Is Miku a Vocaloid?

, sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is the name of a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol and has performed at concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).

Hatsune Miku

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for,, and, thus meaning "the first sound of the future", referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series".

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. The name of "Hatsune Miku" was conceived soon after the Vocaloid 2 announcements, when an English and Japanese vocal were developed for the character. The intended design was delayed and later used for Megurine Luka instead. Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the ""Character Vocal Series"", which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka. Each had a particular concept and vocal direction.

She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. She was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone. Those samples all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine and constructed into a keyboard-style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Crypton released Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007. Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." Hatsune Miku was released for Vocaloid 3 on August 31, 2013, including an English vocal library. She was the first Vocaloid to be developed by the company, following their commercial release handle of Yamaha Corporation developed vocals "Meiko" and "Kaito", making her the third Vocaloid to be sold commercially by the company.

On April 30, 2010, a new add-on for Miku, called "Hatsune Miku Append", was released, consisting of six different timbres for her voice: "Soft" (gentle timbre), "Sweet" (young, chibi quality), "Dark" (mature and melancholic), "Vivid" (bright and cheerful), "Solid" (loud, clear voice), and "Light" (innocent and angelic). "Miku Append" was created to expand Miku's voice library, and as such requires the original program to be installed on the user's computer first. This was the first time a Vocaloid had such a release, and more Append versions were reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

It was mentioned that a 7th "Append" voicebank, a falsetto voice, had been recorded; however, since the developers didn't think it would be useful on its own, no plans were made for an independent release. During the Kagamine Append development, a "darkish Whisper/Sweet" append was being considered. Miku's English vocal was also due for a Vocaloid 2 release, but it was not released in the engine due to low quality.

To aid in the production of 3D animations, the program MikuMikuDance was developed by an independent programmer. The freeware software allowed a boom in fan-made animations to be developed, as well as being a boost for promoting Vocaloid songs themselves. This spawned "NicoNico Cho Party", where fans could submit their animations to accompany live holographic performances of popular Vocaloid songs.

An English voicebank for Hatsune Miku was announced in 2011 and was to be released by the end of 2012. However, the decision to move to Vocaloid 3 and issues with English pronunciation delayed the release. It was finally released on August 31, 2013 via digital distribution.

The Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 3 Japanese vocal library was released on September 26, 2013. It contained updates to all previous Vocaloid 2 vocals except "Vivid" and "Light". These were later released separately, though they were initially offered to anyone who already owned Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Append, and Hatsune Miku V3. Once imported into Vocaloid4, all Vocaloid3 Hatsune Miku vocals could use the new Cross-Synthesis system (XSY) built for the new engine. The voice was also imported into a device called "Pocket Miku", released on April 3, 2014.

Hatsune Miku received an update for Yamaha's Vocaloid 4 engine under the name of "Hatsune Miku V4x". It makes use of the new EVEC system for Piapro Studio, a VSTi plugin used as an alternative to the traditional Vocaloid Editor. EVEC consists of recorded vowels. Along with the consonant, a different vocal tone can be achieved. Two vocal tones are included in the EVEC system: "Power" and "Soft". Along with the new EVEC system, phoneme errors found in Miku's V2 and V3 voicebanks would be fixed allowing for easier manipulation of her voice., Hatsune Miku V4X/V4 English was released.

A Mandarin Chinese voicebank was released in September 2017, making Hatsune Miku the first trilingual Vocaloid product. Her Chinese name is 初音未来 (pinyin: "Chūyīn Wèilái"); 未来 are the Chinese characters for her given name, Miku.

Miku has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese. Her instant success is owed to Vocaloid being a cultural hit in Japan and she reportedly sold 40,000 units by July 2008, selling on average 300 units a week. By Jan 2011, she had sold 60,000 units.

Since the success of her Vocaloid 2 package led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of the mass marketing has come after her initial release as a response to her popularity and has been on going since 2008. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloid related products will usually only feature Hatsune Miku's name. In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of since her release in 2007. Her name is easily the most recognizable of all Vocaloids.

In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to United States audiences. On May 7, Amazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song, "World is Mine", as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it ranked at No. 7 in the top 10 world singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. Since Crypton had always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the western market and expand their audiences.

In 2008, Good Smile Racing began the licensing of Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Future Media-related Vocaloid content. Studie, which participated in the 2008 and 2009 seasons using a BMW Z4 E86. Their car was painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season. In addition for the 2008 season a group of Racing queens were seen in the pitstop of races. Dubbed the "MikuMiku Gals", the three girls were Rin Miyama, Riona Osaki and Hina Sato. In 2009 a new set of MikuMiku Gals were introduced; these girls wore outfits based on all three Character Vocal series females and not specifically Hatsune Miku alone. Hiroko Nagano, Atsuko and Ayami were the Racing Queens for the season.

Team COX, participating in the 2010 season, which uses a Porsche 996 GT3 RSR (and will use a Porsche 997 GT3-R). Their car uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative wearing an orange race queen suit) as their image. 2010 was also the first season to receive the first official "Racing Miku" derivative design, and from this season onward, the Racing Queens outfits were based on the season's derivative design. The designer of the 2010 outfit was illustrator Redjuice. Model ayami returned for this season as a Racing queen and was joined by fellow models Saki Tachibana and Shihomi Kogoshi.

GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was the sponsorship for the 2011 season. The designer of the 2011 Racing Miku derivative design was illustrator Yuichi Murakami. Model Ayami returned as a Racing Queen for the third time and Tachibana Saki returned for her second season. Haruka Aoi was the third Racing Queen to wear the Racing Miku 2011 outfit. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was continued as a sponsorship for the 2012 season. The Racing Miku design was illustrated by Gan for this season. The Racing queens for the season were returning models Tachibana Saki and Aoi Haruka, as well as new models Sena Kougami and Ayana Sato.

Once again, the GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO sponsorship continued with the 2013 season. The Racing Miku design for the season was done by Mari Shimazaki. The illustrator of the official art was Saitom. Sena Kougami returned as a racing queen for this season and was joined by Tsukasa Arai and Elena Ishiguro. In 2013, the Sponsorship was expanded to featured a racing outfit in the Isle of Man motor cycling race, for this race Team Mirari were sponsored and a special design for the Racing Miku design adapted to suit the different spot. The Racing Miku design also was adapted for a "Sepang" version showing bare toned skin as part of showing good health and promoting the design as "the Angel of summer".

The illustrator for the 2014 season was Oguchi, one of the 15 artists of "Kantai Collection". The outfit is designed by Koyamashigeto, the art director of "Kill la Kill". The machine version of the outfit is designed by Koyamashigeto and Shōji Kawamori, who is noted for his "Macross" designs. The Racing Queens who wore the outfit were returning models Tsukasa Arai and Sena Kougami, as well as new models Kelal Yamaura and Noa Mizutani. For the 2015 Racing Miku, the design was based on a "Princess Knight" complete with a shield and spear-like umbrella. The illustrator was Taiki, the lead visual design from Square Enix and Sega's games "Lord of Vermilion" and "Rise of Mana". Koyamashigeto once again returned as the art direction and designer for the season. Tsuyoshi Kusano is in charge of the new machine design.

Sapporo has been a major main target of sponsorship since 2010, with Crypton Future Media sponsoring the winter festivals. The image of Hatsune Miku would appear around the town on public transportation. The image portrayal of Miku that is used is a derivative design called "Snow Miku". Although originally, this was simply a recoloring of the normal Hatsune Miku, unique designs have occurred every year since 2011. Figurines based on the design have also been featured.

The 2012 design was chosen via a contest. The winning entry was referred to as "Fluffy Coat Snow Miku". The 2013 design was called "Strawberry Daifuku Shiromuku Miku". The 2014 design was based on a Magical Girl design by dera_fury, who was the winner of the 2014 Snow Miku contest. The illustration was "Nekosumi". The design also featured a pet called "Rabbit Yukine". The 2015 design was called "Snow Bell Snow Miku" and was illustrated by Nardack.

In 2012, several ice sculptures of the Character Vocal series and several snow sculptures of Miku were produced for the event. However, on February 7, 2012, one of the Snow Miku sculptures later collapsed and had to be rebuilt elsewhere with better support. The collapsed figure also hit a woman in her early 60s on the back of the head; no serious injuries were sustained in the process.

During Miku's development, Crypton decided to take a different approach from that used by the other Vocaloid sound bank publishers. It was decided that to make the product successful not only would a highly appealing voice need to be developed, but that the voice needed an image. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and otaku market had not fully formed yet, and so were not initially considered.

The task for coming up with Miku's image went to the manga artist Kei Garō. When Kei designed Miku, his only direction was that she was an android and what her color scheme (based on Yamaha's synthesizer's signature turquoise color) was. The design on Miku's skirt and boots are based on synthesizer software colors and the bars represent the actual bars within the program's user interface. Miku was originally intended to have a different hairstyle, but Kei stuck to pigtails or bunches after trying them out. Crypton then officially created and posted Miku's personal data sheet. However, this only contained her 'physical' and technical traits; Crypton did not provide much information about Miku's personality, which has allowed song/music video creators and fans to choose the traits that they think suit her best.

Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese website similar to YouTube, played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. Soon after Miku's release, Nico Nico Douga users started posting videos of songs created using her sound bank. According to Crypton, a popular video featuring Miku's super-deformed alter ego Hachune Miku singing and dancing to "Ievan Polkka" while spinning a Welsh onion in homage to Loituma Girl's original video (which led to Miku also being commonly associated with spring onions) demonstrated the potential of the software in multimedia content creation. As Miku's recognition and popularity grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would inspire illustrations, animations in 2D and 3D, and remixes by other users. Some creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas.

In September 2009, three figurines based on the derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from the United States state of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, though it did not reach outer space. In late November 2009, a petition was launched in order to get a custom-made Hatsune Miku aluminium plate (8 cm × 12 cm, 3.1" × 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus spacecraft explorer Akatsuki. Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka (also known as "chodenzi-P"), this project has received the backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. On December 22, 2009, the petition exceeded the needed 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made. An original deadline of December 20, 2009, had been set to send in the petition, but due to a couple of delays in the Akatsuki project, a new deadline of January 6, 2010, was set; by this deadline, over 14,000 signatures had been received. On May 21, 2010 at 06:58:22 (JST), Akatsuki was launched, having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku and Hachune Miku in several monochrome images, composed of the miniature letters of the messages from the petition form etched in the plates. The UK 59th issue of the music and fashion magazine "Clash" featured Hatsune Miku as their cover star (using a real-life photo model), with a full feature on her.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, who looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. A televised anime series aired in February 2012.

In October 2011, Crypton showed on the official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy." Geoffrey Cain of GlobalPost has argued that the phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is partly due to the love of Japanese for giving inanimate objects a soul, which is rooted in Shintoism or animism, but also in the long tradition of Karakuri ningyō or automated wooden puppets. Thus, Japanese are much more ready to accept a virtual character as "human".

Miku's popularity has seen various references to her in anime. Miku is the protagonist of a manga series named "Maker Hikōshiki Hatsune Mix", written by Kei Garō. The manga explores the many possibilities of story-telling and has featured numerous adventures, ranging from giant-sized battles with Hatsune Miku to home exploits. There is therefore no single storyline, and the entire setting within the manga is unofficial. During an episode of "Zoku Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei", Miku is seen auditioning for the voice of Meru Otonashi (Kagamine Rin and Len are referenced in the same episode). Miku's voice is used in one of the ending themes for the anime series "Akikan!" (episode 12). Moreover, she also sings the ending theme for the anime "", called. During an episode in the "Lucky Star" OVA, Kagami Hiiragi gets magically transformed into Miku cosplay. A character in the anime "Kämpfer" appears dressed as Miku in episode seven. She also appeared in the large plasma screen in "Chrome Shelled Regios" as an endorser. She also appears in episode 11 of "Baka and Test" as a member of class B. Miku also appears in "Maria Holic" episode 12, when the class is told they have a swim meet. Miku also appears in episode 1 of "Himōto! Umaru-chan", in an imagination of what the main character wants to buy. A parody of Miku is also seen in "Gintama" (episode 237) in the second editor of Gintaman, Daito's anime fantasies.

