Hatsune Miku

Hatsune Miku (初音ミク) is the first Japanese Vocaloid2 in the Vocaloid2 Character Vocal Series, the third Japanese Vocaloid created by Crypton Future Media, and is the seventh Vocaloid to have appeared overall; released on August 31, 2007. She is considered as the most popular and well known Vocaloid and the first to become a pop idol. The data for the voice was created by sampling the voice of Saki Fujita (藤田 咲, Fujita Saki), a Japanese voice actress.

Vocaloid 2
The idea behind her was first established as being "a cute female vocal that professionals can create from" and part of the "CV" or "Character Vocal" series who were designed to be vocals with a variety of character and colour. Hatsune Miku was unveiled on the 06/25/2007, at the time the name of "Miku" was only known. Her voicebank was at 90% production at the time of her unveiling and was the first of a series of multiple vocals planned for the Vocaloid2 software. She was worked upon for more than 10 hours a day for 2 months according to Crypton Future media. Her last name, "Hatsune", was unveiled on the 07/12/2007 after a 12 hour journey to Yamaha to gain permission to release the "CV01" voicebank. Due to problems with time, her Vocaloid 2 software did not have time to go to public beta testing unlike past Vocaloid vocals, this also was the same for Sweet Ann released prior to her.

Her voicebank received numerous awards;
 * She was nominated for an award in the "All About" awards in 2007, which she later won.
 * Crypton Future Media picked up an BCN award in 2008 for their productions, with their sales reaching a 211% increase thanks to several products (One of which being Hatsune Miku).
 * In March 2008, Hatsune Miku won the "Digital Content" AMD award.
 * In June she picked up the MM総研大賞2008 award.
 * At the DaiKon7 in August 2008, she recieved another award.
 * She was awarded the "Good Design Award 2008".
 * She won the Grand Prize at the BCN AWARD 2009.

Append - the Future of Miku
Crypton's next project involving Miku started on Valentine's Day 2009. On 01/08/2009 the first two Appends were confirmed as "CV01-dark-ProtoTYPEβ" and "CV01-vivid-ProtoTYPEβ". Later the names of "dark (soft dark)", "soft", "vivid", and "very_small" had been confirmed.

Both the Miku product and the Append product are sold separately, and the voicebanks of Miku Append are different from the voicebank that the original Miku voicebank has. All the new voicebanks were voiced by Saki Fujita: Soft, Sweet, Dark, Vivid, Solid, and Light. Crypton announced that this is an append disk (an addition which offers extension to computer softwares and is similar to Expansion Packs in English) and users need the original Miku to utilize Miku Append. It costs collectively slightly under the original Miku price. While they had been announced on Miku's second birthday, they were released over eight months later. The different appends are meant to capture the "moods" and were described by Cypton Future Media as "like a rainbow of color" and had been created from vocal performance of her voice provider.

Prior to the release, demos had constantly been put on Crypton's website. These included productions by various Vocaloid producers from Nico Nico Douga. Ryo's "Black Rock Shooter" 2M mix had also been done with one of the beta voicebanks.

Despite the success of Miku herself, her Append did not sell as many units. Following the Kagamine Append release, both the Kagamine and their Append software pushed Miku's Append software into 6th place on Crypton's sales page. Though it returned to popularity soon after, the reaction to the Append has never reached the same level as her original voicebank.

Her append boxart shows her hair colored much more green than her original product, and her outfit is changed to match a varied color scheme over the old almost one color scheme (her blue-green hair color).

Demos
 * vivid-β, soft-β and very small-β Demos

English version; 2010
On October 8, 2010, at the New York Comic-Con, Ito Hiroyuki (Crypton's CEO) announced that if Miku's facebook page hits 39,390 "likes", an English voicebank will be developed. The project was termed "Project MIKUCASH".

Miku's page has reached more than 39,390 "likes" on her Facebook page (run by Crypton staff).

English version; 2011
Early on in the English voicebank announcement, Crypton Future Media made a point across they would not make a localized version of the software if it did not meet their expectations, i.e. it did not sound cute enough.

