[Tru]

FFR has always required either open source audio or a musician's permission to use their music in the game. This rule is strictly enforced. You can see a list of available permissions here or better here.

Many such permissions were obtained early in the site's history. Sometimes it would only involve some MySpace messages. Sometimes FFR would build an embeddable widget for an artist. The widget was essentially a mini version of the game with a handful of charts of an artist's work that could be embedded on their MySpace page. FFR got a lot of traction from this.

FFR's creator/founder/owner Synthlight and the FFR server itself is in Chicago. This and the permission requirements limited FFR's Japanese-made music to either BMS of Fighters (open source -ish) or a handful of other specific artists we obtained permission from (shoutout to jimerax and ghakimx).

The keyboard Stepmania scene overlapped a fair bit with FFR as well in the early days. There's still some overlap with Etterna. Separate from the main FFR game, FFR used to host community made charts for Stepmania. There was even a way to play some (constant BPM) charts on the site itself (FFR Resonance). Several prominent Stepmania/Etterna packs were organized on FFR, which was one of the largest forums/communities for that at the time with notable splinters like SMGroove, Red Fraction, ODI, Xoon, etc.