What Is Vocaloid? Japan's Vocaloid Culture and Popular Characters

Vocaloid is the umbrella term for VOCALOID, the singing voice synthesis software developed by Yamaha, and for the characters and music culture that grew out of it. At that time, the idea that a computer could sing like a person from nothing more than typed-in lyrics and a melody was groundbreaking.

The famous Hatsune Miku is one of these Vocaloid characters. Nearly twenty years have passed since Miku went on sale in 2007. Composers who started as Vocaloid producers (VocaloP) have since moved beyond being seen as internet artists, and their names now routinely appear on anime theme songs and on music charts outside Japan.

What Is Vocaloid? How Most People Understand It

Most people know Vocaloid as 2D characters that sing, or as the software itself. You put in a melody and lyrics, and the software produces a singing voice that follows them exactly.

In Japan, the affectionate short form vocalo has become standard, and songs made with the software are generally called vocalo-kyoku, or Vocaloid songs.

The word vocalo refers not only to the software itself but also to the music genre and the fan culture as a whole. It is a very broad term that also encompasses Hatsune Miku illustrations and concerts, as well as fan covers of songs, known as utattemita (literally "I tried singing").

Vocaloid Producers

The creators who make the songs are called Vocaloid producers.

Making the software sing like a person, not just produce sound, is quite difficult, and natural tuning (chōsei), the work of adjusting how the voice sings, is one mark of a Vocaloid producer's skill.

The best-known artists who went on to debut after working as Vocaloid producers include Kenshi Yonezu and Ayase of YOASOBI.

Many other well-known artists, arrangers, and music producers have revealed that they were once active as Vocaloid producers.

The History of Vocaloid

Research on VOCALOID began at Yamaha in 2000. The developer Hideki Kenmochi and his colleagues worked on it jointly with Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, and first announced the technology on February 26, 2003.

The first products were Leon and Lola, two English voicebanks (the recorded voices the software sings with). Their release was announced at the NAMM Show, a music products trade fair, in January 2004. The first Japanese-language product was MEIKO, released on November 5, 2004, by Crypton Future Media of Sapporo. In fact, Hatsune Miku was not the first Vocaloid.

Early products did not sell as well as hoped, but the picture changed completely with the release of Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007.

Upgrades have continued since then. VOCALOID6 arrived in October 2022, and in October 2026 VOCALOID7 was announced for release on November 11 of the same year.

Is Vocaloid AI?

Vocaloid is not AI.

It is music software operated by a person, and it cannot hold a conversation or act on its own. Fan art often shows people chatting with the characters, but those scenes come from fans imagining how they wish things were.

VOCALOID:AI, a singing voice synthesis engine that incorporates AI, was released in 2022, but it does not include conversational AI; its AI features are there to help with adjusting the voice.

The Official Definition of Vocaloid Is Surprisingly Narrow

VOCALOID is originally the name of a Yamaha product. Yamaha's official website, news releases, and other materials explicitly identify VOCALOID and the short form vocalo as the company's registered trademarks. Strictly speaking, only products that use Yamaha's engine are VOCALOID.

Vocaloid Songs Are Not Limited to VOCALOID

In practice, though, the songs fans call Vocaloid songs cover a much wider range.

Since its first edition in 2020, The VOCALOID Collection, a song-posting event run by the internet company Dwango, has accepted songs made with any voice synthesis software. Songs made with Synthesizer V, UTAU, CeVIO, and other tools have also ranked on Billboard JAPAN's Niconico VOCALOID SONGS chart. Even Hatsune Miku comes not only in a VOCALOID version but also in an NT version that runs on Crypton's own engine.

That makes things a little confusing, but in this article, VOCALOID refers to Yamaha's products themselves and Vocaloid (vocalo) and the related culture as a whole.

The Vocaloid Characters

A Vocaloid character is a voice provided by a real person, given a name and an illustrated look. The characters below are grouped into three types: characters from VOCALOID products, characters from other software, and characters created by fans.

In some places we call the characters products and the like, for consistency with other terms, and we hope you will bear with us on that.

The signature songs are also the editorial team's own subjective picks, so please also keep that in mind.