The alpha stage of development went under review the weekend of the 19th of March 2011. By then it was still far from the beta stage, Crypton reported they would keep their fans up to date with its development and were aiming for a good, qualified English voicebank. Crypton also reported that they would like to do Miku English Appends in the future, however they have no specific plans right now.

On the 28 of May 2011, demos of Kaito Append Whisper and Power along with Miku English were posted on Nico Nico Douga. This voicebank was only 40% complete and there is more development left to do, as noted by a number of native English fans her smoothness was lacking, but improvements had already been made from Luka's voicebank.

On July 2, 2011 a Beta version of Miku's English voicebank was used at the "MikuNopolis" concert in Los Angeles. It was used to enable Miku to address the audience and, with Luka, perform World's End Dancehall with English lyrics (although Luka sang most of the song).

At the time of her first announcement, it was unknown if Miku would be Vocaloid 2 or Vocaloid 3, but was later confirmed Vocaloid 3.

On Oct 16 2011, a video was uploaded on Youtube with Miku's English Voicebank showing much improvement.

On Oct 24th, it was reported that Miku's voicebank is 70% complete and all the basic sounds had been captured.

English version; 2012
On March 25th, 2012, a demo using Miku's English voicebank composed by Fink was released. At the time the voicebank was still in beta and her triphones were still needing adjustment./ It was also mentioned that in the future they would like to add Appends to the English version to give Miku english expression, however they are currently undecided on the matter.

[English Hatsune Miku] Tokyo x Nicofarre [Fink-Demo] Youtube Broadcast

On July 31, 2012 another demo was released, and was purposely edited to have a strong Japanese accent.

[English Hatsune Miku] NICE AGE Youtube Broadcast.

Further adjustments were made to Kaito and Miku in early October prior to their vocals demostration.

A English demo of Miku and Kaito was shown NYCCon 2012, both are still in Beta version.

As stated by Yu Asakawa, Hatsune Miku English is going to be released by spring of next year.

Vocaloid 3 Update
V3 Miku Append has been confirmed for the Vocaloid3 engine. The move over to the new engine means that all of the Append data must be readjusted from scratch for optimum results in vocaloid3.

Concept
Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." When KEI illustrated Miku, he was asked to draw Miku as an android and a color scheme to go off of (based on YAMAHA synthesizer's signature blue-green color). Crypton also provided KEI her detailed concepts, however, Crypton says it was not easy to explain what a "Vocaloid" was like to him, and KEI says he could not create an image of a "singing computer" at first, as he did not even know what a "synthesizer" was. It took him more than a month. The digital design on Miku's skirt and boots are based off synthesizer program colours and the bars represent the actual bars within the program, following Crypton's idea. Part of her design seems to be based on Yamaha's keyboard model DX-100.

Miku was originally intended to have a different hairstyle, but KEI stuck to pigtails after trying them out. Her pigtails have since become a iconic status of her design. On June 22 2012, Hatsune Miku's Twin tails even earned her the title of the Twin Tail which best represented the 2000s, marking her the best set of Twin Tails in the dawn of the 21st century. She now shares her twin tail distinction with other characters like Sailor Moon (who won best Twin Tails for the 90s period).

After an Internet Meme involving Hachune Miku, Miku was associated with a spring onion (often mistaken for a leek due to the similar appearance). This along with Kaito's discovery started a habit called "the Item War" where it became traditional for new Vocaloids to have an item assigned to them and the items were debated on until one stuck via an Internet Meme.

The thin squares around her pigtails are futuristic ribbons made of a special material that float in place. As seen in Kei's art for Miku, they are able to hold Miku's pigtails in place without having to physically touch the hair itself. The ribbons are also reported by Kei to be the hardest item on the character's design for cosplayers to recreate.

Etymology
The name of the title and the character of the software was chosen by combining Hatsu (初, first), Ne (音, sound), and Miku (ミク, future) thus meaning "the first sound from the future."

