Miku's Popularity in the USA: Google Trends

[sketchesofpayne]

Link to Google Trends

I commonly see questions about Vocaloid/Hatsune Miku's popularity. And often I see people show a Google trends graph with a "woe unto us!" showing Vocaloid's catastrophic decline. I kept looking at it and thinking "this can't be the whole story." Then I noticed that, by default, when you are logged into Google it only allows you to go back to 2008. However, if you are not logged in it will let you go back all the way to 2004. So I put in Miku's release date of August 31st, 2007. Now the data looks more sensible. To illustrate why this data looks more accurate I overlaid key events at their points in time.

 

[Blue Of Mind]

It's interesting to note that although searches for Vocaloid on Google have declined consistently overtime, searches for Miku have remained fairly steady despite a decline in the late 2010s.

 

[sketchesofpayne]

It has been several months since I posted the previous graph. I decided to check up on the trends again. (Miku is on the rise again!)
The parameter "Hatsune Miku (Topic)" includes related searches such as variations on her name.​

 

[lIlI]

I remember when Miku English released, Crypton was clearly hoping for a second Vocaloid wave in the US, picking up the interest that was slowing down in Japan. But the concerts and Letterman feature didn't seem to change her popularity significantly, and Miku was generally perceived as too weird to be mainstream.

Well, guess it turns out that they just needed to wait for Millennial nostalgia to kick in, as former Miku fans entering their 20s and 30s look back on the songs of their youth and reminisce about technology that was cute rather than crushingly dystopian. Combine that with Gen Z's interest in an open source character, and you get a Miku Renaissance.

Not sure if it will translate to NT sales, but Miku as a franchise is much more than that now. In fact, I wonder if she isn't more of a merch line than an vocal synth at this point.

 

[frankensalad]

I agree with your idea of Miku being more of a marketed character than JUST a vocal synth, but I think her vocal synth and the creativity it inspires/assists is still very central to her popularity and marketability. Kind of like how Nintendo sells a lot of different merch of their popular characters to people who haven't played Nintendo games in years, but the newly released Nintendo games are still very important to the changing identity of the characters and manage to be popular in their own right.

 

[Mantis128]

Miku is definitely more popular than several years ago. I've seen non-Vocaloid fan mutuals on Twitter sharing content featuring her, as well as content getting astonomical amounts of shares on social media compared to back in the day.

You could probably even make the argument she's becoming "mainstream" in the context of niche "geek culture."