Vocaloids and The Rise of the Modern Virtual Artist
Originally intended as tools for producers to reinforce their music with vocals, vocaloids have quickly turned into a worldwide phenomenon that’s cultivated a vibrant community deeply invested in the characters and their lore.
Written by Joshua Troncoso
Illustrated by Darrina Green
Vocaloid is a line of vocal synthesizer software products from the Japanese corporations Yamaha and Crypton Future Media. To record the sounds of each individual synthesizer, vocal samples are recorded from a real singer. For example, recordings of Japanese singer and voice actress Saki Fujita were used to create the voice bank of the world famous Hatsune Miku.
Even though Vocaloids are production tools, companies pair them with anime-inspired personas to market them as both products and characters. Despite essentially being an instrument, Hatsune Miku has become one of Japan’s most well-known cultural icons, with her famous turquoise pigtails and tie. Nearly every aspect of her appearance has become iconic right down to her costume’s aqua color scheme that pays homage to Yamaha synthesizers. Ever since her debut in 2007, Miku and her vocaloid contemporaries have become recognizable figures worldwide, packing arenas and selling millions of copies of her rhythm video game Project DIVA. Virtual artists from around the world have carved their own niche in the music industry, and their influence is only expanding.
Vocaloids and other virtual artists present have some interesting advantages over human musicians when it comes to both marketing and social media. Every post and video that a virtual artist makes is a perfectly-crafted viewing experience that often doesn’t even take place in reality. Being able to appear at any location, with any audience, doing anything makes marketing opportunities endless. Collaborations and product placement are now only a test of an artist’s photoshop abilities, rather than a coordinated scheduling nightmare.
Hatsune Miku, Image courtesy of Crypton Future Media
Rising virtual artists and influencers like CGI character Miquela Sousa have attained huge followings on social media. As a pop and R&B visual artist, Sousa (created by the Los Angeles based studio Brud) has become a Tik Tok superstar and fashion influencer. Since 2016, her popularity has risen to the point where she made an appearance at Coachella in 2019 and has collaborated with well-known musicians like Teyana Taylor. As opposed to vocaloids like Miku who have created an entirely new way to consume music, artists like Sousa are updating a template laid out by legends of before. Sousa takes a similar approach to the Gorillaz, in the sense that a real person sings her music, but her appearance is entirely digital. Sousa and her team also play into her uncanny valley appearance by cleverly deflecting accusations and questions whenever people bring up her appearance.
Sousa is also an activist and is among a group of virtual influencers who have made statements supporting social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter. Virtual artists have become increasingly involved in political mobilization as their online followings grow, and many of them have used their platform to spread social justice messages. While the idea that a virtual human has any stake in real life human rights issues sounds far fetched, studios like Brud recognize that virtual influencers have their own role in spreading important messages.
Miku and Sousa have become recognizable characters with large fanbases, but there are smaller vocaloid artists rising from the underground as well. For example, Yameii Online (along with her creators, rapper Deko and visual artist Osean) have started creating some buzz in the cloud rap scene. With the help of the Vocaloid software Avanna, Yameii’s colorful and buoyant brand of airy trap music sets her apart from the more common EDM sound associated with vocaloids. Her song “Fire” even features Lil Hard Drive, another vocaloid that Deko and Osean created. Hearing two vocaloids trade bars over a Trippie Redd-adjacent trap beat is a surreal experience that might give an uninitiated listener whiplash.
Another example is the industrial electronic vocaloid JACKIE EXTREME, who perfectly demonstrates how varied the music virtual artists and their creators can produce. Her cover of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” transforms the desperate love ballad into a haunting and noise-filled fever dream. Auxuman, a digital media company, has created its own set of vocaloids that create experimental pop music. One of the company’s artists, YONA, juxtaposes her patchy computerized voice with an eerie violin solo in the song “2.0” to make it sound like a spoken word piece from an android going through an identity crisis.
Virtual artists also hold another distinct advantage over humans: they are not bound by the same temporal and spatial constraints. Hatsune Miku has been 16 years old for nearly 14 years now, and she will never age until Yamaha and Crypton decide to age her. She can also play multiple concerts at the same time while offering each audience the exact same experience. Since anyone willing to purchase the voice of every vocaloid can own it, there is also a large amount of fan-made content out there constantly for people to consume. Virtual artists also have the ability to inhabit their own worlds that their creators have fleshed out. For example, Yameii Online lives inside of Oseanworld, a cyber dimension where Yameii and other vocaloids live. The Oseanworld website explains the lore around the world, as well as many of the characters, and provides fans with a unique interactive experience. Unlike human artists, whose lore is often created by tabloids and rumors, creators of virtual artists can tell unique stories that provide for both a marketable personality and an extensive history for fans to dive into. Osean’s Takashi Murakami-inspired art style also makes for beautifully trippy music videos and smaller skits that show the world-building of vocaloids that real artists just can’t compete with. Because of this, some human artists have created virtual versions of themselves to take advantage of this virtual aspect: for example, Grimes has used her persona, War Nymph, to expand her own mythos.
But vocaloids are not without their unique challenges and downsides. Virtual artists often overshadow their creators, which can lead to major issues regarding being properly credited for their work. The aforementioned animated quartet Gorillaz has been around since 1998, and the identity of the main creative force behind the group, Damon Albarn, has always been at the forefront of discussions about the band. With vocaloids, however, any trace of human labor is usually intentionally overlooked in pursuit of keeping the image of the characters pure, especially with Crypton’s “Character Vocal Series.” This refers to a main group of vocaloids that Crypton has groomed into pop stars and cultural icons through concerts, shows, video games, and other forms of media. This exercise in commodity fetishism has created some issues in the industry wherein producers and artists who work on the shows, artwork, and music are often overshadowed or completely ignored by fans and sometimes even Crypton. Even when perusing YouTube for vocaloid songs, the average person will commonly see songs credited to the vocaloid themselves and not the producer of the music themself.
Yameii Online, Image courtesy of Oseanworld
It is easy to think that every virtual artist was manufactured in a soulless boardroom to be the most marketable character possible. After all, Crypton has commercialized Hatsune Miku and the other members of the “Character Vocal Series” in nearly every way imaginable. Whether it be car commercials or performances on David Letterman, vocaloids are proven money-makers that Yamaha and Crypton continue to milk for all their value.
However, the community that has risen around these characters has a strong sense of collaboration and appreciation for this new phenomenon. Fans have adopted vocaloids as an interactive version of pop stars where they can contribute to the lore around them. With the ability to buy the software and play a part in the ever-expanding catalog of vocaloid music, fans form a unique relationship with visual artists that only they can match.
Some may now think it’s time to sound the alarm — robots and artificial intelligence have begun to accelerate their gradual annexation of every aspect of humanity. Despite how ingrained technology has become in society, many are still not ready for computer programs to take over humanity’s arts just as other industries have fallen victim to them before, while others just don’t understand the appeal. At a glance, vocaloids and the personas used by virtual artists are only well-marketed tools, but through the musical and storytelling ability of their creators, they have proven their ability to create both unique listening experiences and detailed worlds for fans to lose themselves in.