I can't read the article, but I see in the first few sentences it acknowledges this and starts to point out that Vocaloid (the main technology in question) is t

I can't read the article, but I see in the first few sentences it acknowledges this and starts to point out that Vocaloid (the main technology in question) is the first speech synthesis technology to actually see widespread use in a subculture of music production. Most creative use of speech synthesis prior to this was limited to vocoders, which is really more speech transformation (requires speech input). The sound you hear from Kraftwerk, Daft Punk etc. Though the VODER demonstrations are actually insanely impressive, especially for the time period.