A series of rhythm games starting from "" were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan-made" Vocaloids like Akita Neru. TinierMe also made attire that looks like Miku's for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble her. The series has sold 6million copies. "" was developed for the Nintendo 3DS. Miku's appearance in this game is based on the Nendoroid series of figures. Hatsune Miku is also briefly referenced in the game "Recettear", where a young man stargazing sees "The Green-Onion Girl" constellation. Also, in 2013, Saki Fujita voices Fei-Yen HD, a character based on one of Hatsune Miku's modules, in "Super Robot Wars UX"; this appearance does not use Miku's vocal library.

Miku's clothes appear as a costume for a playable character in the Japanese version of "PangYa" and was the back-up vocal for the game's season four trailer, as a downloadable costume for Sophie in "Tales of Graces" and is seen during a stage in the game "13-sai no Hellowork DS". Miku's clothes also appear in "Phantasy Star Portable 2" as a costume for the player's female character, as well as her hairstyle and leek-themed weapons. Miku appears in the PlayStation 3 version of "The Idolm@ster 2" as downloadable content. In the video game "Skullgirls", one of Filia's alternative colors is based on Miku. Miku has appeared as downloadable content using the game engine M.U.G.E.N. Hatsune Miku's attire has also appeared in "Phantasy Star Online 2" as a female character's costume, along with "Miku Dayō" as a Mag Design. She also makes an appearance in the game "Brave Frontier".

In 2014, Korg introduced "Miku Stomp", a guitar effects unit that emulates the sound of Miku's voice. "Tell Your World" by Livetune, which features her as a featured artist, appears in Japan's "Just Dance Wii U". In 2015, "Ievan Polkka" was announced to appear in "Just Dance 2016" along with a dancer whose outfit is exactly like Miku's. On July 23, 2015, Miku was announced as a DLC character in "", a video game released in 2015 for the PlayStation Vita and developed by Atlus. On November 26, 2015, Miku became a collaboration idol for the second update of the 2016 series of the "Aikatsu!" arcade game. Several cards containing Hatsune Miku uniforms were also included for the update. In 2016, a remix of "Ievan Polkka" appeared on an LG G5 commercial. "PoPiPo" was announced to appear in "Just Dance 2017" also with a dancer whose resembles Miku. Then, "Love Ward" was also announced to appear in "Just Dance 2018" with the same Miku-resembling dancer. In March 2017, Miku was introduced as a playable character in the mobile game '#COMPASS'. In fall 2017, Hatsune Miku was added as a playable character in "PriPara".

In August 2017, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the virtual singer, Ricoh released a limited edition of its 360° camera Ricoh Theta branded with Hatsune Miku imagery called the Ricoh Theta SC Type Hatsune Miku. The Ricoh Theta Type Hatsune Miku mobile apps (iOS and Android) allow for placing images of the character (in 55 different poses) within 360° images taken with the camera. Users can manipulate Hatsune Miku's facial expressions, change the direction of the character's shadow and hair, and rotate the character to place it within the 360° image. The product includes a specially designed case and other features illustrated by Fuzichoco, an illustrator at Crypton Future Media.

In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written for Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name. Crypton's website promotes Miku's popularity having her voice used in over 100,000 unique songs.

One of the Vocaloid compilations, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku", debuted at number-one on the Japanese weekly Oricon album charts dated May 31, 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. Another album, "Supercell", by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's "First Sound Story" and Livetune's" Re:package", and "Re:Mikus" also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include the albums by Absorb and by OSTER-project. She had sung the original Nyan Cat called "Nyanyanyanyan!" by daniwell-P. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album "Prism" credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda". Another song original sung by Miku, "Color", was covered by Maria, and featured as the opening theme of the 2011 anime series "Freezing".

As a virtual idol, Hatsune Miku performed her first "live" concert during Animelo Summer Live at the Saitama Super Arena on August 22, 2009. Miku later returned to Animelo Summer Live 2012: Infinity to perform "World is Mine" and "Tell Your World". Miku also performed her first overseas live concert on November 21, 2009, during Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore. On March 9, 2010, Miku's first solo live performance titled "Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39's Giving Day" was opened at the Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba, Tokyo. Miku performed in the United States on July 2, 2011 at the Nokia Theater at L.A. Live during the 2011 Anime Expo in Los Angeles. The concert followed the same format as the previous "39's Giving Day" concert. Hatsune Miku performed in Japanese rock festival Summer Sonic 2013 on August 10, 2013. Hatsune Miku teamed up with designer Louis Vuitton and director Toshiki Okada for a Vocaloid opera, titled "The End". It featured no human singers and took place at the Theatre du Chatelet Opera House in Paris on November 13 and 15, 2013.

A young male prototype used for the "Project If..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". Hatsune Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga's world tour, performing throughout the first month of her tour from May 6 to June 3, 2014.

In March 2014, Hatsune Miku and Crypton Future Media teamed up with the Japanese band Bump of Chicken to record a music video featuring a real band singing alongside Hatsune Miku in real time. This video was uploaded on March 12, 2014, and contains the song "Ray". The video is not after-edited in any way. This was made possible by Crypton's newest technology to focus characters on a screen directly to the recording camera by using a big curved screen, motion data, Wifi-sensors, movement-sensors and some older technology from Crypton.

Pharrell Williams made a remix of Livetune's song "Last Night, Goodnight" featuring Hatsune Miku. On October 8, 2014, Miku made her American network television debut as she performed "Sharing the World" on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. Hatsune Miku is featured in "B Who I Want 2 B" produced by Sophie from Namie Amuro's album "Genic". The 2016 Hatsune Miku Expo tour featured American electronic band Anamanaguchi as an opening act; to commemorate the tour, the band recorded a single track titled "Miku", which they performed live on the tour with Miku as an encore song. Big Boi (of Outkast) sampled Aura Qualic's song "DATA 2.0", featuring Hatsune Miku for his 2017 single "Kill Jill", also appearing in the song's music video.

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. The name of "Hatsune Miku" was conceived soon after the Vocaloid 2 announcements, when an English and Japanese vocal were developed for the character. The intended design was delayed and later used for Megurine Luka instead. Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the ""Character Vocal Series"", which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka. Each had a particular concept and vocal direction.

Hatsune Miku

, sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is the name of a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol and has performed at concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for,, and, thus meaning "the first sound of the future", referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series".

She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. She was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone. Those samples all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine and constructed into a keyboard-style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Crypton released Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007. Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." Hatsune Miku was released for Vocaloid 3 on August 31, 2013, including an English vocal library. She was the first Vocaloid to be developed by the company, following their commercial release handle of Yamaha Corporation developed vocals "Meiko" and "Kaito", making her the third Vocaloid to be sold commercially by the company.

On April 30, 2010, a new add-on for Miku, called "Hatsune Miku Append", was released, consisting of six different timbres for her voice: "Soft" (gentle timbre), "Sweet" (young, chibi quality), "Dark" (mature and melancholic), "Vivid" (bright and cheerful), "Solid" (loud, clear voice), and "Light" (innocent and angelic). "Miku Append" was created to expand Miku's voice library, and as such requires the original program to be installed on the user's computer first. This was the first time a Vocaloid had such a release, and more Append versions were reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

It was mentioned that a 7th "Append" voicebank, a falsetto voice, had been recorded; however, since the developers didn't think it would be useful on its own, no plans were made for an independent release. During the Kagamine Append development, a "darkish Whisper/Sweet" append was being considered. Miku's English vocal was also due for a Vocaloid 2 release, but it was not released in the engine due to low quality.

To aid in the production of 3D animations, the program MikuMikuDance was developed by an independent programmer. The freeware software allowed a boom in fan-made animations to be developed, as well as being a boost for promoting Vocaloid songs themselves. This spawned "NicoNico Cho Party", where fans could submit their animations to accompany live holographic performances of popular Vocaloid songs.

An English voicebank for Hatsune Miku was announced in 2011 and was to be released by the end of 2012. However, the decision to move to Vocaloid 3 and issues with English pronunciation delayed the release. It was finally released on August 31, 2013 via digital distribution.

The Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 3 Japanese vocal library was released on September 26, 2013. It contained updates to all previous Vocaloid 2 vocals except "Vivid" and "Light". These were later released separately, though they were initially offered to anyone who already owned Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Append, and Hatsune Miku V3. Once imported into Vocaloid4, all Vocaloid3 Hatsune Miku vocals could use the new Cross-Synthesis system (XSY) built for the new engine. The voice was also imported into a device called "Pocket Miku", released on April 3, 2014.

Hatsune Miku received an update for Yamaha's Vocaloid 4 engine under the name of "Hatsune Miku V4x". It makes use of the new EVEC system for Piapro Studio, a VSTi plugin used as an alternative to the traditional Vocaloid Editor. EVEC consists of recorded vowels. Along with the consonant, a different vocal tone can be achieved. Two vocal tones are included in the EVEC system: "Power" and "Soft". Along with the new EVEC system, phoneme errors found in Miku's V2 and V3 voicebanks would be fixed allowing for easier manipulation of her voice., Hatsune Miku V4X/V4 English was released.

A Mandarin Chinese voicebank was released in September 2017, making Hatsune Miku the first trilingual Vocaloid product. Her Chinese name is 初音未来 (pinyin: "Chūyīn Wèilái"); 未来 are the Chinese characters for her given name, Miku.

Miku has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese. Her instant success is owed to Vocaloid being a cultural hit in Japan and she reportedly sold 40,000 units by July 2008, selling on average 300 units a week. By Jan 2011, she had sold 60,000 units.

Since the success of her Vocaloid 2 package led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of the mass marketing has come after her initial release as a response to her popularity and has been on going since 2008. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloid related products will usually only feature Hatsune Miku's name. In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of since her release in 2007. Her name is easily the most recognizable of all Vocaloids.

In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to United States audiences. On May 7, Amazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song, "World is Mine", as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it ranked at No. 7 in the top 10 world singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. Since Crypton had always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the western market and expand their audiences.

In 2008, Good Smile Racing began the licensing of Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Future Media-related Vocaloid content. Studie, which participated in the 2008 and 2009 seasons using a BMW Z4 E86. Their car was painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season. In addition for the 2008 season a group of Racing queens were seen in the pitstop of races. Dubbed the "MikuMiku Gals", the three girls were Rin Miyama, Riona Osaki and Hina Sato. In 2009 a new set of MikuMiku Gals were introduced; these girls wore outfits based on all three Character Vocal series females and not specifically Hatsune Miku alone. Hiroko Nagano, Atsuko and Ayami were the Racing Queens for the season.

Team COX, participating in the 2010 season, which uses a Porsche 996 GT3 RSR (and will use a Porsche 997 GT3-R). Their car uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative wearing an orange race queen suit) as their image. 2010 was also the first season to receive the first official "Racing Miku" derivative design, and from this season onward, the Racing Queens outfits were based on the season's derivative design. The designer of the 2010 outfit was illustrator Redjuice. Model ayami returned for this season as a Racing queen and was joined by fellow models Saki Tachibana and Shihomi Kogoshi.

GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was the sponsorship for the 2011 season. The designer of the 2011 Racing Miku derivative design was illustrator Yuichi Murakami. Model Ayami returned as a Racing Queen for the third time and Tachibana Saki returned for her second season. Haruka Aoi was the third Racing Queen to wear the Racing Miku 2011 outfit. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was continued as a sponsorship for the 2012 season. The Racing Miku design was illustrated by Gan for this season. The Racing queens for the season were returning models Tachibana Saki and Aoi Haruka, as well as new models Sena Kougami and Ayana Sato.

