Vocaloid Popularity Analysis
(Note: I have nothing to say except "Wow, I'm so glad I got this done.)
This is an analysis by yours truly on the shifting popularity of Vocaloids throughout the years, from its development to now.
When it was first being developed, Vocaloid was... Hmm. It was certainly groundbreaking technology- LEON and LOLA even won a couple of awards. However, it was really expensive, hard to use, and didn't sound very good. Additionally, LEON and LOLA missed their audience, American DAW Producers, with their British accents, plus the fact that they were sold by a British company. MIRIAM failed because of competition with Cantor, a rival software to Vocaloid at the time. Kaito failed, again, because of a missed audience (I'll elaborate more on Kaito's popularity on his description). Meiko was the first Vocaloid to actually do well.
Then V2, a vastly improved version of the software, released, a bit before the first V2 Vocaloid, Sweet Ann. She had originally been developed for V1, under the name of "Jodie," but was moved to the updated version. She was the first Vocaloid to have an official avatar, a slightly weird "Bride of Frankenstein" thing. She did still a bit better.
And then Miku happened.
The popularity of Vocaloid exploded. A combination of her cute avatar and voice, relative ease-of-use, and ability to fit into multiple different genres of music caused her to sell more than 40,000 units in only her first year of sale. To add perspective, selling 1,000 units of a software was considered good business. As much as I don't care for her, I do have Miku to thank for making Vocaloid not just another obscure software- she made Vocaloid a thing. People started posting videos using the software on Nico Nico Douga, the Japanese version of YouTube (one of those videos was a cover of Ievan Polkka), which contributed a lot to Vocaloid's growing popularity.
I'm being lazy and skipping a lot here, but basically, what followed were the "golden days/years" of Vocaloid. Lots of releases, V3 made it even better, lots of songs.
However, in recent years, the fad has been dying off in Japan, which has been the main financial support for the software. There are a couple reasons: one, V4 and V5 didn't add much to Vocaloid, two, the market has been so swamped with Japanese Vocaloids that there are hardly unique voice types coming out any more (I can hardly tell Kizuna Akari from Yuzuki Yukari, or Otomatchi Una from Rana), three, V5 even had some bugs, and took out XSY, and four, just a general fad dying off. Additionally, other software like Synth V, Emvoice, and CeVIO have been catching up, and some might even say that they're better than Vocaloid, except for the amount of available voices.
So what does this mean for the future of Vocaloid?
It means that it needs to find a new audience, and also step up its game.
Can it do that?
We'll just have to wait and see.
This is an analysis by yours truly on the shifting popularity of Vocaloids throughout the years, from its development to now.
When it was first being developed, Vocaloid was... Hmm. It was certainly groundbreaking technology- LEON and LOLA even won a couple of awards. However, it was really expensive, hard to use, and didn't sound very good. Additionally, LEON and LOLA missed their audience, American DAW Producers, with their British accents, plus the fact that they were sold by a British company. MIRIAM failed because of competition with Cantor, a rival software to Vocaloid at the time. Kaito failed, again, because of a missed audience (I'll elaborate more on Kaito's popularity on his description). Meiko was the first Vocaloid to actually do well.
Then V2, a vastly improved version of the software, released, a bit before the first V2 Vocaloid, Sweet Ann. She had originally been developed for V1, under the name of "Jodie," but was moved to the updated version. She was the first Vocaloid to have an official avatar, a slightly weird "Bride of Frankenstein" thing. She did still a bit better.
And then Miku happened.
The popularity of Vocaloid exploded. A combination of her cute avatar and voice, relative ease-of-use, and ability to fit into multiple different genres of music caused her to sell more than 40,000 units in only her first year of sale. To add perspective, selling 1,000 units of a software was considered good business. As much as I don't care for her, I do have Miku to thank for making Vocaloid not just another obscure software- she made Vocaloid a thing. People started posting videos using the software on Nico Nico Douga, the Japanese version of YouTube (one of those videos was a cover of Ievan Polkka), which contributed a lot to Vocaloid's growing popularity.
I'm being lazy and skipping a lot here, but basically, what followed were the "golden days/years" of Vocaloid. Lots of releases, V3 made it even better, lots of songs.
However, in recent years, the fad has been dying off in Japan, which has been the main financial support for the software. There are a couple reasons: one, V4 and V5 didn't add much to Vocaloid, two, the market has been so swamped with Japanese Vocaloids that there are hardly unique voice types coming out any more (I can hardly tell Kizuna Akari from Yuzuki Yukari, or Otomatchi Una from Rana), three, V5 even had some bugs, and took out XSY, and four, just a general fad dying off. Additionally, other software like Synth V, Emvoice, and CeVIO have been catching up, and some might even say that they're better than Vocaloid, except for the amount of available voices.
So what does this mean for the future of Vocaloid?
It means that it needs to find a new audience, and also step up its game.
Can it do that?
We'll just have to wait and see.
Here's an interesting discussion on the Vocaloid Wiki:
ReplyDeletehttps://vocaloid.fandom.com/f/p/3294873499205736273