Most importantly: provide suggestions to new players about the charts they might like to play. FFR has a pretty huge song library and I bet a lot of new players would start out looking for songs they know, find a few at most, and then end up just playing random low level songs and being disappointed at the songs they've chosen. Giving them suggestions on good songs in each genre will help a lot.