Once again, the GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO sponsorship continued with the 2013 season. The Racing Miku design for the season was done by Mari Shimazaki. The illustrator of the official art was Saitom. Sena Kougami returned as a racing queen for this season and was joined by Tsukasa Arai and Elena Ishiguro. In 2013, the Sponsorship was expanded to featured a racing outfit in the Isle of Man motor cycling race, for this race Team Mirari were sponsored and a special design for the Racing Miku design adapted to suit the different spot. The Racing Miku design also was adapted for a "Sepang" version showing bare toned skin as part of showing good health and promoting the design as "the Angel of summer".

Sapporo has been a major main target of sponsorship since 2010, with Crypton Future Media sponsoring the winter festivals. The image of Hatsune Miku would appear around the town on public transportation. The image portrayal of Miku that is used is a derivative design called "Snow Miku". Although originally, this was simply a recoloring of the normal Hatsune Miku, unique designs have occurred every year since 2011. Figurines based on the design have also been featured.

The 2012 design was chosen via a contest. The winning entry was referred to as "Fluffy Coat Snow Miku". The 2013 design was called "Strawberry Daifuku Shiromuku Miku". The 2014 design was based on a Magical Girl design by dera_fury, who was the winner of the 2014 Snow Miku contest. The illustration was "Nekosumi". The design also featured a pet called "Rabbit Yukine". The 2015 design was called "Snow Bell Snow Miku" and was illustrated by Nardack.

In 2012, several ice sculptures of the Character Vocal series and several snow sculptures of Miku were produced for the event. However, on February 7, 2012, one of the Snow Miku sculptures later collapsed and had to be rebuilt elsewhere with better support. The collapsed figure also hit a woman in her early 60s on the back of the head; no serious injuries were sustained in the process.

During Miku's development, Crypton decided to take a different approach from that used by the other Vocaloid sound bank publishers. It was decided that to make the product successful not only would a highly appealing voice need to be developed, but that the voice needed an image. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and otaku market had not fully formed yet, and so were not initially considered.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, who looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. A televised anime series aired in February 2012.

In October 2011, Crypton showed on the official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy." Geoffrey Cain of GlobalPost has argued that the phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is partly due to the love of Japanese for giving inanimate objects a soul, which is rooted in Shintoism or animism, but also in the long tradition of Karakuri ningyō or automated wooden puppets. Thus, Japanese are much more ready to accept a virtual character as "human".

A series of rhythm games starting from "" were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan-made" Vocaloids like Akita Neru. TinierMe also made attire that looks like Miku's for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble her. The series has sold 6million copies. "" was developed for the Nintendo 3DS. Miku's appearance in this game is based on the Nendoroid series of figures. Hatsune Miku is also briefly referenced in the game "Recettear", where a young man stargazing sees "The Green-Onion Girl" constellation. Also, in 2013, Saki Fujita voices Fei-Yen HD, a character based on one of Hatsune Miku's modules, in "Super Robot Wars UX"; this appearance does not use Miku's vocal library.

In August 2017, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the virtual singer, Ricoh released a limited edition of its 360° camera Ricoh Theta branded with Hatsune Miku imagery called the Ricoh Theta SC Type Hatsune Miku. The Ricoh Theta Type Hatsune Miku mobile apps (iOS and Android) allow for placing images of the character (in 55 different poses) within 360° images taken with the camera. Users can manipulate Hatsune Miku's facial expressions, change the direction of the character's shadow and hair, and rotate the character to place it within the 360° image. The product includes a specially designed case and other features illustrated by Fuzichoco, an illustrator at Crypton Future Media.

In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written for Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name. Crypton's website promotes Miku's popularity having her voice used in over 100,000 unique songs.

A young male prototype used for the "Project If..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". Hatsune Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga's world tour, performing throughout the first month of her tour from May 6 to June 3, 2014.

In March 2014, Hatsune Miku and Crypton Future Media teamed up with the Japanese band Bump of Chicken to record a music video featuring a real band singing alongside Hatsune Miku in real time. This video was uploaded on March 12, 2014, and contains the song "Ray". The video is not after-edited in any way. This was made possible by Crypton's newest technology to focus characters on a screen directly to the recording camera by using a big curved screen, motion data, Wifi-sensors, movement-sensors and some older technology from Crypton.

Pharrell Williams made a remix of Livetune's song "Last Night, Goodnight" featuring Hatsune Miku. On October 8, 2014, Miku made her American network television debut as she performed "Sharing the World" on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. Hatsune Miku is featured in "B Who I Want 2 B" produced by Sophie from Namie Amuro's album "Genic". The 2016 Hatsune Miku Expo tour featured American electronic band Anamanaguchi as an opening act; to commemorate the tour, the band recorded a single track titled "Miku", which they performed live on the tour with Miku as an encore song. Big Boi (of Outkast) sampled Aura Qualic's song "DATA 2.0", featuring Hatsune Miku for his 2017 single "Kill Jill", also appearing in the song's music video.

Since the success of her Vocaloid 2 package led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of the mass marketing has come after her initial release as a response to her popularity and has been on going since 2008. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloid related products will usually only feature Hatsune Miku's name. In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of since her release in 2007. Her name is easily the most recognizable of all Vocaloids.

Hatsune Miku

, sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is the name of a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol and has performed at concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for,, and, thus meaning "the first sound of the future", referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series".

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. The name of "Hatsune Miku" was conceived soon after the Vocaloid 2 announcements, when an English and Japanese vocal were developed for the character. The intended design was delayed and later used for Megurine Luka instead. Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the ""Character Vocal Series"", which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka. Each had a particular concept and vocal direction.

She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. She was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone. Those samples all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine and constructed into a keyboard-style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Crypton released Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007. Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." Hatsune Miku was released for Vocaloid 3 on August 31, 2013, including an English vocal library. She was the first Vocaloid to be developed by the company, following their commercial release handle of Yamaha Corporation developed vocals "Meiko" and "Kaito", making her the third Vocaloid to be sold commercially by the company.

On April 30, 2010, a new add-on for Miku, called "Hatsune Miku Append", was released, consisting of six different timbres for her voice: "Soft" (gentle timbre), "Sweet" (young, chibi quality), "Dark" (mature and melancholic), "Vivid" (bright and cheerful), "Solid" (loud, clear voice), and "Light" (innocent and angelic). "Miku Append" was created to expand Miku's voice library, and as such requires the original program to be installed on the user's computer first. This was the first time a Vocaloid had such a release, and more Append versions were reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

It was mentioned that a 7th "Append" voicebank, a falsetto voice, had been recorded; however, since the developers didn't think it would be useful on its own, no plans were made for an independent release. During the Kagamine Append development, a "darkish Whisper/Sweet" append was being considered. Miku's English vocal was also due for a Vocaloid 2 release, but it was not released in the engine due to low quality.

To aid in the production of 3D animations, the program MikuMikuDance was developed by an independent programmer. The freeware software allowed a boom in fan-made animations to be developed, as well as being a boost for promoting Vocaloid songs themselves. This spawned "NicoNico Cho Party", where fans could submit their animations to accompany live holographic performances of popular Vocaloid songs.

An English voicebank for Hatsune Miku was announced in 2011 and was to be released by the end of 2012. However, the decision to move to Vocaloid 3 and issues with English pronunciation delayed the release. It was finally released on August 31, 2013 via digital distribution.

The Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 3 Japanese vocal library was released on September 26, 2013. It contained updates to all previous Vocaloid 2 vocals except "Vivid" and "Light". These were later released separately, though they were initially offered to anyone who already owned Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Append, and Hatsune Miku V3. Once imported into Vocaloid4, all Vocaloid3 Hatsune Miku vocals could use the new Cross-Synthesis system (XSY) built for the new engine. The voice was also imported into a device called "Pocket Miku", released on April 3, 2014.

Hatsune Miku received an update for Yamaha's Vocaloid 4 engine under the name of "Hatsune Miku V4x". It makes use of the new EVEC system for Piapro Studio, a VSTi plugin used as an alternative to the traditional Vocaloid Editor. EVEC consists of recorded vowels. Along with the consonant, a different vocal tone can be achieved. Two vocal tones are included in the EVEC system: "Power" and "Soft". Along with the new EVEC system, phoneme errors found in Miku's V2 and V3 voicebanks would be fixed allowing for easier manipulation of her voice., Hatsune Miku V4X/V4 English was released.

A Mandarin Chinese voicebank was released in September 2017, making Hatsune Miku the first trilingual Vocaloid product. Her Chinese name is 初音未来 (pinyin: "Chūyīn Wèilái"); 未来 are the Chinese characters for her given name, Miku.

Miku has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese. Her instant success is owed to Vocaloid being a cultural hit in Japan and she reportedly sold 40,000 units by July 2008, selling on average 300 units a week. By Jan 2011, she had sold 60,000 units.

In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to United States audiences. On May 7, Amazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song, "World is Mine", as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it ranked at No. 7 in the top 10 world singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. Since Crypton had always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the western market and expand their audiences.

In 2008, Good Smile Racing began the licensing of Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Future Media-related Vocaloid content. Studie, which participated in the 2008 and 2009 seasons using a BMW Z4 E86. Their car was painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season. In addition for the 2008 season a group of Racing queens were seen in the pitstop of races. Dubbed the "MikuMiku Gals", the three girls were Rin Miyama, Riona Osaki and Hina Sato. In 2009 a new set of MikuMiku Gals were introduced; these girls wore outfits based on all three Character Vocal series females and not specifically Hatsune Miku alone. Hiroko Nagano, Atsuko and Ayami were the Racing Queens for the season.

Team COX, participating in the 2010 season, which uses a Porsche 996 GT3 RSR (and will use a Porsche 997 GT3-R). Their car uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative wearing an orange race queen suit) as their image. 2010 was also the first season to receive the first official "Racing Miku" derivative design, and from this season onward, the Racing Queens outfits were based on the season's derivative design. The designer of the 2010 outfit was illustrator Redjuice. Model ayami returned for this season as a Racing queen and was joined by fellow models Saki Tachibana and Shihomi Kogoshi.

GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was the sponsorship for the 2011 season. The designer of the 2011 Racing Miku derivative design was illustrator Yuichi Murakami. Model Ayami returned as a Racing Queen for the third time and Tachibana Saki returned for her second season. Haruka Aoi was the third Racing Queen to wear the Racing Miku 2011 outfit. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was continued as a sponsorship for the 2012 season. The Racing Miku design was illustrated by Gan for this season. The Racing queens for the season were returning models Tachibana Saki and Aoi Haruka, as well as new models Sena Kougami and Ayana Sato.

Once again, the GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO sponsorship continued with the 2013 season. The Racing Miku design for the season was done by Mari Shimazaki. The illustrator of the official art was Saitom. Sena Kougami returned as a racing queen for this season and was joined by Tsukasa Arai and Elena Ishiguro. In 2013, the Sponsorship was expanded to featured a racing outfit in the Isle of Man motor cycling race, for this race Team Mirari were sponsored and a special design for the Racing Miku design adapted to suit the different spot. The Racing Miku design also was adapted for a "Sepang" version showing bare toned skin as part of showing good health and promoting the design as "the Angel of summer".

Sapporo has been a major main target of sponsorship since 2010, with Crypton Future Media sponsoring the winter festivals. The image of Hatsune Miku would appear around the town on public transportation. The image portrayal of Miku that is used is a derivative design called "Snow Miku". Although originally, this was simply a recoloring of the normal Hatsune Miku, unique designs have occurred every year since 2011. Figurines based on the design have also been featured.