VOCALOID Characters

Hatsune Miku

Hatsune Miku is the character who set off the Vocaloid boom. On Crypton's English product page, her name is explained as "The first Sound from the Future."

Say the word Vocaloid, and she is the first name that comes to mind: a legend everyone knows.

MEIKO

MEIKO was the first VOCALOID product released in Japanese. It is also said to be the first software of its kind to feature a character on its package.

Because she came out before Hatsune Miku and the others, fans fondly treat her as a big sister.

KAITO

KAITO was the second Japanese VOCALOID product after MEIKO, and the first male voice in Japanese.

Like MEIKO, he came out before Hatsune Miku, so fans see him as a big brother.

Kagamine Rin and Len

Kagamine Rin and Len are characters whose two singing voices, the girl Rin and the boy Len, come together in a single product. Len was also the first male voice in the Character Vocal Series.

Megurine Luka

Megurine Luka comes with two voicebanks, one Japanese and one English, so she can sing lyrics in either language smoothly.

Because of her look, many of her songs have a mature or stylish feel.

GUMI

The name GUMI was chosen by Megumi Nakajima, who provided the voice. GUMI sings alongside Hatsune Miku in "Matryoshka" by Hachi (Kenshi Yonezu), and she also sings "ECHO," an English-language song introduced later in this article.

Camui Gackpo

Camui Gackpo, often romanized Kamui Gakupo, was the first VOCALOID character released by INTERNET Co., Ltd. The voice comes from the musician GACKT, and the character art was drawn specially for the product by Kentaro Miura, the manga artist known for Berserk.

IA

Lia, who provides the voice, is a singer known for songs such as "Tori no Uta," the theme song of the visual novel game AIR. Aka Akasaka, the character designer, is a manga artist who later wrote Kaguya-sama: Love Is War and the original story behind the anime Oshi No Ko, whose theme song is YOASOBI's "Idol."

Luo Tianyi

Luo Tianyi is the first VOCALOID product to sing in Chinese. Both her look and her voice were chosen through an open call to the public.

Synthesizer V by Dreamtonics

Synthesizer V is singing voice synthesis software developed by Dreamtonics, a Tokyo company, and it is a separate product from VOCALOID. The latest version, Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro, was released on March 21, 2025. The AI version of Kasane Teto, covered below, was also made for this software.

CeVIO Creative Studio

CeVIO Creative Studio is singing voice synthesis software released on September 26, 2013. Its first character was Sato Sasara. This software is not VOCALOID either, but songs made with it are released at Vocaloid culture events such as The VOCALOID Collection, on equal footing with VOCALOID songs as part of the same community.

Fan-Created Characters

As Vocaloid grew in popularity, fans also began creating characters of their own. Some, like Kasane Teto, gained their own voicebank and became able to actually sing. Others, like Akita Neru and Yowane Haku, never got a dedicated singing voice, yet became staples of illustrations and videos and even made it into official games and merchandise.

Kasane Teto

Kasane Teto is a character who began as a fan joke. She was created as a fictional Vocaloid on the Japanese message board 2channel on April Fools' Day 2008. Soon afterward, work began on a voicebank for UTAU, singing voice synthesis software developed by Ameya/Ayame, and she became a character who could really sing. UTAU is shareware but effectively free to use.

A Synthesizer V AI version followed in 2023. On the Niconico VOCALOID SONGS chart for the first half of 2025, "Tetoris" by Hiiragi Magnetite, sung by Teto, claimed an impressive first place. In the English-speaking world, many people search for "Is Kasane Teto a Vocaloid?" The answer is that she is not a VOCALOID product but is one of the main characters who represent Vocaloid culture. Kasane Teto's official website also states clearly in its Q&A that she does not use VOCALOID technology.

Akita Neru

Akita Neru's story began in the fall of 2007. Prompted by a TV feature and by an uproar after Hatsune Miku images became hard to find on search engines, speculation spread on 2channel that operatives might be secretly working to tarnish Miku's image.

Posts like "I'm bored of this already" and "I'm going to bed," which read as if meant to calm the uproar, were deliberately turned into a cute moe character: Akita Neru. She was first portrayed as Miku's antagonist, but through fans' videos and illustrations she gradually became a popular tsundere character, cold on the outside but sweet underneath.

