Her strong association with VOCALOID has lead to the view she must be included in all things related to VOCALOID. This view itself has led to criticism. For example, critics at the VOCALOID:AI performance made notes towards and against Hatsune Miku. For a brief moment she appeared on screen during explanation on the technology. The criticism was related to the fact she had nothing to do with the VOCALOID technology demo. This was a performance was in regards to a beloved real-life singer, Hibari Misora, and that Miku was a fictitious singer fans did not come to see and did not like. The general criticism was fans were there for Hibari Misora's render of voice and image. Miku's inclusion felt out of place and included for the sake of inclusion because VOCALOID was mentioned. [65] Sound Horizon, a popular band that uses music to tell stories, used Hatsune Miku in their third single "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido" and its corresponding album, "Marchen". Saki Fujita, Miku's voice actor, also does narrations. Hatsune Miku (初音ミク), codenamed CV01, was the first Japanese VOCALOID to be both developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media, Inc.. She was initially released in August 2007 for the VOCALOID2 engine and was the first member of the Character Vocal Series. She was the seventh VOCALOID overall, as well as the second VOCALOID2 vocal released to be released for the engine. Her voice is provided by the Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita (藤田咲, Fujita Saki). [2] [3] Hatsune Miku - English The English version of the Hatsune Miku vocal was also planned for Miku's original V2 vocal, though that project became Megurine Luka instead. Despite the fact this is the English version, it does not always match the tone of the "Original" voicebank. Results have varied per release due to improvements between versions with consequential versions being very different in tone and pronunciation.

Despite her popularity as a Vocaloid, both Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid itself were both reportedly struggling to make an impact on the west by December 2015. Though SEGA had imported games like Project Diva X into the west, the target audience was still considered a "niche audience". [63] https://web.archive.org/web/20121114235741/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/virtual-star-to-be-unleashed-on-us-2291713.html (archive) https://www.tokyohive.com/article/2010/11/the-gazettes-aoi-stirs-up-debate-about-vocaloid-artists-through-controversial-tweets/There have since been numerous installments, such as additional voice libraries dubbed ' Append', as well as an upgrade for the VOCALOID3 engine, which contained an English vocal release. She received a VOCALOID4 update to her Japanese and English voicebanks in August 2016, as well as a Mandarin Chinese voicebank in September 2017. Hatsune Miku's popularity had a major impact on the development of other Crypton Future Media voicebanks. Due to the huge market for her voicebank and character image, Crypton have sometimes been overwhelmed by demand. This caused delays to other VOCALOID2 projects, including the release of an additional character, CV04. How much impact her popularity has had on other VOCALOID™ voicebanks is unknown, but Crypton Future Media has many delayed voicebanks that were originally set for a VOCALOID2 release.

It was stated in 2013, that videos tagged with Miku's name reached between 1,000 and 1,500 videos each month. This was by far the most videos of any Vocaloid on Nico nico Douga. [62] While she was the first VOCALOID2 to be released for the Japanese market, it was PowerFX's Sweet ANN who claimed the place as the first VOCALOID2, released 2 months prior to Miku. Crypton had the idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." [7] [8] Etymology http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/07/22/video-hatsune-miku-sings-theme-song-for-a-japanese-national-election-candidate Before Miku was released, VOCALOID™ was not much more than an obscure program. Nico Nico Douga played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software today. Soon after its release, users of Nico Nico Douga started posting videos with songs created using the software. According to Crypton, a popular video with a comically-altered Miku holding a spring/Welsh onion, singing Ievan Polkka, presented multifarious possibilities of using the software in multimedia content creation. Miku gained her first 1,000,000+ song on 15th October 2007 with the song みくみくにしてあげる♪ (Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru♪), in addition it also became the first Vocaloid song to reach 1,000,000 views. It achieved 1,000,000+ views in less than 26 days. [60]

Special Round Base

With a total of 15 voicebanks released, Miku has the second highest number of vocals developed for the VOCALOID™ engine, first being GUMI. Hatsune Miku - Dark Designed to be a darker tone version of the "Original" vocal, this vocal is a voice acted result and designed to act very different from the "Original" vocal. This vocal is designed to make Miku sound moodier and is meant for more expressive songs. She was also not the first to feature in a concert; MIRIAM was the first, in 2004. However, Miku was the first to actually be featured "live" in the concert whereas MIRIAM's concert featured just her vocal. Corolla Miku, presented in 2011, wears slightly different attire compared to KEI's original design: instead of one skirt stripe and single floating ribbons, she now has two, as was intended by the client.