What the heck is Luka doing up there?! She's not that popular, is she? And above GUMI? Something seems wrong with these readings...
You're right to be a little confused! I'll quote what I said in the
SynthV Discussion thread about VocaDB statistics, as it still applies:
Caveats:
- VocaDB relies not just on a vocal synth's popularity among producers, but the popularity of a vocal synth among VocaDB editors. As such it cannot be considered a perfect correlation to the overall popularity of any vocal synth.
- Being a primarily English site, it's biased in favour of vocal synths with strong English-speaking fandoms. Obvious examples are the inflation of Megurine Luka's popularity, and Luo Tianyi being critically under-documented.
- A single productive editor can boost the number of entries for a particular vocal synth.
I am fairly certain that Megurine Luka is overrepresented on VocaDB, because her ranking does not correlate with any of the recent Vocacolle rankings, where she isn't even in the top 15. It's unlikely that Luka users are simply abstaining from Vocacolle
en masse: so what this probably indicates is that Luka is more popular with English speakers (VocaDB users) than with Japanese producers. This means Luka songs have a higher likelihood of being documented on VocaDB. On the opposite end of the spectrum, vocal synths like Nurse Robo, Zundamon, and Chis-A are very popular with Japanese producers, but little known among English fans. This causes their songs to be less well documented on VocaDB, resulting in a VocaDB ranking that is out of sync with the number of songs created using them. It's important to remember that every VocaDB entry is added manually, by a fan or power user.
If I were simply dedicated, I could spend the next year adding Chinese VSinger songs to VocaDB, and move the majority of them up significantly in the rankings. Luo Tianyi has performed in the literal Olympics, and theoretically has a song count that might rival Miku's (if her commercial presence in China is any indication). Who knows where she would rank with accurate documentation.