Today, I will tell you about the newest trend in pop culture in techonology. Music and PC technology have been connecting each other since the 1980’s. Nowadays, a completely virtual cyber pop idol has been popular for a couple of years. Her name is Hatsune Miku. She reached number 1 on the Japanese Hit Chart and she toured the North America as an opening act of Lady Gaga this summer. Hatsune Miku’s voice is made of the software called Vocaloid. By using this software, everybody can let her sing in any melody and in any language. At the beginning, ordinary people started posting their works with Miku on nico nico douga (a Japanese Youtube-like site) or Youtube. And then, major labels began to be interested in this movement happening on the internet. Miku held concerts in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Los Angeles. I watched these concerts on Youtube. She appeared as a hologram on the stage with humans’ live bands. Audiences seemed very excited to see a ‘real’ Miku. These kind of virtual pop idols are called 2D idols in contrast with 3D real human pop idols. This Vocaloid technology is also useful to give more realistic voices to people who lost their voice for some reason.