Marketing
Miku's inital marketing was similar to past software synthesizers and Vocaloid voicebanks, as this was standard marketing at her time of release for Vocaloids. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and Otaku market hadn't fully formed yet, and so it was not initially considered or factored in. Her unexpected success was owed more to the creativity of fans, who experimented with her vocals and created songs that, in turn, influenced others to do the same. This provided Crypton with the chance to take advantage of early technical support for Miku and several guidebooks and magazine support were released souly focused on her vocals. This type of technical coverage was even possible long after Miku's inital release and methods of adapting her vocals are the most well documented amongst the Vocaloid2 era vocals.

Since the success of her voicebank led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of the mass marketing has come after her release and as a response to her popularity. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloids will usually only feature Miku's name, despite the inclusion of other Crypton Vocaloids in the product. In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all "Hatsune Miku" brand goods added up into the region of ¥10,000,000,000 since her release in 2007, the result of Miku's marketing success is that her name is now the easiest of the Vocaloids to market. Also owed to her popularity, many vocaloid related products such as piano sheet music packs, books, and magazines carry her image on the front cover.

Corolla Miku, presented in 2011, has a slightly different attire than KEI's original design: instead of one skirt stripe and single floating ribbons, she now has two, as was intended by the client.

In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to the U.S. audiences. On May 7, USAmazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song "World is Mine" as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it came 7th in the top 10 World singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. The entry was presented as "The World is Mine Feat. Hatsune Miku". Crypton had to consider who they were aiming the advertisements of Miku at, mostly at the web fanbase, and had to check the differences between the Japanese and English fanbases. Since Crypton always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the west and expand their audiences.

Crypton Future Media do not approve of using Miku for politics. This is so far one of the biggest areas of marketing that Miku has avoided being used for.


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Voicebank Libraries

 * Comparison between the Vocaloid and voice provider
 * Hatsune Miku has songs in the Nico Nico Douga Hall of Fame
 * Book on how to use Hatsune Miku & Kagamine Rin/Len

Hatsune Miku (CV01)
The Vocal Character series were designed to be a set of vocals with particular characteristics about them; her voice allows for manipulation in a variety of ways while maintaining a cute sounding voice as a result of this approach. In 2009 she was also offered alongside the Sonar8 software package.
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Demo Version
A trial version of this software was featured in VOCALOIDをたのしもう Vol.7 along side trials of VY2 and VY1v3. It also appeared in the next issue VOCALOIDをたのしもう Vol.8 alongside a a trial version of Tone Rion.

Hatsune Miku (CV01); Append
The Append voicebanks exist side by side with the original voicebank, giving Miku a total of 7 possible voicebanks to choose from for users with both plug-ins. They require the original Hatsune Miku software to function and are a higher quality voicebanks that render smoother results than Miku's original voicebank. For older Hatsune Miku users this will also act as a method of updating the Vocaloid 2 engine to a newer version, which was sometimes only possible during the Vocaloid 2 era by buying a more updated voicebank. Each voicebank has its own strengths and weakness and the append voicebanks themselves have different ranges, meaning that different voicebanks can be used for different songs.

The difficulty of using each Append voicebank varies, for example, Append; Soft has no optimum differences between its range and tempo compared to the original Miku voicebank, whereas other Appends like Append; Dark are considered a much greater contrast. For these greater contrasting voicebanks more editing may be required for better results. Despite this, compared to the latter Kagamine Append that followed, the Miku Append is overall much easier to use and complies with Miku's own reputation as being one of the easier Vocaloid2 vocals to use. Many of the Append vocals overlap each other, making switching Appends mid-song relatively unnoticeable and with correct use can make Miku sound more realistic compared to just using her original voicebank alone. However, the vocals themselves are designed to give Miku "expression of colour" and like the original Hatsune Miku vocal, they are based on vocal performance and do not produce professional singer results and on occusion do not maintain a natural tone.


 * Comparative verification of 7 Append voicebanks
 * Comparing VY1(β version), Miku Append (Soft), Gumi, Lily


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Demo Version
In December 2009, demo software versions of "soft" and "dark" were released. They did not allow VSQ saving, but did allow .wav rendering, which led to a stream of videos released on Nico Nico Douga. In vol.5 of VOCALOIDをたのしもう, trials of "sweet" and "solid" were also featured.

