Piko

Piko (ピコ) is a Japanese male singer and the voice provider for the Vocaloid2 Utatane Piko. He was born in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan in March, 1988. He involved himself to music as an amateur vocalist when he was a high school student. With his mother's advice, Piko posted a vocaloid fandub song on Nicovideo and the song received fame. In September 2009 he made his debut as an independent singer, and this led to the contract with Ki/oon Records (read as "kyuun records"), subsidiary company of Sony Music Entertainment Inc. in March, 2010. His artist name, Piko, was from the dog he had.

Trivia

 * In Japan, he is known as 両声類 Ryouseirui, an artificial word from the word of the same pronunciation 両生類 (amphibian) and meaning "both-vocals-species". This is because he has the ability of producing both masculine and feminine vocal tones.
 * His logo is ﾋﾟωﾟｺ, where the katakana ピコ (Piko) are included.
 * PIKO often uses a handdrawn cat with the following face as his trademark image, ﾋﾟωﾟｺ. This cat can be seen as a representation of PIKO in several of his NicoNicoDouga song covers. He has many plush toys, puppets, and, oversized pillows in the likeness of his trademark mascot.
 * The official English romanization is "PIKO". As stated in an entry in his blog.
 * He says his favourite anime character is K-ON!'s Hirasawa Ui on the NND Live broadcast on 12.18.2010. (The source broadcast, with Piko and his band members, can be viewed here with NND premium membership for the next 7 days).
 * He is often known for singing with Sekihan, his friend and another Nico Nico singer.
 * Sekihan and Piko occasionally add comedy into their covers.