Virtual Singer Uses Crowdsourced Songs To Become a Star In Japan (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg. [Alternate version here]: During her 10-year career, she's released more than 100,000 songs in a variety of languages and opened shows for Lady Gaga. And yet Hatsune Miku, who boasts 2.5 million Facebook followers, doesn't actually exist -- at least not in the typical way we think of a flesh-and-blood diva. Miku is a computer-simulated pop star created more than a decade ago by Hiroyuki Ito, CEO of Crypton Future Media in Sapporo, Japan.

She started life as a piece of voice-synthesis software but since has evolved to become a singing sensation in her own right -- thanks to the creativity of her legions of fans. Crucial to Miku's success is the ability for devotees to purchase the Yamaha-powered Vocaloid software and write their own songs for the star to sing right back at them. Fans then can upload songs to the web and vie for the honor of having her perform them at "live" gigs, in which the computer-animated Miku takes center stage, surrounded by human guitarists, drummers and pianists.
Bloomberg's article includes some video clips of the virtual artist -- as well as her real-world fans.

Comments

Re:Still.

[sheramil]

"Tonal hooch, the substitute for real music, beloved of apes, morons, half-wits, cake-eaters..."

Hey! There's no call for that kind of language.

Re:Well, it was only a matter of time

[Nidi62]

You can't force this one to give you a blowjob, though. So that's a loss for the music executives in Japan's version of the RIAA.

Krieger has been working on that for a while though, and I think he's pretty close.