The 2012 design was chosen via a contest. The winning entry was referred to as "Fluffy Coat Snow Miku". The 2013 design was called "Strawberry Daifuku Shiromuku Miku". The 2014 design was based on a Magical Girl design by dera_fury, who was the winner of the 2014 Snow Miku contest. The illustration was "Nekosumi". The design also featured a pet called "Rabbit Yukine". The 2015 design was called "Snow Bell Snow Miku" and was illustrated by Nardack.

In 2012, several ice sculptures of the Character Vocal series and several snow sculptures of Miku were produced for the event. However, on February 7, 2012, one of the Snow Miku sculptures later collapsed and had to be rebuilt elsewhere with better support. The collapsed figure also hit a woman in her early 60s on the back of the head; no serious injuries were sustained in the process.

During Miku's development, Crypton decided to take a different approach from that used by the other Vocaloid sound bank publishers. It was decided that to make the product successful not only would a highly appealing voice need to be developed, but that the voice needed an image. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and otaku market had not fully formed yet, and so were not initially considered.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, who looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. A televised anime series aired in February 2012.

In October 2011, Crypton showed on the official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy." Geoffrey Cain of GlobalPost has argued that the phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is partly due to the love of Japanese for giving inanimate objects a soul, which is rooted in Shintoism or animism, but also in the long tradition of Karakuri ningyō or automated wooden puppets. Thus, Japanese are much more ready to accept a virtual character as "human".

A series of rhythm games starting from "" were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan-made" Vocaloids like Akita Neru. TinierMe also made attire that looks like Miku's for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble her. The series has sold 6million copies. "" was developed for the Nintendo 3DS. Miku's appearance in this game is based on the Nendoroid series of figures. Hatsune Miku is also briefly referenced in the game "Recettear", where a young man stargazing sees "The Green-Onion Girl" constellation. Also, in 2013, Saki Fujita voices Fei-Yen HD, a character based on one of Hatsune Miku's modules, in "Super Robot Wars UX"; this appearance does not use Miku's vocal library.

In August 2017, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the virtual singer, Ricoh released a limited edition of its 360° camera Ricoh Theta branded with Hatsune Miku imagery called the Ricoh Theta SC Type Hatsune Miku. The Ricoh Theta Type Hatsune Miku mobile apps (iOS and Android) allow for placing images of the character (in 55 different poses) within 360° images taken with the camera. Users can manipulate Hatsune Miku's facial expressions, change the direction of the character's shadow and hair, and rotate the character to place it within the 360° image. The product includes a specially designed case and other features illustrated by Fuzichoco, an illustrator at Crypton Future Media.

In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written for Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name. Crypton's website promotes Miku's popularity having her voice used in over 100,000 unique songs.

A young male prototype used for the "Project If..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". Hatsune Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga's world tour, performing throughout the first month of her tour from May 6 to June 3, 2014.

In March 2014, Hatsune Miku and Crypton Future Media teamed up with the Japanese band Bump of Chicken to record a music video featuring a real band singing alongside Hatsune Miku in real time. This video was uploaded on March 12, 2014, and contains the song "Ray". The video is not after-edited in any way. This was made possible by Crypton's newest technology to focus characters on a screen directly to the recording camera by using a big curved screen, motion data, Wifi-sensors, movement-sensors and some older technology from Crypton.

Pharrell Williams made a remix of Livetune's song "Last Night, Goodnight" featuring Hatsune Miku. On October 8, 2014, Miku made her American network television debut as she performed "Sharing the World" on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. Hatsune Miku is featured in "B Who I Want 2 B" produced by Sophie from Namie Amuro's album "Genic". The 2016 Hatsune Miku Expo tour featured American electronic band Anamanaguchi as an opening act; to commemorate the tour, the band recorded a single track titled "Miku", which they performed live on the tour with Miku as an encore song. Big Boi (of Outkast) sampled Aura Qualic's song "DATA 2.0", featuring Hatsune Miku for his 2017 single "Kill Jill", also appearing in the song's music video.

Hatsune Miku

, sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is the name of a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol and has performed at concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for,, and, thus meaning "the first sound of the future", referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series".

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. The name of "Hatsune Miku" was conceived soon after the Vocaloid 2 announcements, when an English and Japanese vocal were developed for the character. The intended design was delayed and later used for Megurine Luka instead. Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the ""Character Vocal Series"", which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka. Each had a particular concept and vocal direction.

She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. She was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone. Those samples all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine and constructed into a keyboard-style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Crypton released Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007. Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." Hatsune Miku was released for Vocaloid 3 on August 31, 2013, including an English vocal library. She was the first Vocaloid to be developed by the company, following their commercial release handle of Yamaha Corporation developed vocals "Meiko" and "Kaito", making her the third Vocaloid to be sold commercially by the company.

On April 30, 2010, a new add-on for Miku, called "Hatsune Miku Append", was released, consisting of six different timbres for her voice: "Soft" (gentle timbre), "Sweet" (young, chibi quality), "Dark" (mature and melancholic), "Vivid" (bright and cheerful), "Solid" (loud, clear voice), and "Light" (innocent and angelic). "Miku Append" was created to expand Miku's voice library, and as such requires the original program to be installed on the user's computer first. This was the first time a Vocaloid had such a release, and more Append versions were reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

It was mentioned that a 7th "Append" voicebank, a falsetto voice, had been recorded; however, since the developers didn't think it would be useful on its own, no plans were made for an independent release. During the Kagamine Append development, a "darkish Whisper/Sweet" append was being considered. Miku's English vocal was also due for a Vocaloid 2 release, but it was not released in the engine due to low quality.

To aid in the production of 3D animations, the program MikuMikuDance was developed by an independent programmer. The freeware software allowed a boom in fan-made animations to be developed, as well as being a boost for promoting Vocaloid songs themselves. This spawned "NicoNico Cho Party", where fans could submit their animations to accompany live holographic performances of popular Vocaloid songs.

An English voicebank for Hatsune Miku was announced in 2011 and was to be released by the end of 2012. However, the decision to move to Vocaloid 3 and issues with English pronunciation delayed the release. It was finally released on August 31, 2013 via digital distribution.

The Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 3 Japanese vocal library was released on September 26, 2013. It contained updates to all previous Vocaloid 2 vocals except "Vivid" and "Light". These were later released separately, though they were initially offered to anyone who already owned Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Append, and Hatsune Miku V3. Once imported into Vocaloid4, all Vocaloid3 Hatsune Miku vocals could use the new Cross-Synthesis system (XSY) built for the new engine. The voice was also imported into a device called "Pocket Miku", released on April 3, 2014.

Hatsune Miku received an update for Yamaha's Vocaloid 4 engine under the name of "Hatsune Miku V4x". It makes use of the new EVEC system for Piapro Studio, a VSTi plugin used as an alternative to the traditional Vocaloid Editor. EVEC consists of recorded vowels. Along with the consonant, a different vocal tone can be achieved. Two vocal tones are included in the EVEC system: "Power" and "Soft". Along with the new EVEC system, phoneme errors found in Miku's V2 and V3 voicebanks would be fixed allowing for easier manipulation of her voice., Hatsune Miku V4X/V4 English was released.

A Mandarin Chinese voicebank was released in September 2017, making Hatsune Miku the first trilingual Vocaloid product. Her Chinese name is 初音未来 (pinyin: "Chūyīn Wèilái"); 未来 are the Chinese characters for her given name, Miku.

Miku has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese. Her instant success is owed to Vocaloid being a cultural hit in Japan and she reportedly sold 40,000 units by July 2008, selling on average 300 units a week. By Jan 2011, she had sold 60,000 units.

Since the success of her Vocaloid 2 package led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of the mass marketing has come after her initial release as a response to her popularity and has been on going since 2008. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloid related products will usually only feature Hatsune Miku's name. In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of since her release in 2007. Her name is easily the most recognizable of all Vocaloids.

In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to United States audiences. On May 7, Amazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song, "World is Mine", as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it ranked at No. 7 in the top 10 world singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. Since Crypton had always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the western market and expand their audiences.

In 2008, Good Smile Racing began the licensing of Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Future Media-related Vocaloid content. Studie, which participated in the 2008 and 2009 seasons using a BMW Z4 E86. Their car was painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season. In addition for the 2008 season a group of Racing queens were seen in the pitstop of races. Dubbed the "MikuMiku Gals", the three girls were Rin Miyama, Riona Osaki and Hina Sato. In 2009 a new set of MikuMiku Gals were introduced; these girls wore outfits based on all three Character Vocal series females and not specifically Hatsune Miku alone. Hiroko Nagano, Atsuko and Ayami were the Racing Queens for the season.

Team COX, participating in the 2010 season, which uses a Porsche 996 GT3 RSR (and will use a Porsche 997 GT3-R). Their car uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative wearing an orange race queen suit) as their image. 2010 was also the first season to receive the first official "Racing Miku" derivative design, and from this season onward, the Racing Queens outfits were based on the season's derivative design. The designer of the 2010 outfit was illustrator Redjuice. Model ayami returned for this season as a Racing queen and was joined by fellow models Saki Tachibana and Shihomi Kogoshi.

GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was the sponsorship for the 2011 season. The designer of the 2011 Racing Miku derivative design was illustrator Yuichi Murakami. Model Ayami returned as a Racing Queen for the third time and Tachibana Saki returned for her second season. Haruka Aoi was the third Racing Queen to wear the Racing Miku 2011 outfit. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was continued as a sponsorship for the 2012 season. The Racing Miku design was illustrated by Gan for this season. The Racing queens for the season were returning models Tachibana Saki and Aoi Haruka, as well as new models Sena Kougami and Ayana Sato.

Once again, the GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO sponsorship continued with the 2013 season. The Racing Miku design for the season was done by Mari Shimazaki. The illustrator of the official art was Saitom. Sena Kougami returned as a racing queen for this season and was joined by Tsukasa Arai and Elena Ishiguro. In 2013, the Sponsorship was expanded to featured a racing outfit in the Isle of Man motor cycling race, for this race Team Mirari were sponsored and a special design for the Racing Miku design adapted to suit the different spot. The Racing Miku design also was adapted for a "Sepang" version showing bare toned skin as part of showing good health and promoting the design as "the Angel of summer".

Sapporo has been a major main target of sponsorship since 2010, with Crypton Future Media sponsoring the winter festivals. The image of Hatsune Miku would appear around the town on public transportation. The image portrayal of Miku that is used is a derivative design called "Snow Miku". Although originally, this was simply a recoloring of the normal Hatsune Miku, unique designs have occurred every year since 2011. Figurines based on the design have also been featured.

The 2012 design was chosen via a contest. The winning entry was referred to as "Fluffy Coat Snow Miku". The 2013 design was called "Strawberry Daifuku Shiromuku Miku". The 2014 design was based on a Magical Girl design by dera_fury, who was the winner of the 2014 Snow Miku contest. The illustration was "Nekosumi". The design also featured a pet called "Rabbit Yukine". The 2015 design was called "Snow Bell Snow Miku" and was illustrated by Nardack.

In 2012, several ice sculptures of the Character Vocal series and several snow sculptures of Miku were produced for the event. However, on February 7, 2012, one of the Snow Miku sculptures later collapsed and had to be rebuilt elsewhere with better support. The collapsed figure also hit a woman in her early 60s on the back of the head; no serious injuries were sustained in the process.

During Miku's development, Crypton decided to take a different approach from that used by the other Vocaloid sound bank publishers. It was decided that to make the product successful not only would a highly appealing voice need to be developed, but that the voice needed an image. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and otaku market had not fully formed yet, and so were not initially considered.

The task for coming up with Miku's image went to the manga artist Kei Garō. When Kei designed Miku, his only direction was that she was an android and what her color scheme (based on Yamaha's synthesizer's signature turquoise color) was. The design on Miku's skirt and boots are based on synthesizer software colors and the bars represent the actual bars within the program's user interface. Miku was originally intended to have a different hairstyle, but Kei stuck to pigtails or bunches after trying them out. Crypton then officially created and posted Miku's personal data sheet. However, this only contained her 'physical' and technical traits; Crypton did not provide much information about Miku's personality, which has allowed song/music video creators and fans to choose the traits that they think suit her best.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, who looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. A televised anime series aired in February 2012.

