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The unintentional marketing effect of the Vocaloid characters (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len) is phenomenal. I want to buy and use Vocaloid itself just because
by _chu1 4y ago
The unintentional marketing effect of the Vocaloid characters (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len) is phenomenal. I want to buy and use Vocaloid itself just because those characters are cute
- krapp 4y agoIt's very intentional.
- _chu1 4y ago50/50, I'm sure they would've liked the characters to catch on with people, but they grew way more than I'm sure Yamaha ever thought they would internationally even. Weebs everywhere love Miku and don't even know she's from audio software by Yamaha
- smegsicle 4y agolike their targeted advertising collaboration with dominos, known to be the favored pizza of audio professionals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuI4l0jK7s
- astrange 4y agoBeing true to who you are makes all your dreams possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XMIGjJoS8
- krapp 4y agoRelated (and of interest to HN) - the effort to save the Hatsune Miku Dominos app[0], the quest to track down Scott Oelkers, President of Dominos Pizza Japan (featured in the ad)[1] and interview [2]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341IsnWdaT4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaZt6Dy2_A [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLUCZux2Sbs
- redwall_hp 4y agoMinor correction: Miku, Luka, Rin/Len, Kaito and Meiko are not Yamaha products. Crypton Future Media is the company behind them, as they're third party voice banks for Yamaha's Vocaloid platform. (+/- the newer NT version of Miku, which uses its own thing.) Yamaha only recently started shipping their own voices at all, and none of them have the same fan cachet.
- slongfield 4y agoHer sleeves are literally a Yamaha DX7, which makes it obvious to synth nerds everywhere, but... not sure how much of the weeb population are also synth nerds.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoIt's very clever and very intentional. Vocaloid was developed as a DSP project at a Spanish university, supported by Yamaha, and first marketed in the UK - with almost zero success. It wasn't until it was personalised/mythologised by combining it with anime in Japan that it really exploded. Crypton have very deliberately milked it for everything it's worth. Making the output branded but royalty-free was marketing genius. One bizarre thing about it - it's converging with autotuned vocal stylings applied to organic human vocals, especially in genres like hyperpop. It's becoming increasingly hard to tell them apart. Another bizarre thing - there's a kind of corrosive psychedelic "What does human mean?" aesthetic that applies to AI art in general. Vocaloid music is a subset of other emulated artforms: simultaneously cute, spectacular, and naive, but also disturbing, overwrought, and uncanny. This looks very much like a new era, in the manner of Baroque, Romantic, and Modern. It's going to be explosively transformative for all of the arts, and it's not obvious yet that there's going to be much left that's still recognisable after the dust has settled.
- fomine3 4y agoIt was not obvious that they become so popular like now. Vocaloid1 Meiko wasn't popular. There were very few official artwork for Miku at the beginning. Rise of Nicovideo UGC helped a lot.
- darkwinx 4y agoProbably also natural. Japan love to make character for everything.
- redwall_hp 4y agoCrypton actually licenses their characters under the noncommercial Creative Commons license, since they recognize that their whole business (and the desirability for companies to want to license them) stems from fans creating a whole world of music and visual art surrounding them. It's a great example of a company seizing an opportunity and not stepping on the fan communities that built them said opportunity.