Hatsune Miku: The world's fakest pop star
Crypton Future Media's digital darling Hatsune Miku / Crypton Future Media
Hatsune Miku is the rarest kind of pop star. She is enduringly popular in her native country of Japan. She has never been photographed stumbling out of night clubs in the early hours of the morning, and never had issues with drugs or alcohol. She has, in fact, never been seen outside of her concerts at all. This is because Miku is also the fakest kind of pop star. She is a hologram.
More accurately, Hatsune Miku is a digital avatar. Wikipedia describes her as a "singing synthesizer application with a female persona," created by Crypton Future Media. Using Yamaha's Vocaloid software, anyone with enough technical know-how can program Miku to perform any song on a computer.
In Japan, where synthetic characters -- such as Hello Kitty -- are often far more enduring than real celebrities, Miku has been a huge hit. The holographic star has performed multiple sold-out concerts in her home country and abroad. Projected larger than life on a screen, Miku sings and dances according to the direction of programmers who "choreographed" the concert weeks or months in advance.
The stark unreality of Hatsune Miku doesn't seem to bother her fans at all.
"It doesn't take a human to sing a good song," one fan told Wired contributor James Verini. Verini also notes that Miku is portrayed on her fan site as being better than human.
"She's rather more like a goddess: She has human parts, but she transcends human limitations. She's the great post-human pop star," Verini reports one site reads.
Part of the adoration comes in part from the crowd-sourced nature of Miku's stardom. Vocaloid allows any aspiring songwriter to use Miku's voice on their song. As a result, the songs Miku "performs" in concert are all fan-written.
In fact, Miku's entire persona has been created by fans. The character originally started as little more than a corporate mascot in 2007. Crypton Future Media, like many corporations, wanted a face to go with their product -- in this case, their newly designed virtual voice program. Japanese graphic designer Kei drew a 16-year-old girl with flowing blue hair named Hatsune Miku -- Japanese for "first sound" and "future," respectively.
With little else to go on, fans of the Vocaloid software made Miku their own, and the digital avatar quickly took off. Crypton Future Media chief executive officer Hiroyuki Itoh estimates that there are 3,000 Hatsune Miku songs on Japanese iTunes and Amazon. This is in addition to the thousands upon thousands of YouTube videos featuring the azure-haired hologram.
In a world where hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur can appear on stage via hologram over 15 years after his death, the idea of a digital pop star is perhaps not as far-fetched as it seems. For fans, creating and sharing content is as much a part of the experience as the singer herself. When the concert lights go down and the pop star appears on stage, the emotions of thousands of screaming fans are as real as it gets.
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I'm a native Japanese in Japan.
To come to the point, you are totally ignorant on Japanese culture and thinking. We have a special affection for human-shaped objects under the influence of Shinto culture.
In Shinto everything and anything in the universe, both animate and inanimate, even the artificial material, has its own "soul" or "spirit" in it. Especially dolls are the resting or residing place for souls, spirits and gods. This custom became kinda old but not a few Japanese people take their old dolls to shrine or temple for the repose of souls inside. Priests or monks recite sutra before cremate old dolls. This can be one of the reasons why Japanese people love virtual idols.
I hope my poor explanation would be an access to better insight on Japanese culture.
- Damesuke, Japan
The underlying voice is NOT a computer made software- it is a set voice bank of recorded notes and consonant-vowel combinations. Nearly EVERY Vocaloid has a HUMAN VOICE PROVIDER who needs JUST as much credit to the success of said Vocaloid because, without them, you would not have the VOCA part of the LOID.
For example some lyrics from Chris Brown "Don't Wake Me Up"
Dearly beloved,
If this love only exists in my dreams,
Don't wake me up
Too much light in this window, don't wake me up,
Only coffee no sugar, inside my cup,
If I wake and your here still, give me a kiss,
I wasn't finish dreaming, about your lips
Don't wake me up up up up up up,
Don't wake me up up up up up up,
Don't wake me up up up up up up,
Don't wake me up, don't wake me,
Don't wake me up (no)
Don't wake me up,
Don't wake me up (yeah)
Don't wake me up up up up up up,
Don't wake me up, don't wake me
Okay, the rhythm is good, but the lyric is quite horrible.