Hatsune Miku English
Unreleased


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V3 Hatsune Miku (CV01)
Unreleased

The updated version of Hatsune Miku.
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V3 Hatsune Miku (CV01); Append
Unreleased

The updated version of Hatsune Miku Append.
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Examples of Usage
To our readers and editors, for section notes please read; Notes; Examples sections.


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Popularity



 * Google Trends "Hatsune Miku"

Before Miku was released, Vocaloid was not much more than an obscure program. Nico Nico Douga played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software today. Soon after its release, users of Nico Nico Douga started posting videos with songs created by the software. According to Crypton, a popular video with a comically-altered Miku holding a spring/Welsh onion, singing Ievan Polkka, presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation. As recognition and popularity grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborate content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D and 3D, and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas.

The initial sales of Hatsune Miku were so high that Tokyo could not keep up with the demand. In the first 12 days of sale, nearly 3,000 sales reservations were made. This was around one sale in 250 in the music software industry, quoted as "an impossible number" by Wataru Sasaki—the person in charge of the planning and production company 'surprise'. Amazon.co.jp stated on September 12, 2007 that they had sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,001 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. It was confirmed in her first year alone, Miku sold 40,000+ units. Later reports came that she had sold 60,000+ copies of her software, normally selling 1,000 copies of a synthesizing software was considered good business. Because of Miku's success, Crypton Future Media were able to open up their services to allow more support for their Vocaloids, including websites such as Piapro and Karen-T, concerts and merchandise. By 2009, some were referring to her as Vocaloid's first "Diva". In 2010, Crypton Future Media produced a ranking of the Vocaloids they sold on their website.

Miku has remained the fan favorite amongst the Japanese fandom, having the strongest following and usage even after the release of much better Vocaloids from her era. Her popularity was so high that when GazettE’s Aoi made a negative comment on her through twitter, he was immediately met with outraged fans and was forced to retract some of his comments after trying out the software for himself. Indeed most of the more popular songs for Vocaloid are sung by Miku and she has more hit songs on Nico Nico Douga than any other Vocaloid. Merchandise for Miku is plenty and often sells well due to her popularity; by 2009 most of the merchandise released for Vocaloid was Miku. All of Crypton Future Media's promotions also centered on Miku's image. As she is the most popular Vocaloid and the most commonly used, she is the most associated with the software and is regarded as the first true "Vocaloid Diva Star".

Hatsune Miku's popularity had major impact on the development of other Crypton Future Media voicebanks. Because of the high demand for her voicebank and character image, Crypton were caught up by the overwhelming popularity and demand for her vocal and character image. This caused delays to other Vocaloid 2 projects, including the release of a additional character. How much impact her popularity has had on other Vocaloid voicebanks is unknown, but Crypton Future Media has many delayed voicebanks that were originally set for a Vocaloid 2 release.

An independent Vocaloid search on Nico Nico Douga revealed that most Vocaloids had less then 1,000 videos uploaded on Nico Nico Douga in between July 1 and December 15 2011. Miku, however, had managed to gain 9904 uploads to the site during this period making her number one in video submissions for Vocaloid related videos. She also had the highest number of total views during this period with 23847081 views and 1943303 mylists. However, Miku was put in 3rd place on average number of views per video with 2407.82 views per video (and 196.21 mylists). However, a comment led by the report noted that due to the popularity of the most famous Producers it was much harder to conduct the report. When the mean number was conducted, which was a more accurate report of the Vocaloids during this period, Miku did not even make it into the top 6 Vocaloids despite having consistant no.1s throughout this period.

Her design has also influenced the Vocaloid mascot designs of other companies, creating common design influence that divides fans opinions on character design. Her design has also spawned many producer based derivatives. She is the most common Vocaloid to receive derivatives due to the popularity of her voicebank and heavy promotions by Crypton Future Media.