Yowane Haku

Yowane Haku personifies the feelings of a fan who is inspired by skilled creators' songs on the video site Niconico, buys the Hatsune Miku software, and then feels crushed by their own lack of talent. She was included as a bundled model in the 3D graphics software MikuMikuDance (MMD) and became a staple character in dance videos and band performance videos.

Niconico, Inseparable from Vocaloid Culture

Once Hatsune Miku went on sale, people began posting song after song using Miku on Niconico, a Japanese video-sharing service. On September 4, 2007, just four days after the release, Otomania posted a video of Miku singing "Ievan Polkka."

Miku's well-known link with the leek, or negi in Japanese, spread from this video. According to Otomania, the inspiration was a video popular outside Japan at the time, in which Orihime Inoue from the anime Bleach twirls a leek while listening to "Ievan Polkka."

An environment that encouraged fan works also took shape gradually. On February 24, 2008, Yu Higuchi released MikuMikuDance, free 3D graphics software. In June 2009, Crypton established the Piapro Character License, permitting fan works featuring its six characters, but only for noncommercial purposes. Then, in December 2012, Crypton adopted the CC BY-NC 3.0 license for its official illustrations, with fans outside Japan in mind.

In the 2020s, song-posting events and music charts have given the culture a further boost. In 2026, The VOCALOID Collection was held in February and August, and according to preliminary figures, more than 7,200 songs were submitted to the summer event. Billboard JAPAN's Niconico VOCALOID SONGS chart launched in December 2022.

Signature Vocaloid Songs Born on Niconico

Note: View counts are the figures we checked on each video's Niconico page as of October 13, 2026.

"Senbonzakura" is a classic example of a Vocaloid song that spread beyond the internet. In 2015, Sachiko Kobayashi sang "Senbonzakura" in a special segment of the 66th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen, NHK's New Year's Eve music show. "DUNE" (Suna no Wakusei) was the first song Kenshi Yonezu had released under the name Hachi in about four years, and it drew wide attention as the theme song of the event Hatsune Miku Magical Mirai 2017.

Hit songs have kept coming in the 2020s. DECO*27 posted "Vampire" on Miku Day, March 9, 2021. "Kyoufuu All Back" by Yukopi, sung by the voicebank Kaai Yuki and released on March 15, 2023, took first place on the first-ever year-end Niconico VOCALOID SONGS chart.

"Mesmerizer" by Satsuki is a duet between Hatsune Miku and Kasane Teto, released on April 27, 2024. On the 2025 year-end Niconico VOCALOID SONGS chart, DECO*27's "Monitoring" took first place, and Satsuki's "Mesmerizer" came in third.

Hatsune Miku Goes from Niconico to the World

A Hatsune Miku song was used in a TV commercial for Google Chrome that began airing on December 16, 2011. The song, "Tell Your World," is an original by kz of livetune, released worldwide on January 25, 2012.

In 2014, Miku was especially prominent in the English-speaking world. She was the opening act on Lady Gaga's artRAVE tour for its shows in the United States and Canada, held from May to June. On October 8, she appeared on the popular American talk show Late Show with David Letterman and performed "Sharing The World" live.

MIKU EXPO, a world tour that also began in 2014, has been staged repeatedly across North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Nine European shows are scheduled for November 2026, starting at The O2 in London and running as far as Lisbon. In April 2024, Miku performed at Coachella, one of the biggest outdoor music festivals in the United States, on two dates, April 12 and 19, local time.

In games, too, Miku has been gaining fans outside Japan. Hatsune Miku: COLORFUL STAGE!, the English version of the mobile game Project SEKAI, launched on December 7, 2021. The game's anime film, COLORFUL STAGE! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing, had a limited release in North America in April 2025 and ranked seventh at the American box office, a remarkable result. In January 2025, Hatsune Miku appeared in Fortnite Festival Season 7, part of the popular game Fortnite.

