The Weekly VOCALOID Ranking (週刊VOCALOIDランキング Shuukan VOCALOID Ranking), sometimes shortened to Vocaran (ぼからん), is a ranking of most popular VOCALOID songs from the past week using statistics from Niconico's metrics. It is currently "hosted" by the Ranking navigator, Naho (奈帆).
History & Evolution[]
Originally titled Weekly Miku Miku Ranking, the first video was uploaded October 9, 2007. It only featured 26 ranked videos, at the scoring was slightly different (My Lists were worth 10 points and comments were worth 1.0 points). The top song was "Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru" with 254,349 points, more than triple the score of the next highest video.
On November 13, 2007, the 6th video adopted the Weekly VOCALOID Ranking name and introduced a male silhouette as narrator/host.
For the 2008 season (introduced on week 14 on January 8) the comment modifier was introduced. In the 39th episode on July 1, Naho assumed her current role as the main host, and the Weekly Pickup began as a regular feature.
For the 2009 Season (starting with episode 67), there was an update to the graphics used for the video, especially title and segment graphics.
For the 2010 season (starting at #119 on January 11), the comment modifier became "Modifier A" and a new My List modifier was added as "Modifier B." Again, graphics and presentation were updated.
For the 2012 season (starting at #205 on August 17), the Weekly UTAU Ranking was incorporated, after 11th position. The video adopted the Weekly VOCALOID & UTAU Ranking name, and both Naho and A-san host the video.
For the 2020 season (starting at #640 on January 8), the video adopted the Weekly VOCAL Character & UTAU Ranking name, with the VOCALOID portion additionally covering other vocal synthesisers such as Sharpkey, Synthesizer V, CeVIO, and musicalized speech software.
Current Episode Format[]
Each episode follows a similar format.
- Safety Warning
- Introduction and explanation of the rules and points system
- General top 10
- New Top 20 (20-11)
- Weekly Utau Ranking (Top 10)
- Top 10-4
- This Week in History (currently the Top 5 from approximately the same time one year ago)
- 3rd, 2nd, and Top ranked videos
- Videos rank 21 and below (New Ranking)
- Videos rank 11 and below (General Ranking)
- Sign-off
Song Combos[]
Humorously unique to the Weekly VOCALOID Ranking, song combos occur when two or more consecutively-ranked songs sound incredibly alike (which stems from the fact that they are remakes and/or remixes of each other). The effect is that there would be a seamless transition between ranks, without the title ticker in-between. This can sometimes break the regular format of certain segments.
Most Recent Combo:
Weekly VOCALOID Ranking #441 - 少年と魔法のロボット "The Boy and the Magical Robot" Fukase version and GUMI version
Qualifying[]
In order to be considered for placement, a song or video must be original and cannot be explicit in nature. "Original" is loosely defined as "no direct copy/pasting from another video." Covers, remixes, and full versions of older songs are eligible for the ranking.
Additionally, it must meet standards based on the official RSS Rankings.
- It must be in the Top 1000 for all category in either of the 3 key metrics
- It must be in the Top 100 in the VOCALOID, Ongaku (音楽), or Ensoushitemita (演奏してみた) categories in either of the 3 metrics
How points are calculated[]
Each video is awarded points based on the 3 key metrics on Niconico: Views, Comments, and MyList appearances. The calculation used for the 2010 season is
- View + Comment * Modifier A + Mylist * Modifier B
- Modifier A: (View + Mylist) / (View + Comment + Mylist) (rounded to 2 decimal places)
- Modifier B: (Mylist/View*100)*2, max. 40 (rounded to 2 decimal places)
Until this season, the example was a video that received 10,000 hits, 5,000 comments, and 500 My List adds. Applying that to the new system, Modifier A is found by adding hits and My Lists (in this case 10,500) and dividing that sum by the total amount of metrics (15,500) which ends up being 0.67. Modifier B is finding the ratio of Mylists per view (500/10,000), and multiplying that by 200, resulting in a value of 10.
This means the videos final score is 10,000+(5,000*0.67)+(500*10)=18,350 points.
There is a limit that is imposed on the number of points that the My List metric can contribute to the total score. It is equal to 5x the number of hits. In the previous example, the My List Limit would be 10,000*5=50,000 points. This is to avoid skewed or faked My List data.
Scoring Controversies[]
The scoring system is not perfect and has been subject to problems. Early on in Vocaran's history, comments had equal weighting as views. Fans of the song "Hikyou Sentai Urotander" exploited this by filling the comment box with spam. To combat this, the comment modifier was added in the winter of 2007-2008.
In the summer of 2009, another controversy emerged concerning iroha's "Roshin Yuukai": In order to keep the song in the various ranking engines NND has, including WVR, users created dummy accounts and added to the song to the accounts' Mylists, boosting the song's score. Iroha's requests to stop fell on deaf ears, so the producer pulled the song from NND and had a different user (Nagimiso.SYS) upload it. Because of WVR's rules concerning plagiarism, the re-uploaded "Meltdown" does not qualify for any of the VOCALOID Rankings.
Gatekeeper (門番)[]
The term Gatekeeper (門番/Monban) is a commonly used word to describe songs that have been in the general top 10 for an indefinite amount of weeks, a gatekeeper is known for having stayed in the General Top 10 for more than 7 weeks usually pushing songs off the rankings.
There's been more than 25 gatekeepers since the first edition of Vocaran, the longest gatekeeper to have stayed in the rankings was Senbonzakura (Week 207 - Week 502, About 5.6 years) Followed by Asu no yozora Shoukaihan (Week 387 - 596, About 4 years) and Donut hole (Week 318 - 504, about 3.56 years)
Other notable gatekeepers are
Umiyuri Kaiteitan (Week 386 - Week 570, About 3.52 years)
Ghost Rule (Week 432 - Week 603, about 3.2 years)
Yoake to Hotaru (Week 372 - Week 535, about 3.1 years)
"Vocaran Gatekeeper" NicoNicoPedia Page
How Videos are Featured[]
If a video makes the Top 30 (or is the selected pickup song), it is given approximately 20 seconds of air time in a shrunken picture. On the right side of the screen is the videos rank this week and last and its score in detail. At the bottom is the title of the video with the upload date, URL to original video and uploader's username below that.
If the video makes the top 3, the information described above is only shown briefly, as the video eventually takes up the full screen. These videos are given much more air time, normally enough to feature the beginning of the song all the way up to the end of the first chorus.
If a video fails to make the Top 30, but still meets the qualifications to be ranked, it is shown at the end of the program. Four videos are listed at a time, featuring only a thumbnail image of the video, along with the title, upload date, URL, and detailed score. There are typically around 100 videos that qualify for rankings each week.
VOCALOID Ranking Specials[]
Instead of highlighting the best songs from a single week, these multi-part specials count down the all-time most popular VOCALOID songs. There have been specials in December 2007, September 2008, and April 2009. All videos that have qualified for at least one ranking show are eligible for the specials.
Current Episodes[]
List of episodes can be seen on the official niconico MyList.
Other Rankings[]
Although not as popular as the weekly VOCALOID ranking, there are others as well, each with their own categories. It has similar layouts with the VOCALOID ranking, the only difference are the categories.
External links[]
Weekly VOCALOID Ranking Summary - The VocaRan homepage[dead link]Weekly VOCALOID Ranking - ProjectDIVA.de[dead link]