In 2012, a poll was held for the London Olympic Games 2012 which asked people which singer or group they would like to see at the Olympics. Miku reached the no.1 spot, beating popular singers such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. The poll was not offical and was done for popularity reasons.

Those against Vocaloid or skeptical on it cite Hatsune Miku's vocal as a reason for their feelings against Vocaloid. A common negative reaction towards her centers on her high pitched vocals, labelling her as sounding like a "chipmunk", as it is not normal for a singer to be able to reach notes so high so easily. In turn this can led to incorrect presumptions on the software itself; a common stereotype of Vocaloid is that all Vocals are as high pitched as Miku herself. However, most Vocaloids can not reach Miku's notes, the only Vocaloid capable of reaching her same notes during the Vocaloid 2 era was Prima, who does not have the same vocal pitching or vocal type as Miku. So for those who are not impressed by Miku, she can often end up being the source of anti-Vocaloid opinions.

Miku's Append was not as well received as her original voicebank, though it managed to stay in the top ten products from Crypton Future Media. It may also disappear from the list entirely from time to time. However, it has been known to have reached the top 3 products on occasion, as well as knock other CV vocals further down the charts. Miku was ranked as the no.1 Vocaloid product they sold and despite drifting between ranks on their product list her Append managed to grab 2nd place.

Trivia

 * Because she is the first Vocaloid many got to know and the first to draw a large amount of attention, there are a number of common misconceptions;
 * Miku is often mistaken as the very first Vocaloid ever produced by those new or unfamiliar to the software's history, or the first Vocaloid 2 released. While she was the first Vocaloid 2 to be released for the Japanese market, it was PowerFX's Sweet Ann who claimed the place as the first Vocaloid 2 to be released, she was released 2 months prior to Miku. When Miku became more known in 2010, the media also incorrectly labelled her as this as well. On more than one occasion Crypton Future Media have labelled her as the first, though this is likely an error as they usually introduce her as "the first of the character vocal series".
 * Since 2010, Miku has won the classification of "Virtual Diva" and has become a pop star in her own right. However, some reports mislabel her as "the first virtual star" when other "virtual stars" have been released prior to her existence as early as the mid-1990s, although these "stars" never rose to the level of popularity Miku has reached.
 * Miku is also not the first Vocaloid to debut in America as Zero-G's Vocaloids were already on sale before her. However, all previous Vocaloids failed to make an impact in America.
 * Miku is also not the first to have an avatar, the first was Sweet Ann who was based on "the bride of Frankenstein", though Miku was the first to have a profile and expand on the concept of an avatar. Leon and Lola did not feature a character on their boxart, Miriam had a blurred photo of Miriam Stockley.  Though Kaito and Meiko had characters on their boxart, they were not originally meant to represent their vocals.
 * She was also not the first to feature in a "live" concert, Miriam had the first in 2004. However, Miku was the first to actually feature herself "live" in the concert whereas Miriam's concert featured just her vocal.


 * Sound Horizon, a popular band that uses music to tell stories, used Miku Hatsune in their third single "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido" and its corresponding album, "Marchen". Saki Fujita, the seiyuu that provided her voice, also does narrations.


 * With a total of 7 voicebanks made and at least one on the way, Hatsune Miku is the Vocaloid character with the most voicebanks to her name and is currently only beaten in number of total voicebanks by the Kagamine software releases.

Notable for...

 * First Japanese Vocaloid 2 to be released
 * First of Crypton Future Media's Character Vocal series
 * First specialised vocal of Vocaloid 2
 * Most merchandise to date
 * Most songs created to date
 * First Vocaloid to have a "true" avatar given
 * First Vocaloid to have a bio
 * First Vocaloid to earn the status of "Diva"
 * First Vocaloid to be Appended
 * Holds the highest sales figures of all Vocaloids
 * Highest amount of pre-orders of a software synthesizer
 * Most common/popular Vocaloid
 * First Vocaloid to have a videogame
 * First Japanese Vocaloid to be on stage
 * One of 3 voicebanks used by the robot HRP-4C
 * A number of the Internet Memes linked to Vocaloid
 * Most awarded Vocaloid software released

Gallery
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