50 new songs:

Octopath Traveler II's soundtrack is about as good as the first, resulting in 18 5-star songs, 12 4-star songs, 3 3-star songs and 11 2-star songs.  The 6 other songs were 3 Jun Maeda compositions for Heaven Burns Red (all rated 2 star), the new Idol opening for Oshi no Ko (2 star), the new U149 Idolm@ster opening 'Shine in the Sky' (3 star), and the ending theme to Tokyo Mewmew New (Can-do Dreamer, 5-star).

It was very difficult deciding which Octopath songs exactly merited the open 5-star slots, they kept trading their rankings back and forth, but I think I finally got it right by the time I listened to everything 100 times.  Over the past year I'd carefully scrutinized my 5-star tier and decided there were 19 weak entries that could be replaced, so Octopath II had to fill in those 19 slots and no more, which it managed to do splendidly.

It doesn't make much difference if you're rated 2, 3, or 4 star, it all means 'mediocre', so those rankings were adjusted in a sloppy manner to the new reality.

As for the 1-star tier, where getting demoted actually matters because it kicks you out of the hall of fame entirely, all the songs were pre-screened trash I was hoping to throw away at the first opportunity, so this 50 song influx came as a great relief.  A promise fulfilled.  Now all the music I say is great really is great.

Yasunori Nishiki catapulted to my 6th favorite composer with all this new music, surpassing Jun Maeda who stayed at 7th.  Masaharu Iwata fell back to 8th place.  Nishiki is the only young composer I respect (age 37), everyone else up there is on their deathbed due to old age, but Nishiki might compose a lot more good songs before he's done.  He may not stay 6th forever.

For all the details of which songs went where one can always check out my newly updated Music Hall of Fame.  Hopefully I won't have to make any more major changes to my music hall of fame after this, because it's already full of nothing but good music.  But I do have a trick up my sleeve.  Instead of deleting music entirely, I can stitch together a lot of short songs into one respectable song.  In this way I can improve the quality of the ditties and make more room for new music.  That should accommodate new entries for at least the next year.