In October 2011, Crypton showed on the official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy." Geoffrey Cain of GlobalPost has argued that the phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is partly due to the love of Japanese for giving inanimate objects a soul, which is rooted in Shintoism or animism, but also in the long tradition of Karakuri ningyō or automated wooden puppets. Thus, Japanese are much more ready to accept a virtual character as "human".

A series of rhythm games starting from "" were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan-made" Vocaloids like Akita Neru. TinierMe also made attire that looks like Miku's for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble her. The series has sold 6million copies. "" was developed for the Nintendo 3DS. Miku's appearance in this game is based on the Nendoroid series of figures. Hatsune Miku is also briefly referenced in the game "Recettear", where a young man stargazing sees "The Green-Onion Girl" constellation. Also, in 2013, Saki Fujita voices Fei-Yen HD, a character based on one of Hatsune Miku's modules, in "Super Robot Wars UX"; this appearance does not use Miku's vocal library.

In August 2017, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the virtual singer, Ricoh released a limited edition of its 360° camera Ricoh Theta branded with Hatsune Miku imagery called the Ricoh Theta SC Type Hatsune Miku. The Ricoh Theta Type Hatsune Miku mobile apps (iOS and Android) allow for placing images of the character (in 55 different poses) within 360° images taken with the camera. Users can manipulate Hatsune Miku's facial expressions, change the direction of the character's shadow and hair, and rotate the character to place it within the 360° image. The product includes a specially designed case and other features illustrated by Fuzichoco, an illustrator at Crypton Future Media.

In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written for Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name. Crypton's website promotes Miku's popularity having her voice used in over 100,000 unique songs.

A young male prototype used for the "Project If..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". Hatsune Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga's world tour, performing throughout the first month of her tour from May 6 to June 3, 2014.

In March 2014, Hatsune Miku and Crypton Future Media teamed up with the Japanese band Bump of Chicken to record a music video featuring a real band singing alongside Hatsune Miku in real time. This video was uploaded on March 12, 2014, and contains the song "Ray". The video is not after-edited in any way. This was made possible by Crypton's newest technology to focus characters on a screen directly to the recording camera by using a big curved screen, motion data, Wifi-sensors, movement-sensors and some older technology from Crypton.

Pharrell Williams made a remix of Livetune's song "Last Night, Goodnight" featuring Hatsune Miku. On October 8, 2014, Miku made her American network television debut as she performed "Sharing the World" on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. Hatsune Miku is featured in "B Who I Want 2 B" produced by Sophie from Namie Amuro's album "Genic". The 2016 Hatsune Miku Expo tour featured American electronic band Anamanaguchi as an opening act; to commemorate the tour, the band recorded a single track titled "Miku", which they performed live on the tour with Miku as an encore song. Big Boi (of Outkast) sampled Aura Qualic's song "DATA 2.0", featuring Hatsune Miku for his 2017 single "Kill Jill", also appearing in the song's music video.

Hatsune Miku

, sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is the name of a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol and has performed at concerts onstage as an animated projection (rear cast projection on a specially coated glass screen).

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for,, and, thus meaning "the first sound of the future", referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series".

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. The name of "Hatsune Miku" was conceived soon after the Vocaloid 2 announcements, when an English and Japanese vocal were developed for the character. The intended design was delayed and later used for Megurine Luka instead. Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the ""Character Vocal Series"", which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka. Each had a particular concept and vocal direction.

She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. She was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone. Those samples all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine and constructed into a keyboard-style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Crypton released Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007. Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." Hatsune Miku was released for Vocaloid 3 on August 31, 2013, including an English vocal library. She was the first Vocaloid to be developed by the company, following their commercial release handle of Yamaha Corporation developed vocals "Meiko" and "Kaito", making her the third Vocaloid to be sold commercially by the company.

On April 30, 2010, a new add-on for Miku, called "Hatsune Miku Append", was released, consisting of six different timbres for her voice: "Soft" (gentle timbre), "Sweet" (young, chibi quality), "Dark" (mature and melancholic), "Vivid" (bright and cheerful), "Solid" (loud, clear voice), and "Light" (innocent and angelic). "Miku Append" was created to expand Miku's voice library, and as such requires the original program to be installed on the user's computer first. This was the first time a Vocaloid had such a release, and more Append versions were reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates.

It was mentioned that a 7th "Append" voicebank, a falsetto voice, had been recorded; however, since the developers didn't think it would be useful on its own, no plans were made for an independent release. During the Kagamine Append development, a "darkish Whisper/Sweet" append was being considered. Miku's English vocal was also due for a Vocaloid 2 release, but it was not released in the engine due to low quality.

To aid in the production of 3D animations, the program MikuMikuDance was developed by an independent programmer. The freeware software allowed a boom in fan-made animations to be developed, as well as being a boost for promoting Vocaloid songs themselves. This spawned "NicoNico Cho Party", where fans could submit their animations to accompany live holographic performances of popular Vocaloid songs.

An English voicebank for Hatsune Miku was announced in 2011 and was to be released by the end of 2012. However, the decision to move to Vocaloid 3 and issues with English pronunciation delayed the release. It was finally released on August 31, 2013 via digital distribution.

The Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 3 Japanese vocal library was released on September 26, 2013. It contained updates to all previous Vocaloid 2 vocals except "Vivid" and "Light". These were later released separately, though they were initially offered to anyone who already owned Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Append, and Hatsune Miku V3. Once imported into Vocaloid4, all Vocaloid3 Hatsune Miku vocals could use the new Cross-Synthesis system (XSY) built for the new engine. The voice was also imported into a device called "Pocket Miku", released on April 3, 2014.

Hatsune Miku received an update for Yamaha's Vocaloid 4 engine under the name of "Hatsune Miku V4x". It makes use of the new EVEC system for Piapro Studio, a VSTi plugin used as an alternative to the traditional Vocaloid Editor. EVEC consists of recorded vowels. Along with the consonant, a different vocal tone can be achieved. Two vocal tones are included in the EVEC system: "Power" and "Soft". Along with the new EVEC system, phoneme errors found in Miku's V2 and V3 voicebanks would be fixed allowing for easier manipulation of her voice., Hatsune Miku V4X/V4 English was released.

A Mandarin Chinese voicebank was released in September 2017, making Hatsune Miku the first trilingual Vocaloid product. Her Chinese name is 初音未来 (pinyin: "Chūyīn Wèilái"); 未来 are the Chinese characters for her given name, Miku.

Miku has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese. Her instant success is owed to Vocaloid being a cultural hit in Japan and she reportedly sold 40,000 units by July 2008, selling on average 300 units a week. By Jan 2011, she had sold 60,000 units.

Since the success of her Vocaloid 2 package led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of the mass marketing has come after her initial release as a response to her popularity and has been on going since 2008. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloid related products will usually only feature Hatsune Miku's name. In March 2012, the Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of since her release in 2007. Her name is easily the most recognizable of all Vocaloids.

In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to United States audiences. On May 7, Amazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song, "World is Mine", as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it ranked at No. 7 in the top 10 world singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. Since Crypton had always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the western market and expand their audiences.

In 2008, Good Smile Racing began the licensing of Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Future Media-related Vocaloid content. Studie, which participated in the 2008 and 2009 seasons using a BMW Z4 E86. Their car was painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season. In addition for the 2008 season a group of Racing queens were seen in the pitstop of races. Dubbed the "MikuMiku Gals", the three girls were Rin Miyama, Riona Osaki and Hina Sato. In 2009 a new set of MikuMiku Gals were introduced; these girls wore outfits based on all three Character Vocal series females and not specifically Hatsune Miku alone. Hiroko Nagano, Atsuko and Ayami were the Racing Queens for the season.

Team COX, participating in the 2010 season, which uses a Porsche 996 GT3 RSR (and will use a Porsche 997 GT3-R). Their car uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative wearing an orange race queen suit) as their image. 2010 was also the first season to receive the first official "Racing Miku" derivative design, and from this season onward, the Racing Queens outfits were based on the season's derivative design. The designer of the 2010 outfit was illustrator Redjuice. Model ayami returned for this season as a Racing queen and was joined by fellow models Saki Tachibana and Shihomi Kogoshi.

GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was the sponsorship for the 2011 season. The designer of the 2011 Racing Miku derivative design was illustrator Yuichi Murakami. Model Ayami returned as a Racing Queen for the third time and Tachibana Saki returned for her second season. Haruka Aoi was the third Racing Queen to wear the Racing Miku 2011 outfit. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was continued as a sponsorship for the 2012 season. The Racing Miku design was illustrated by Gan for this season. The Racing queens for the season were returning models Tachibana Saki and Aoi Haruka, as well as new models Sena Kougami and Ayana Sato.

Once again, the GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO sponsorship continued with the 2013 season. The Racing Miku design for the season was done by Mari Shimazaki. The illustrator of the official art was Saitom. Sena Kougami returned as a racing queen for this season and was joined by Tsukasa Arai and Elena Ishiguro. In 2013, the Sponsorship was expanded to featured a racing outfit in the Isle of Man motor cycling race, for this race Team Mirari were sponsored and a special design for the Racing Miku design adapted to suit the different spot. The Racing Miku design also was adapted for a "Sepang" version showing bare toned skin as part of showing good health and promoting the design as "the Angel of summer".

The illustrator for the 2014 season was Oguchi, one of the 15 artists of "Kantai Collection". The outfit is designed by Koyamashigeto, the art director of "Kill la Kill". The machine version of the outfit is designed by Koyamashigeto and Shōji Kawamori, who is noted for his "Macross" designs. The Racing Queens who wore the outfit were returning models Tsukasa Arai and Sena Kougami, as well as new models Kelal Yamaura and Noa Mizutani. For the 2015 Racing Miku, the design was based on a "Princess Knight" complete with a shield and spear-like umbrella. The illustrator was Taiki, the lead visual design from Square Enix and Sega's games "Lord of Vermilion" and "Rise of Mana". Koyamashigeto once again returned as the art direction and designer for the season. Tsuyoshi Kusano is in charge of the new machine design.

Sapporo has been a major main target of sponsorship since 2010, with Crypton Future Media sponsoring the winter festivals. The image of Hatsune Miku would appear around the town on public transportation. The image portrayal of Miku that is used is a derivative design called "Snow Miku". Although originally, this was simply a recoloring of the normal Hatsune Miku, unique designs have occurred every year since 2011. Figurines based on the design have also been featured.

The 2012 design was chosen via a contest. The winning entry was referred to as "Fluffy Coat Snow Miku". The 2013 design was called "Strawberry Daifuku Shiromuku Miku". The 2014 design was based on a Magical Girl design by dera_fury, who was the winner of the 2014 Snow Miku contest. The illustration was "Nekosumi". The design also featured a pet called "Rabbit Yukine". The 2015 design was called "Snow Bell Snow Miku" and was illustrated by Nardack.

In 2012, several ice sculptures of the Character Vocal series and several snow sculptures of Miku were produced for the event. However, on February 7, 2012, one of the Snow Miku sculptures later collapsed and had to be rebuilt elsewhere with better support. The collapsed figure also hit a woman in her early 60s on the back of the head; no serious injuries were sustained in the process.

During Miku's development, Crypton decided to take a different approach from that used by the other Vocaloid sound bank publishers. It was decided that to make the product successful not only would a highly appealing voice need to be developed, but that the voice needed an image. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and otaku market had not fully formed yet, and so were not initially considered.