Need another example?..I can give you guys a bunch.
However, like I've said on the Verini article (which, in my opinion was HORRIBLY cited in this article), as an active member in the Vocaloid community, I'll put my two cents in.
First off, it appears that the major news channels are running out of material to write on.
First off, the Vocaloid engine debuted in 2005-2006 with Zero-G (England)'s Leon and Lola Vocaloids, running in the Vocaloid 1 engine. (They would also release Miriam on the same engine later) Crypton (Japan) followed suit with their first Vocaloids, Meiko and Kaito, also running on the Yamaha Vocaloid 1 engine. A year or two later, Vocaloid 2 is developed. Just like before, Zero-G releases the first: Sonika, and eventually after some feedback on Sonika, they release the first Classical voice Vocaloids, Prima and Tonio. Meanwhile in Japan, Crypton releases their first major line of Vocaloids. Due to Meiko and Kaito's previous relative commercial failure, Crypton decided to take the Vocaloid tool to the next level: they created the Character Voice series, featuring Miku Hatsune, Rin and Len Kagamine (the first Vocaloid release to feature two different voicebanks from the same voice provider), and finally, Luka Megurine (who was the first bilingual Vocaloid to be released, featuring voicebanks in Japanese and English). The "hologram" concerts came LONG after the usage of Vocaloid became popular. You Americans seem to be, again, forgetting that singers often don't write their own material. Producers and songwriters do. It's the same with Vocaloid. That's the whole reason why they were ******* made in the first place, because up and coming producers and songwriters were having a hard time finding vocal talent, even for demos. Shortly after Vocaloid was released, now big-named producers like Kuwagata-P (who recently worked with fellow Vocaloid cover artist, F9), doriko, ryo of supercell (who recently began working with major animation studio, Production I.G. on "Guilty Crown" and "Psycho-Pass" with new vocalists, 15-year-old Kaeda and 18-year-old Chelly (as EGOIST)), 40meter-P (having collaborated on an album with his Vocaloid cover artist wife, Chano), as well as many others have found major life-altering career routes BECAUSE of Vocaloid and the hologram concerts that major video-game producer SEGA sponsors with Crypton Media. Their music, which was rejected from the mainstream scene for SO long, was finally given the biggest stage in the modern music world.
After this, three more companies would develop to join them in the Vocaloid market, but since this article is so narrow enough to focus on just Miku Hatsune, I'll stop here for facts.
To think that publishers as supposedly professional as CBS and Wired have me riled up for two different reasons: 1) the fact that they even ALLOWED these sad excuses of writers to be given opportunities that other people probably deserved more, and 2) the fact that the editors are so narrow-minded that they think that there's nothing wrong with the content of such articles.
CBS, and Wired, too, if you guys are reading this, here's my message to you: If you're going to be writing about something like this, do your research properly. I beg of you. Because honestly, you're sounding no better than the 14-year-old trolls that plague the internet's social sites. Grow up and be willing to open your mind to something that you're all so obviously scared of before making assumptions. You're only making yourselves look bad.
Next time anybody decides to write an article about Vocaloid or Miku Hatsune or whatever else comes this way, please do your research. And, yes, there is material out there that is 300x better than that stupid Verini article, so please stop relying on your equally narrow-minded colleagues, because, chances are, if someone decides to diss their most professional sources in a major magazine article, they're not all that smart.
Like, seriously? Captain America? Spider Man? Super Man? Batman? Snoopy? Micky Mouse? Tom and Jerry? Bugs Bunny? Darth Vader? America has it's fair share of "synthetic characters" that far surpass their acting counter parts.
In an article about Hatsune, I really wanted CBS to focus more on the fact that no name composers and song writers who made it to the big show because of the program. Anyone can use the vocaloid program, but only a good amount are ever even considered worthy to be favorited.
http://********.com/virtual-pop-star-inspires-terrorism/
Old media, welcome to the new media. And try to get up to speed so you don't look like a helpless dinosaur.