User blog comment:Angel Emfrbl/2014 end of year report/@comment-25577599-20141229010922/@comment-53539-20141230094958

And it seems a lot of French fans are ignoring it. They say that Ruby's marketing is awful (I don't know much about it so I wont comment), but calling her a vocaloid wasn't a great marketing and it wasn't even legal ? VoxWave seem nice and open to critics, but they don't talk much about the VOCALOID thing. Some fans are also saying that a lot of people on VO don't like ALYS because they think only Engloids (Ruby) are great, but I've seen lots of good reaction on the ALYS topic ? Plus it's natural to hope that Ruby will be sucessfull, since a lot of Engloids aren't.

Originally Vocaloid didn't sell because it had marketing behind it. go back to the day of Miku's release she had 3,000+ pre-orders and had recieved almost 0 marketing.

In contrast to other vocaloids, Ruby has had more and without a completed vocal there is a limit. Releasing an image before the vocal is done means fans judge only based on appearance and not on voice. We have had a concept art despite that of 3 possible designs, but we've been told another artist could have done the official art instead.

From exist of VO, the majority of users are bias in favor of Japanese vocaloids. VO forums gets feed back for PowerFX and Zero-G and are loosely associated with the two companies. Its why their no longer allowed to have links to pocaloid or any other form of illegal vocaloid, though they are not forbidden to talk about it.

The English vocaloids have a mask over them, there has never been 100% confirmation on how well they've done except we've been told they are popular within their own market and do well based on this. The trouble is simply the market is small. "Success" in synthesizers means just selling 1,000 copies of something. Vocaloid are generally expected to do better, but this remains as far as one knows, a legit goal. Ergo, so long as vocaloids meet this goal they will do well.

The more legit concern is the lower profit they bring in, but as Japanese vocaloids add more contents (appends and other extra vocals) they will also received less profit per sale. However they are expected to sell a lot more copies so this is why they can afford to get a lower profit for the sake of higher sales.

There are other factors too... Overseas vocaloids (Korean, chinese, Spanish and English companies) count as exports and their licensing is higher. Most of the focus is on Japan for Vocaloid and this brings the concept of Vocaloid being typically Japanese. Only yesturday on DA I saw someone say the 3 reasons they hate Vocaloid is its Japanese, high pitched and based on "robots". So this is the ever lasting impression voclaoid has.

Even now there are struggling vocaloids because since some companies, especially CFM, can now afford to invest more in marketing, they potentially can out market any new vocaloid. Even Gumi has at times moments where she can't compete with Miku, and Gumi is the considered the next closet vocaloid who isn't from CFM to Miku's popularity.

The problem isn't "Engloids aren't popular" or "doing well". As we've established their actually "doing well". The trouble is that Japanese Vocaloids are doing better. Better then Chinese... Korean... Spanish as well. Miku sells with little effort too. :-/

Regardless, Ruby has recieved some marketing and compared to some toher vocaloids that has been released, more.

What was Ia's first solid marketing?

A single note sung by her and a bare bones website. All her marketing, like Miku's, came after her release. ^_^'