The task for coming up with Miku's image went to the manga artist Kei Garō. When Kei designed Miku, his only direction was that she was an android and what her color scheme (based on Yamaha's synthesizer's signature turquoise color) was. The design on Miku's skirt and boots are based on synthesizer software colors and the bars represent the actual bars within the program's user interface. Miku was originally intended to have a different hairstyle, but Kei stuck to pigtails or bunches after trying them out. Crypton then officially created and posted Miku's personal data sheet. However, this only contained her 'physical' and technical traits; Crypton did not provide much information about Miku's personality, which has allowed song/music video creators and fans to choose the traits that they think suit her best.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, who looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. A televised anime series aired in February 2012.

In October 2011, Crypton showed on the official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy." Geoffrey Cain of GlobalPost has argued that the phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is partly due to the love of Japanese for giving inanimate objects a soul, which is rooted in Shintoism or animism, but also in the long tradition of Karakuri ningyō or automated wooden puppets. Thus, Japanese are much more ready to accept a virtual character as "human".

A series of rhythm games starting from "" were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan-made" Vocaloids like Akita Neru. TinierMe also made attire that looks like Miku's for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble her. The series has sold 6million copies. "" was developed for the Nintendo 3DS. Miku's appearance in this game is based on the Nendoroid series of figures. Hatsune Miku is also briefly referenced in the game "Recettear", where a young man stargazing sees "The Green-Onion Girl" constellation. Also, in 2013, Saki Fujita voices Fei-Yen HD, a character based on one of Hatsune Miku's modules, in "Super Robot Wars UX"; this appearance does not use Miku's vocal library.

In August 2017, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the virtual singer, Ricoh released a limited edition of its 360° camera Ricoh Theta branded with Hatsune Miku imagery called the Ricoh Theta SC Type Hatsune Miku. The Ricoh Theta Type Hatsune Miku mobile apps (iOS and Android) allow for placing images of the character (in 55 different poses) within 360° images taken with the camera. Users can manipulate Hatsune Miku's facial expressions, change the direction of the character's shadow and hair, and rotate the character to place it within the 360° image. The product includes a specially designed case and other features illustrated by Fuzichoco, an illustrator at Crypton Future Media.

In August 2010, over 22,000 original songs had been written for Hatsune Miku. Later reports confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name. Crypton's website promotes Miku's popularity having her voice used in over 100,000 unique songs.

A young male prototype used for the "Project If..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". Hatsune Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga's world tour, performing throughout the first month of her tour from May 6 to June 3, 2014.

In March 2014, Hatsune Miku and Crypton Future Media teamed up with the Japanese band Bump of Chicken to record a music video featuring a real band singing alongside Hatsune Miku in real time. This video was uploaded on March 12, 2014, and contains the song "Ray". The video is not after-edited in any way. This was made possible by Crypton's newest technology to focus characters on a screen directly to the recording camera by using a big curved screen, motion data, Wifi-sensors, movement-sensors and some older technology from Crypton.

Pharrell Williams made a remix of Livetune's song "Last Night, Goodnight" featuring Hatsune Miku. On October 8, 2014, Miku made her American network television debut as she performed "Sharing the World" on the "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. Hatsune Miku is featured in "B Who I Want 2 B" produced by Sophie from Namie Amuro's album "Genic". The 2016 Hatsune Miku Expo tour featured American electronic band Anamanaguchi as an opening act; to commemorate the tour, the band recorded a single track titled "Miku", which they performed live on the tour with Miku as an encore song. Big Boi (of Outkast) sampled Aura Qualic's song "DATA 2.0", featuring Hatsune Miku for his 2017 single "Kill Jill", also appearing in the song's music video.

Originally, Hiroyuki Ito—President of Crypton Future Media—claimed that Hatsune Miku was not a virtual idol but a kind of the Virtual Studio Technology instrument. However, Hatsune Miku performed her first "live" concert like a virtual idol on a projection screen during Animelo Summer Live at the Saitama Super Arena on August 22, 2009. At the "MikuFes '09 (Summer)" event on August 31, 2009, her image was screened by rear projection on a mostly-transparent screen. Miku also performed her first overseas live concert on November 21, 2009, during Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore. On March 9, 2010, Miku's first solo live performance titled "Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39's Giving Day" was opened at the Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba, Tokyo. The tour was run as part of promotions for Sega's "Hatsune Miku: Project Diva" video game in March 2010. The success and possibility of these tours is owed to the popularity of Hatsune Miku and so far Crypton is the only studio to have established a world tour of their Vocaloids.

Vocaloid

The software enables users to synthesize "singing" by typing in lyrics and melody. It uses synthesizing technology with specially recorded vocals of voice actors or singers. To create a song, the user must input the melody and lyrics. A piano roll type interface is used to input the melody and the lyrics can be entered on each note. The software can change the stress of the pronunciations, add effects such as vibrato, or change the dynamics and tone of the voice.

Various voice banks have been released for use with the Vocaloid synthesizer technology. Each is sold as "a singer in a box" designed to act as a replacement for an actual singer. As such, they are released under a moe anthropomorphism. These avatars are also referred to as "Vocaloids", and are often marketed as virtual idols; some have gone on to perform at live concerts as an on-stage projection.

The software was originally only available in English starting with the first Vocaloids Leon, Lola and Miriam by Zero-G, and Japanese with Meiko and Kaito made by Yamaha and sold by Crypton Future Media. Vocaloid 3 has added support for Spanish for the Vocaloids Bruno, Clara and Maika; Chinese for Luo Tianyi and Xin Hua; Korean for SeeU.

The software is intended for professional musicians as well as light computer music users. Japanese musical groups such as Livetune of Toy's Factory and Supercell of Sony Music Entertainment Japan have released their songs featuring Vocaloid as vocals. Japanese record label Exit Tunes of Quake Inc. also have released compilation albums featuring Vocaloids. Artists such as Mike Oldfield have also used Vocaloids within their work for back up singer vocals and sound samples.

Vocaloid's technology is generally categorized into the concatenative synthesis in the frequency domain, which splices and processes the vocal fragments extracted from human singing voices, in the forms of time-frequency representation. The Vocaloid system can produce the realistic voices by adding vocal expressions like the vibrato on the score information. Initially, Vocaloid's synthesis technology was called on the release of Vocaloid in 2004, although this name is no longer used since the release of Vocaloid 2 in 2007. "Singing Articulation" is explained as "vocal expressions" such as vibrato and vocal fragments necessary for singing. The Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2 synthesis engines are designed for singing, not reading text aloud, though software such as Vocaloid-flex and Voiceroid have been developed for that. They cannot naturally replicate singing expressions like hoarse voices or shouts.

The main parts of the Vocaloid 2 system are the Score Editor (Vocaloid 2 Editor), the Singer Library, and the Synthesis Engine. The Synthesis Engine receives score information from the Score Editor, selects appropriate samples from the Singer Library, and concatenates them to output synthesized voices. There is basically no difference in the Score Editor and the Synthesis Engine provided by Yamaha among different Vocaloid 2 products. If a Vocaloid 2 product is already installed, the user can enable another Vocaloid 2 product by adding its library. The system supports three languages, Japanese, Korean, and English, although other languages may be optional in the future. It works standalone (playback and export to WAV) and as a ReWire application or a Virtual Studio Technology instrument (VSTi) accessible from a digital audio workstation (DAW).

The Score Editor is a piano roll style editor to input notes, lyrics, and some expressions. When entering lyrics, the editor automatically converts them into Vocaloid phonetic symbols using the built-in pronunciation dictionary. The user can directly edit the phonetic symbols of unregistered words. The Score Editor offers various parameters to add expressions to singing voices. The user is supposed to optimize these parameters that best fit the synthesized tune when creating voices. This editor supports ReWire and can be synchronized with DAW. Real-time "playback" of songs with predefined lyrics using a MIDI keyboard is also supported.

Each Vocaloid license develops the Singer Library, or a database of vocal fragments sampled from real people.The database must have all possible combinations of phonemes of the target language, including diphones (a chain of two different phonemes) and sustained vowels, as well as polyphones with more than two phonemes if necessary. For example, the voice corresponding to the word "sing" ([sIN]) can be synthesized by concatenating the sequence of diphones "#-s, s-I, I-N, N-#" (# indicating a voiceless phoneme) with the sustained vowel ī. The Vocaloid system changes the pitch of these fragments so that it fits the melody. In order to get more natural sounds, three or four different pitch ranges are required to be stored into the library. Japanese requires 500 diphones per pitch, whereas English requires 2,500. Japanese has fewer diphones because it has fewer phonemes and most syllabic sounds are open syllables ending in a vowel. In Japanese, there are basically three patterns of diphones containing a consonant: voiceless-consonant, vowel-consonant, and consonant-vowel. On the other hand, English has many closed syllables ending in a consonant, and consonant-consonant and consonant-voiceless diphones as well. Thus, more diphones need to be recorded into an English library than into a Japanese one. Due to this linguistic difference, a Japanese library is not suitable for singing in eloquent English.

The Synthesis Engine receives score information contained in dedicated MIDI messages called Vocaloid MIDI sent by the Score Editor, adjusts pitch and timbre of the selected samples in frequency domain, and splices them to synthesize singing voices. When Vocaloid runs as VSTi accessible from DAW, the bundled VST plug-in bypasses the Score Editor and directly sends these messages to the Synthesis Engine.

Yamaha started development of Vocaloid in March 2000 and announced it for the first time at the German fair Musikmesse on March 5–9, 2003. It was created under the name "Daisy", in reference to the song "Daisy Bell", but for copyright reasons this name was dropped in favor of "Vocaloid".

Vocaloid 2 was announced in 2007. Unlike the first engine, Vocaloid 2 based its results on vocal samples, rather than analysis of the human voice. The synthesis engine and the user interface were completely revamped, with Japanese Vocaloids possessing a Japanese interface.

Vocaloid 3 launched on October 21, 2011, along with several products in Japanese product, the first of its kind. Several studios are providing updates to allow Vocaloid 2 vocal libraries to come over to Vocaloid 3.

In October 2014, the first product confirmed for the Vocaloid 4 engine was the English vocal Ruby, whose release was delayed so she could be released on the newer engine. Soon afterwards, Wat of Crypton Future Media reacted to the news in regards to the upcoming "new Luka vocal". In 2015, several V4 versions of Vocaloids were released. The Vocaloid 4 engine was then announced soon afterwards.

Vocaloid 5 was released on July 12, 2018, with an overhauled user interface and substantial engine improvements. The product is only available as a bundle; the standard version includes four voices and the premium version includes eight.

The following products are able to be purchased;

Though developed by Yamaha, the marketing of each Vocaloid is left to the respective studios. Yamaha themselves do maintain a degree of promotional efforts in the actual Vocaloid software, as seen when the humanoid robot model HRP-4C of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) was set up to react to three Vocaloids—Hatsune Miku, Megpoid and Crypton's noncommercial Vocaloid software "CV-4Cβ"—as part of promotions for both Yamaha and AIST at CEATEC in 2009. The prototype voice CV-4Cβ was created by sampling a Japanese voice actress, Eriko Nakamura.

Japanese magazines such as "DTM magazine" are responsible for the promotion and introduction for many of the Japanese Vocaloids to Japanese Vocaloid fans. It has featured Vocaloids such as Miku, Kagamine Rin and Len, and Luka, printing some sketches by artist Kei and reporting the latest news on the Vocaloids. Thirty-day trial versions of Miriam, Lily and Iroha have also contributed to the marketing success of those particular voices. After the success of SF-A2 Miki's CD album, other Vocaloids such as VY1 and Iroha have also used promotional CDs as a marketing approach to selling their software. When Amazon MP3 in Japan opened on November 9, 2010, Vocaloid albums were featured as its free-of-charge contents.

Crypton has been involved with the marketing of their Character Vocal Series, particularly Hatsune Miku, has been actively involved in the GT300 class of the Super GT since 2008 with the support of Good Smile Racing (a branch of Good Smile Company, mainly in charge of car-related products, especially itasha (cars featuring illustrations of anime-styled characters) stickers). Although Good Smile Company was not the first to bring the anime and manga culture to Super GT, it departs from others by featuring itasha directly rather than colorings onto vehicles.

