Talk:LEON/@comment-179.219.108.1-20191113121313/@comment-53539-20191116091041

Crypton Future Media were the ones handling the V1 promotional era and were tasked with promotion of Vocaloid itself back then. CFM wasn't a Vocaloid company yet and hadn't made 1 Vocaloid, they were left handling Meiko and Kaito.

CFM was about to release Miku English at this point and it was suppose to be a V2, so the comment was likely made in passing to explain a few things they were doing at the time. My guess is they saw the American market as generally worth more money (it is to be honest) and how American's usually prefer American accented vocals. They themselves based their English vocals on the American accent so its also a justification for Miku trying rather unsuccessfully to sound American.

The funny thing is, the most popular Vocaloids until Diva and Songman were released were Avanna and Oliver, Oliver having a British accent and Avanna a more Irish accent, Avanna was until Dex and Daina the no.1 native English voicebank being sold and held onto that title for a long time. She only lost it because Dex and Daina came out. So, the reality is even the American market prefers diversity from time to time and doesn't strictly stick to only liking American accents. Also by the fact a number of them also like the Japanese non-native vocals who have Japanese-y accents, I don't think it should be taken too seriously.

Though in the days of V1, when Vocaloid was barely heard of, it would have made much more sense as Vocaloid was this obscure software few heard of. Unless they read the New York Times article or Sound on Sound magazine. So this is how things were in those days. I had heard of it myself from Sound on Sound and found Lola in a box of software at a computer fair, so this is just how things were in those days. So CFM maybe was right about their presumptions.