Niconico Chokaigi and Cho Kabuki

Niconico Chokaigi is a large-scale event where visitors can experience all kinds of internet culture in person. The 2026 edition was held on April 25 and 26 at the Makuhari Messe convention center, and as many as 138,228 people attended. On stage, programs such as Cho Vocanico, a live show of Vocaloid songs, drew an enthusiastic crowd, and the next event has already been announced for April 2027.

Cho Kabuki, which began at Chokaigi in 2016, is a fusion stage production starring the kabuki actor Nakamura Shidō and Hatsune Miku. A tenth-anniversary performance was staged at the Kabukiza Theatre in December 2025. Its signature piece, Hanakurabe Senbonzakura, combines the Vocaloid song "Senbonzakura" with the classic kabuki play Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees).

The Producers Behind Vocaloid Songs and the Artists Active Today

In Japanese, the creators who write and release songs using Vocaloid or other singing voice synthesis software are known as vocalo-P. In English they are called Vocaloid producers, or VocaloP for short.

A similar term is utaite, which refers to people who mainly sing online; the name came from the utattemita tag on Niconico. The two sides have a relationship of mutual benefit: Vocaloid producers write the songs, and utaite cover them.

It is now a well-established path for composers who started out as Vocaloid producers to go on to write anime theme songs and other hits. Below are brief profiles of some of the leading names.

Kenshi Yonezu (Hachi)

Kenshi Yonezu began posting original songs on Niconico under the name Hachi in 2009. He made his major-label debut under his real name on May 29, 2013, with the single "Santa Maria" on UNIVERSAL SIGMA. "KICK BACK," the opening theme of the anime Chainsaw Man, became the first all-Japanese-language song ever certified Gold by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in August 2023, and it went Platinum in September 2025.

YOASOBI (Ayase)

Ayase, the composer of YOASOBI, debuted as a Vocaloid producer on December 24, 2018, with "Sentensei Assault Girl." In 2019, he formed YOASOBI with the vocalist ikura (Lilas Ikuta). "Idol," the opening theme of the anime Oshi No Ko, reached number one on the American Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart dated June 10, 2023, the first Japanese-language song to do so.

supercell (ryo)

The 2007 song "Melt" made ryo famous almost overnight, and in March 2009 he made his major-label debut with the album supercell by the creator unit supercell. "Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari," the signature song released under the supercell name, is widely loved as the ending theme of the anime Bakemonogatari.

Yorushika (n-buna)

In Yorushika's official profile, too, n-buna is introduced as a Vocaloid producer. In 2017, composer n-buna and vocalist suis formed Yorushika, and in April 2019 they released their first full-length album on Polydor Records.

Tatsuya Kitani

From around 2014, Tatsuya Kitani was active as a Vocaloid producer under the name Konnichiwa Tanida-san. "Where Our Blue Is," which Kitani released as a solo artist, was chosen as the opening theme for the anime Jujutsu Kaisen's Hidden Inventory / Premature Death arc (aka. Gojo’s Past arc) and became a huge hit.

Keina Suda (balloon)

Keina Suda started out as a Vocaloid producer under the name balloon in 2013. His signature song "Charles" is also known for its many covers, both by Suda himself and by utaite.

syudou and Ado

Ado's major-label debut song "Usseewa," which came out in October 2020 and became a social phenomenon, was written, composed, and arranged by the Vocaloid producer syudou. Ado herself is not a Vocaloid producer but a vocalist who started out as an utaite.

Vocaloid Songs from the English-Speaking World

Vocaloid producers are not limited to Japan. "ECHO," an English-language song sung by GUMI that Crusher-P released on October 8, 2014, became a worldwide hit. Circus-P handled the tuning and mastering. The two also work together as the unit CIRCRUSH.

Final Thoughts

I was a teenager during Niconico's heyday, so Vocaloid culture was already familiar to me. Looking into so many things for this article, though, I was quietly struck by how much I had never known.

Human singing and Vocaloid singing tend to get compared, but there are things only a human voice can express and things only Vocaloid makes possible, and each has its own strengths, right?

Interest in Vocaloid has surged yet again, sparked by Project SEKAI, the mobile game released a few years ago.

Vocaloid is now one of Japan's signature forms of entertainment, and the community keeps putting out music you can enjoy even if you don't understand Japanese, so please feel free to give it a listen.