Since the 2008 season, three different teams received their sponsorship under Good Smile Racing, and turned their cars to Vocaloid-related artwork:As well as involvements with the GT series, Crypton also established the website Piapro. A number of games starting from "" were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan made" Vocaloids. Later, a mobile phone game called "Hatsune Miku Vocalo x Live" was produced by Japanese mobile social gaming website Gree. TinierMe Gacha also made attire that looks like Miku for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble the Crypton Vocaloids.

Two unofficial manga were also produced for the series, "Maker Unofficial: Hatsune Mix" being the most well known of the two, which was released by Jive in their "Comic Rush" magazine; this series is drawn by Vocaloid artist Kei. The series features the Crypton Vocaloids in various scenarios, a different one each week. The series focuses on the Crypton Vocaloids, although Internet Co., Ltd.'s Gackpoid Vocaloid makes a guest appearance in two chapters. The series also saw guest cameos of Vocaloid variants such as Hachune Miku, Yowane Haku, Akita Neru and the Utauloid Kasane Teto. The series comprises the original 28 chapters serialized in "Comic Rush" and a collection of the first 10 chapters in a single "tankōbon" volume. A manga was produced for Lily by Kei, who also drew the mascot. An anime music video titled "Schwarzgazer", which shows the world where Lily is, was produced and it was released with the album "anim.o.v.e 02", however the song is sung by Move, not by Vocaloids. A yonkoma manga based on Hatsune Miku and drawn by Kentaro Hayashi, "Shūkan Hajimete no Hatsune Miku!", began serialization in "Weekly Young Jump" on September 2, 2010. Hatsune Miku appeared in "Weekly Playboy" magazine. However, Crypton Future Media confirmed they will not be producing an anime based on their Vocaloids as it would limit the creativity of their user base, preferring to let their user base to have freedom to create PV's without restrictions.

Initially, Crypton Future Media were the only studio that was allowed the license of figurines to be produced for their Vocaloids. A number of figurines and plush dolls were also released under license to Max Factory and the Good Smile Company of Crypton's Vocaloids. Among these figures were also Figma models of the entire "Character Vocal Series" mascots as well as Nendoroid figures of various Crypton Vocaloids and variants. Pullip versions of Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Len and Rin have also been produced for release in April 2011; other Vocaloid dolls have since been announced from the Pullip doll line. As part of promotions for Vocaloid Lily, license for a figurine was given to Phat Company and Lily became the first non-Crypton Vocaloid to receive a figurine.

With regard to the English Vocaloid studios, Power FX's Sweet Ann was given her own MySpace page and Sonika her own Twitter account. In comparison to Japanese studios, Zero-G and PowerFX maintain a high level of contact with their fans. Zero-G in particular encourages fan feed back and, after adopting Sonika as a mascot for their studio, has run two competitions related to her. There was also talk from PowerFX of redoing their Sweet Ann box art and a competition would be included as part of the redesign. The Vocaloid Lily also had a competition held during her trial period. English Vocaloids have not sold enough to warrant extras, such as seen with Crypton's Miku Append. However, it has been confirmed if the English Vocaloids become more popular, then Appends would be an option in the future. Crypton plans to start an electronic magazine for English readers at the end of 2010 in order to encourage the growth of the English Vocaloid fanbase. Extracts of PowerFX's Sweet Ann and Big Al were included in Soundation Studio in their Christmas loops and sound release with a competition included.

Crypton and Toyota began working together to promote the launch of the 2011 Toyota Corolla using Hatsune Miku to promote the car. The launch of the car also marked the start of Miku's debut in the US alongside it. Crypton had always sold Hatsune Miku as a virtual instrument, but they decided to ask their own fanbase in Japan if it was okay with them to market her to the United States as a virtual singer instead.

The largest promotional event for Vocaloids is "The Voc@loid M@ster" (Vom@s) convention held four times a year in Tokyo or the neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture. The event brings producers and illustrators involved with the production of Vocaloid art and music together so they can sell their work to others. The original event was held in 2007 with 48 groups, or "circles", given permission to host stalls at the event for the selling of their goods. The event soon gained popularity and at the 14th event, nearly 500 groups had been chosen to have stalls. Additionally, Japanese companies involved with production of the software also have stalls at the events. The very first live concert related to Vocaloid was held in 2004 with the Vocaloid Miriam in Russia.

Vocaloids have also been promoted at events such as the NAMM show and the Musikmesse fair. In fact, it was the promotion of Zero-G's Lola and Leon at the NAMM trade show that would later introduce PowerFX to the Vocaloid program. These events have also become an opportunity for announcing new Vocaloids with Prima being announced at the NAMM event in 2007 and Tonio having been announced at the NAMM event in 2009. A customized, Chinese version of Sonika was released at the Fancy Frontier Develop Animation Festival, as well as with promotional versions with stickers and posters. Sanrio held a booth at Comiket 78 featuring the voice of an unreleased Vocaloid. AH Software in cooperation with Sanrio shared a booth and the event was used to advertise both the "Hello Kitty" game and AH Software's new Vocaloid. At the Nico Nico Douga Daikaigi 2010 Summer: Egao no Chikara event, Internet Co., Ltd. announced their latest Vocaloid "Gachapoid" based on popular children's character Gachapin.

Later, the CEO of Crypton Future Media appeared in San Francisco at the start of the San Francisco tour where the first Hatsune Miku concert was hosted in North America on September 18, 2010, featuring songs provided by the Miku software voice. A second screening of the concert was on October 11, 2010 in the San Francisco Viz Cinema. A screening of the concert was also shown in New York City in the city's anime festival. Hiroyuki Ito, and planner/producer, Wataru Sasaki, who were responsible for Miku's creation, attended an event on October 8, 2010 at the festival. Videos of her performance are due to be released worldwide. Megpoid and Gackpoid were also featured in the 2010 King Run Anison Red and White concert. This event also used the same projector method to display Megpoid and Gackpoid on a large screen. Their appearance at the concert was done as a one-time event and both Vocaloids were featured singing a song originally sung by their respective voice provider.

The next live concert was set for Tokyo on March 9, 2011. Other events included the Vocarock Festival 2011 on January 11, 2011 and the Vocaloid Festa which was held on February 12, 2011. The Vocaloid Festa had also hosted a competition officially endorsed by Pixiv, with the winner seeing their creation unveiled at Vocafes2 on May 29, 2011. The first Vocaloid concert in North America was held in Los Angeles on July 2, 2011 at the Nokia Theater during Anime Expo; the concert was identical to the March 9, 2010 event except for a few improvements and new songs. Another concert was held in Sapporo on August 16 and 17, 2011. Hatsune Miku also had a concert in Singapore on November 11, 2011. Since then, there have been multiple concerts every year featuring Miku in various concert series, such as Magical Mirai, and Miku Expo.

The software became very popular in Japan upon the release of Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 2 software and her success has led to the popularity of the Vocaloid software in general. Japanese video sharing website Niconico played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. A user of Hatsune Miku and an illustrator released a much-viewed video, in which "Hachune Miku", a super deformed Miku, held a Welsh onion ("Negi" in Japanese), which resembles a leek, and sang the Finnish song "Ievan Polkka" like the flash animation "Loituma Girl", on Nico Nico Douga. According to Crypton, they knew that users of Nico Nico Douga had started posting videos with songs created by the software before Hatsune Miku, but the video presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation—notably the "dōjin" culture. As the recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D and 3D, and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. The software has also been used to tell stories using song and verse and the "Story of Evil" series has become so popular that a manga, six books, and two theatre works were produced by the series creator. Another theater production based on "Cantarella", a song sung by Kaito and produced by Kurousa-P, was also set to hit the stage and will run Shibuya's Space Zero theater in Tokyo from August 3 to August 7, 2011. The website has become so influential that studios often post demos on Nico Nico Douga, as well as other websites such as YouTube, as part of the promotional effort of their Vocaloid products. The important role Nico Nico Douga has played in promoting the Vocaloids also sparked interest in the software and Kentaro Miura, the artist of Gakupo's mascot design, had offered his services for free because of his love for the website.

In September 2009, three figurines based on the derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from the United States state of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, though it did not reach outer space. In late November 2009, a petition was launched in order to get a custom made Hatsune Miku aluminum plate (8 cm x 12 cm, 3.1" x 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus space probe Akatsuki. Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka that goes by chodenzi-P, this project received the backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The website of the petition written in Japanese was translated into other languages such as English, Russian, Chinese and Korean, and, the petition exceeded the needed 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made on December 22, 2009. On May 21, 2010 at 06:58:22 (JST), Akatsuki was launched on the rocket H-IIA 202 Flight 17 from the Japanese spaceport Tanegashima Space Center, having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku.

The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, which looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. The virtual idols "Meaw" have also been released aimed at the Vocaloid culture. The twin Thai virtual idols released two singles, "Meaw Left ver." and "Meaw Right ver.", sung in Japanese.

A cafe for one day only was opened in Tokyo based on Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2010. A second event was arranged for all Japanese Vocaloids. "Snow Miku" was also featured on an event as a part of the 62nd Sapporo Snow Festival in February 2011. A Vocaloid-themed TV show on the Japanese Vocaloids called "Vocalo Revolution" began airing on Kyoto Broadcasting System on January 3, 2011. The show is part of a bid to make the Vocaloid culture more widely accepted and features a mascot known as "Cul", also mascot of the "Cul Project". The show's first success story is a joint collaboration between Vocalo Revolution and the school fashion line "Cecil McBee" "Music x Fashion x Dance". Piapro also held a competition with famous fashion brands with the winners seeing their Lolita-based designs reproduced for sale by the company Putumayo. A radio station set up a 1-hour program containing nothing but Vocaloid-based music.

The Vocaloid software had a great influence on the development of the freeware Utau. Several products were produced for the for intended use for the programs Reason 4 and GarageBand. These products were sold by Act2 and by converting their file format, were able to also work with the Utau program. The program Maidloid, developed for the character, was also developed, which works in a similar way to Vocaloid, except produces erotic sounds rather than an actual singing voice. Other than Vocaloid, AH Software also developed Tsukuyomi Ai and Shouta for the software Voiceroid, and the sale of their Vocaloids gave AH software the chance to promote Voiceroid at the same time. The software is aimed for speaking rather than singing. Both AH Software's Vocaloids and Voiceroids went on sale on December 4, 2009. Crypton Future Media has been reported to openly welcome these additional software developments as it expands the market for synthesized voices.

During the events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a number of Vocaloid related donation drives were produced. Crypton Future Media joined several other companies in a donation drive, with money spent on the sales of music from Crypton Future Media's KarenT label being donated to the Japanese Red Cross. In addition, a special Nendoroid of Hatsune Miku, Nendoroid Hatsune Miku: Support ver., was announced with a donation of 1,000 yen per sale to the Japanese Red Cross.

In 2012, Vocaloid was quoted as one of the contributors to a 10% increase in cosplay related services. In 2013, the Vocaloid 3 software Oliver was used as the voice of Cartoon Hangover character Puppycat from their web series "Bee and Puppycat".

