Talk:IA/@comment-86.11.145.120-20121123225141/@comment-53539-20121125102053

Okay, a brief history of this Miku stuff...

Miku got lucky, she inspired the Otaku culture... But a lot of it came down to the fact that Nico Nico Douga was new and it was easy for her videos to appear often enough to get noticed. Some producers made some "good" songs with her, it took off, internet memes spawned from her... Soon Miku was selling 40,000 VBs in her first year. She picked up several awards too.

What kept her popular for a long while was just that following Vocaloids never took off. English vocaloids got swallowed up and forgotten in the midst of Miku, and the Kagamine's got a bad rep for being much more difficult to use then her. Luka was good for her language capablities, and was popular at first, but never reached Miku's level of fame either. Meanwhile, due to the lack of male vocals, Kaito was suddenly a mad success in 2008. Also, Gakupo was released, but again, never took off in popularity as much as Miku despite being a better singing vocal because unlike Miku was based ona professional singer's vocal (Gackt), he also had several glitches and a vocal tone which made him harder to use. Miku was not without her flaws but was a lot easier to use DESPITE her own amount of weaknesses, since no matter what the idea of her was to sound cute.

Gumi was released in 2009 (same year as Luka), she was the only one to compete with Miku's popularity in up coming years, mostly because a;though harder to use, she had a balanced mix of professional results and pleasing vocals. Vocaloids released after Gumi have had a harder time... For example Ah softwares first 3 vocals had a higher difficulty level to work with that was close to Kagamine level in some cases. Their "best" vocaloid is Iroha, who has a good rep too, but hasn't taken off for one reason or another.

These days, there are many vocaloids, but producers stick to the main known ones and only really get involved with the others on the side lines it seems. Miku herself is really outdated by now, there were bettter Vocaloid 2 vocals then her released later on in its lifespan, however, again they never took off. Miku herself is missing vowel sounds, and with the reelease of Vocaloid 3 cannot compete with the average Vocaloid3 vocal. :-/

Also, note... 40,000+ units in her first year? At this point, Miku nd the Kagamine's are the ONLY Vocaloids in Japanese and English vocaloids were not due to be rediscovered with Prima's release. And if your a producer who can afford just one vocaloid, what are you going to invest in? A strange Vocaloid no one has used, or one everyone knows the flaws and strengths of? thus it became a habbit also for new users to buy Miku before they bought other vocaloids due to her reputation, so Miku continued to sell another 20,000 units bringing her sales to 60,000+ as was reported in 2011. Not only that, but a lot of producers only got noticed because of their Miku songs, whereas if they did other Vocaloids they failed to get noticed.

As I mentioned, the only vocaloid closet to Miku's popularity is Gumi... There are better vocaloids besides Miku, but for one reason or another their just not getting noticed or used as much. The majority of song uploads are STILL Miku, despite being old and out dated, but then again a lot of the vocaloid culture and promotion is still centred around her. Top it off, a Vocaloid 3 update is due so the loyal CFM users are staying on Miku. Even if this was not taken into factor, with the amount of merchandise around, Piapro and Pixiv... CFM is mangaing to keep Miku popular, despite they've yet to release a vocaloid 3 vocal and are the last Japanese studio to do so. Not only that, but their also stuck on Miku's popularity and have done nothing new since Luka's release except Appends (which never got the same level of success as the original) and now English versions.

Is Miku the best? If I threw a phonetic chart at you with red marks over, it would show she isn't the best vocal as of right now. "Best" is also a word which can change its meaning depending on what your looking at... For example, Prima is a better opera singer then Miku, hands down, though Miku hasd opera songs out there, their cute but have the wrong tone for opera. So {rima is better for opera then Miku... Male vocals? Miku again doesn't compete with REAL male vocals. In both cases, Miku is not the best of what is to offer... Quality VY1 is better or Gumi, for various reasons, Miku's original tone is basically singspiel not professional as I mentioned previously. I can go on, but I'm due to leave and visit someone so this is all I have time for... :-/