The earliest use of Vocaloid related software used prototypes of Kaito and Meiko and were featured on the album "History of Logic System" by Hideki Matsutake released on July 24, 2003, and sang the song "Ano Subarashii Ai o Mō Ichido". The first album to be released using a full commercial Vocaloid was "A Place in the Sun", which used Leon's voice for the vocals singing in both Russian and English. Miriam has also been featured in two albums, "Light + Shade" and "Continua". Japanese progressive-electronic artist Susumu Hirasawa used the Lola Vocaloid in the original soundtrack of "Paprika" by Satoshi Kon. The software's biggest asset is its ability to see continued usage even long after its initial release date. Leon was featured in the album "32bit Love" by Muzehack and Lola in "Operator's Manual" by anaROBIK; both were featured in these albums six years after they were released. Even early on in the software's history, the music making progress proved to be a valuable asset to the Vocaloid development as it not only opened up the possibilities of how the software may be applied in practice, but led to the creation of further Vocaloids to fill in the missing roles the software had yet to cover. The album "A Place in the Sun" was noted to have songs that were designed for a male voice with a rougher timbre than the Vocaloid Leon could provide; this later led to the development of Big Al to fulfill this particular role.

Some of the most popular albums are on the "Exit Tunes" label, featuring the works of Vocaloid producers in Japan. One of the Vocaloid compilations, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku", debuted at No. 1 on the Japanese weekly Oricon albums chart in May 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. The album sold 23,000 copies in its first week and eventually sold 86,000 copies. The following released album, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalonexus feat. Hatsune Miku", became the second Vocaloid album to top the weekly charts in January 2011. Another album, "Supercell", by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Upon its release in North America, it became ranked as the second highest album on Amazon's bestselling MP3 album in the international category in the United States and topped the store's bestselling chart for world music on iTunes. Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's "First Sound Story" and Livetune's "Re:Repackage", and "Re:Mikus" also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include the albums by Absorb and by OSTER-project. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album "Prism" credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda". The compilation album "Vocarock Collection 2 feat. Hatsune Miku" was released by Farm Records on December 15, 2010, and was later featured on the Cool Japan Music iPhone app in February 2011. The record label Balloom became the first label to focus solely on Vocaloid-related works and their first release was "Unhappy Refrain" by the Vocaloid producer Wowaka. Hatsune Miku's North American debut song "World is Mine" ranked at No. 7 in the iTunes world singles ranking in the week of its release. Singer Gackt also challenged Gackpoid users to create a song, with the prize being 10 million yen, stating if the song was to his liking he would sing and include it in his next album. The winning song "Episode 0" and runner up song "Paranoid Doll" were later released by Gackt on July 13, 2011. In relation to the Good Smiling racing promotions that Crypton Future Media Vocaloids had played part in, the album "Hatsune Miku GT Project Theme Song Collection" was released in August 2011 as part of a collaboration.

In the month prior to her release, SF-A2 Miki was featured in the album "Vocaloids X'mas: Shiroi Yoru wa Seijaku o Mamotteru" as part of her promotion. The album featured the Vocaloid singing Christmas songs. Miki was also featured singing the introduction of the game "Hello Kitty to Issho! Block Crash 123!!". A young female prototype used for the "project if..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". For Yamaha's VY1 Vocaloid, an album featuring VY1 was created. The album was released with the deluxe version of the program. It includes various well-known producers from Nico Nico Douga and YouTube and includes covers of various popular and well-known Vocaloid songs using the VY1 product. The first press edition of Nekomura Iroha was released with a CD containing her two sample songs "Tsubasa" and "Abbey Fly", and the install disc also contained VSQ files of the two songs for use with her program. A number of Vocaloid related music, including songs starring Hatsune Miku, were featured in the arcade game "Music Gun Gun! 2". One of the rare singles with the English speaking Sonika, "Suburban Taxi", was released by Alexander Stein and the German label Volume0dB on March 11, 2010.

To celebrate the release of the Vocaloid 3 software, a compilation album titled "The Vocaloids" was released. The CD contains 18 songs sung by Vocaloids released in Japan and contains a booklet with information about the Vocaloid characters. Porter Robinson used the Vocaloid Avanna for his studio album "Worlds".

Yamaha utilized Vocaloid technology to mimic the voice of deceased rock musician hide, who died in 1998, to complete and release his song "Co Gal" in 2014. The musician's actual voice, breathing sounds and other cues were extracted from previously released songs and a demo and combined with the synthesized voice. Kenji Arakawa, a spokesman for Yamaha, said he believes this to be the first time a work by a deceased artist is commercially available and includes the dead person singing lyrics completed after their death.

For illustrations of the characters, Crypton Future Media licensed "original illustrations of Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len, Megurine Luka, Meiko and Kaito" under Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported ("CC BY-NC"), allowing for artists to use the characters in noncommercial adaptations and derivations with attribution.

According to Crypton, because professional female singers refused to provide voice samples, in fear that the software might create their singing voice's clones, Crypton changed their focus from imitating certain singers to creating characteristic vocals. This change of focus led to sampling vocals of voice actors and the Japanese voice actor agency Arts Vision supported the development. Similar concerns are expressed throughout the other studios using Vocaloid, with Zero-G refusing to release the names of several of their providers. PowerFX only hinted at Sweet Ann's voice provider, and Oliver's voice provider is still unknown. AH Software named the voice providers for Miki, Kiyoteru, Yukari, Zunko and Iroha, but for legal reasons cannot name Kaai Yuki's voice provider as a minor was the subject of the recordings.

Any rights or obligations arising from the vocals created by the software belong to the software user. Just like any music synthesizer, the software is treated as a musical instrument and the vocals as sound. Under the term of license, the mascots for the software can be used to create vocals for commercial or non-commercial use as long as the vocals do not offend public policy. In other words, the user is bound under the term of license of the software not to synthesize derogatory or disturbing lyrics. On the other hand, copyrights to the mascot image and name belong to their respective studios. Under the term of license, a user cannot commercially distribute a vocal as a song sung by the character, nor use the mascot image on commercial products, without the consent of the studio who owns them.

Employees working within the studios are bound by legal implications not to repeat any details given to them from Yamaha on Vocaloid development without Yamaha's permission. They are also not allowed to disclose details of upcoming Vocaloids without permission of the Vocaloid studio nor reveal the identity of the singer if the studio does not make it public.

On November 29, 2010, Crypton started an independent music publication for seeking copyright royalties if songs are used for commercial purposes such as karaoke, because Vocaloid users hardly used the copyright collective Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC). Due to the fact songs using the software are made by independent users, the act of plagiarism has remained a highly controversial issue among Vocaloid users and their published works. This has been a heated issue on both illustrative and musical levels with songs and their publishers being targeted by allegations of stealing the works of others. In January 2011, Japanese boyband KAT-TUN were forced to admit plagiarism against their song "Never×Over~「-」Is Your Part~", after the producer of the song admitted it was influenced by the Vocaloid song "Dye" produced by AVTechNO, after fans expressed their outrage over the similarities of the two songs. However, AVTechNO also released a statement explaining that the members of the band were not to blame for this incident.

The portrayals of Vocaloids can at times touch controversial issues. Vocaloids portrayed as young children risk becoming subject to sexual or pedophilic portrayals.

One of the most controversial uses of the legal agreements of any Vocaloid producing studio was from the Democratic Party of Japan, whose running candidate, Kenzo Fujisue, attempted to secure the use of Miku's image in the Japanese House of Councillors election of July 11, 2010. The hope was that the party could use her image to appeal to younger voters. Although Crypton Future Media rejected the party's use of her image or name for political purposes, Fujisue released the song "We Are the One" using her voice but not credited to her on YouTube, by replacing her image with the party's character in the music video.

Yamaha has had input in the art style of new Vocaloids. For example, the illustrations for Vocaloid AVANNA were changed to a more 'anime-esque' style at Yamaha's request. Avanna's illustrator, AkiGlancy, theorised that this was in response to backlash against the first two Spanish Vocaloid packages Bruno and Clara, which was met with outcry from Vocaloid fans over the artwork style.

Despite the success of the software in Japan, overseas customers have been reluctant on the software overall. When interviewed by the Vocaloid producing company Zero-G, music producer Robert Hedin described how the software offered creative freedom. He compared it to auto-tuning software, stating the Vocaloid software itself has enough imperfections to present itself as a singer who does not sound human. However, he states that Vocaloid also does not "snap into tune" like auto-tuning software, which the music industry seems to favor these days. Giuseppe, who had produced demo songs for both Zero-G and PowerFX Vocaloids, and is aided in the production of Spanish-based Vocaloids, had noted that each Vocaloid package worked the same way. However, each vocal has its own unique personality to it, so choosing one vocal over another is not easy. He hoped that the Vocaloid software will continue to progress forward so long as its userbase continues to push it forward. He also noted that the software's slow start and its early bad reputation was the hardest part for the software to overcome regarding its success, and like any commercial product, a decrease in sales would result in a decrease in development. However, focus had switched from focusing on the vocals to focusing on the boxart character mascot itself at this point.

The CEO of Crypton Future Media noted the lack of interest in Vocaloids overall was put down to the lack of response in the initial Vocaloid software. With regard to the development of the English version of the software specifically, many studios when approached by Crypton Future Media for recommendations towards developing the English Vocaloids had no interest in the software initially, with one particular company representative calling it a "toy". A level of failure was put on Leon and Lola for lack of sales in the United States, putting the blame on their British accents. Crypton praised the value of the English Vocaloids and what they offered to the Japanese users for their capability of offering the English language to them, when it would otherwise be off limits. As Hatsune Miku was responsible for making the software famous, her voice has become the most commonly associated with the Vocaloid software and divides opinions of critics both overseas and within Japan on their opinions towards her and the software. Crypton blamed a fear of robots on part of the lack of response on the sale of the software overseas and expressed that there was also a general "anti-Vocaloid" point of view amongst some cultures and communities, although he also noted that he hoped in the future this would change as the software continued to be developed. Prior to the release of the Hatsune Miku product, Crypton Future Media had also noted there was some criticism at choosing to release the original Vocaloid engine as a commercial licensing product, although felt that the choice was for the better of the engine. Furthermore, it was noted that the original Vocaloid engine felt more like a prototype for future engine versions.

Even with the lack of success for the English version of the software in the United States, Crypton Future Media reported that about half of music downloads at the iTunes Store for songs of Crypton's label KarenT, published by Japanese producers, have been from overseas purchases, with sales from American consumers making up the majority of percentages of overseas sales. Despite experiencing good sales in Europe, it was reported the software is failing to attract a satisfactory level of attention, and software developers are now setting their sights on trying to overturn the lack of interest in the software in Europe.

Hatsune Miku picked up second place in a 2010 Japanese Yahoo! poll on Japanese gamers' favorite characters, owed to her starring role in "". CNN's website CNNGo declared Hatsune Miku as one of Japan's best in their "Tokyo best and worst of 2010", listing her as the "Best new virtual singer for the otaku generation". "Clash" magazine labeled Hatsune Miku and the Vocaloid software as the future of music.

Vocaloid was sold as a product for professional musicians, and although there were many producers using the software within Japan by 2011, a report was released detailing the true reflections of the Vocaloid craze. It was conducted independently by fans of the Vocaloid software and detailed the popularity of certain Vocaloids over others. Most Vocaloid related videos struggled to get over 5,000 views and the most popular producers gaining the most interest over lesser popular producers. In order of the most video uploads were Hatsune Miku (first), Kagamine Rin (second), Gumi (third), Megurine Luka (fourth), Kagamine Len (fifth) and Kaito (sixth) had the most videos uploaded related to them, while all other Vocaloids had less than 1,000 uploads related to them. This was not true for all the calculations they ran to determine the popularity, including average and mean views and mylists. In the end, only Gumi and the Kagamine software packages managed to stay on the top six lists of all their calculations, with popular Vocaloid Hatsune Miku failing to make it on the mean average top six list calculations for the study period. In 2013, it was estimated that about 30% of all videos updated each month on Niconico were Vocaloid related.

Despite its growing popularity as a franchise, by December 2015, Vocaloid was still struggling to make an impact in the west; Hatsune Miku also did not make as much of an impact. Concerns were mostly focused on Vocaloid itself at this point. It was also reported that more Japanese companies were growing protective of their properties, with "", which was released at the time, being the center of one such conflict of copyright interest. The market for such games was described as a "niche audience in the west".