Unpopular Opinions

[REDD]

This is touching upon kind of an older point, but I think the reason why some people might say "all western Vocaloid music sounds the same" might mainly be because they looked at the, like, 5 or so really popular people making music in the western fandom in 2016, (GHOST, Creep-P, Crusher, Circus, etc), didnt like their music, and then proceeded to write off the rest of the western scene as edgy teenagers who didnt know what they were doing. I know this because I used to have this mindset, and in hindsight it was a bit immature, (but so was I, seeing as i was still 17-19 lol)

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that it is considerably harder to be noticed now as a small artist (both musical AND visual) due to a big chunk of internet traffic being homogenized into like, 3-4 apps, and said apps are trying as absolutely hard as they can to push content that is short, provocative, and quick to make. So anything that cant be uploaded over and over again every single day to hook people to their screens is essentially getting shunned more and more by the day.

I keep seeing art/songs that i just KNOW would've gotten a LOT MORE likes, views and attention if they uploaded it 5 years ago, but said content now gets peanuts for engagement. I can't imagine how hard it must be to get feedback on your stuff if you're completely new to the fandom. The fact that you now have to REALLY go out of your way to find newer talent is definitely not helping us. Artists grow when they get feedback. When people like what they make. It's possible to grow on your own to some extent, but it pales in comparison to how much you grow when other people are invested in what you do.

Its really hard to have a community thriving with new, fresh content in this kind of environment where short form content trumps most other forms of content.

Now i know that old saying "dont do it for engagement, do it because you enjoy it", but heres the thing....

I wouldnt spend my free time doing art if i didnt enjoy it. But if i truly didnt care about other people seeing it, i simply wouldn't upload it. Nobody would. The whole POINT of uploading things to the internet is to have it be enjoyed by other people. I remember being younger and uploading my stuff to DeviantArt and having people comment on it, making connections with other people. I made friends like that. The stuff I made, made them happy. And I used to get that rush of excitement whenever i saw my friend's art appear in my inbox. it was FUN.

Making art in and of itself is fun. I'm in no way discrediting that. Im not saying "im not gonna make art anymore if i dont get engagement" (at least not anymore) But one goal of the artist, visual or otherwise, is to make an impression on other people. We want to make others happy with what we do. We want to share what we have to say with people. We want to grow.

And if we want our community to grow, we need to have some sort of way where we actually support and interact with newer talent. The fandom needs to be fun to be in again. (Which isn't to say its not fun AT ALL anymore, but it pales in comparison to how fun it was in 2012-2017)

 

[Blue Of Mind]

The centralisation of the internet to something like three or four big social media platforms, along with algorithms that favour short content, has killed off a lot of aspects of old school internet that Vocaloid initially caught the tail end of, yet still thrived on.

I should probably explain more deeply as an old lady by net standards - I pretty much joined the wider internet community when I was around eleven (in hindsight, not a good idea lol, and by joining, I mean lurking for the first couple of years - I didn't start creating accounts on websites until I was 13), which would have been around 2007. This would have been right in the middle of both the golden age of YouTube, and the twilight of the wild west period of the internet, where it felt like if you went to the right/wrong websites, you'd find some crazy stuff. Sites like DeviantART and Newgrounds thrived throughout the 2000s because the idea of fandoms and nerd culture still hadn't broke into the mainstream yet, which meant communities could be close knit but relatively isolated from mainstream eyes.

This was the situation that V2 initially thrived in - the Miku phenomenon was mainly an otaku thing, but the early community surrounding Vocaloid was not only super creative (favouring longer videos and sometimes unusual songs), but also a tight group. There were some unspoken rules that only fans could catch on to (including Western fans), but at the time it wasn't seen as gatekeeping. It didn't take long for Miku in particular to catch the attention of the Japanese mainstream, but on the whole Vocaloid was still considered an otaku/nerd interest, and in the West, liking Vocaloid was niche even by otaku standards. (Remember how many people bashed Vocaloid fans for being cringe, even by anime fandom standards?)

Nowadays, social media has broken down much of what allowed fandoms to stay low key, and it feels like every activity is out in the open for someone to see. On the other hand, it also means that it's really easy to miss something, including really good new content. Current algorithms don't favour full songs or videos anymore when it comes to vocal synths, and they also tend to favour similar genres, hence complaints about Western producers sounding the same. Ironically enough, breaking down barriers to internet participation has made it harder to get noticed, because now everyone with a desktop, smartphone or tablet can post something vocal synth-related, which ends up overwhelming a vocal synth tag in the long run.

Oddly enough, forums like this are a bit of a "last stand" against modern internet, because they favour long form, thoughtful content over 10 second videos that are easy to dismiss. Maybe it's just a sign that I'm getting too old for the current direction the internet is taking though - it's seeping through into the real world so much now that I really feel like I'm losing my anonymity. (Whooo, cyberpunk dystopia.)

 

[pico]

I'm younger than the oldheads on this forum, but I was "chronically online" at a disconcertingly young age, so I can speak for parts of the "pre-centralization" 'net from the perspective of my childhood. Wew.

I really think the value of niconico douga can't be overstated in terms of its impact on our community. The main problem with the loss of independent communities and independently operated websites really falls to algorithmically-centered content delivery that generates profit on major social platforms. I think algorithmically driven sites like Twitter and IG are horrible for fostering actual relationships and community because its features and limitations restrict it purposefully.
YouTube does some things right, but content discovery is still bad.

The fact that nicodou was and is an otaku site but most importantly makes it exceptionally easy for fanmade, 'underdog' content to circulate and become popular ( even when the rankings algorithm was kind of messed up ) has really been so valuable. There's been a big shift in recent years of people going back to uploading on nicodou and so many massive recent memes have been from nicodou. There are also streamers two-timing on both YouTube and nicodou. nicodou itself is putting in a lot of effort these days to lift up the communities it supports (vocacolle, horror festival, etc)

I don't think there being more people online is the main reason it's harder. Sorting through more content does add an extra challenge, but synth fans that actively produce original music kind of feel like they're in a minority to me. We've seen these kinds of technical problems overcome before. But it will never happen in the landscape of today's internet.

When english-speaking fans try to organize in a way more similar to nicodou, it's usually on those very centralized platforms, and are organized under a single "administrator account" that doesn't really propagate.

I am not sure what the solution is, but I do something needs to change structurally with how English-speaking fans consume their vocal synth content, whether that be the platform itself or external tools.

 

[DefiantKitsune]

I do notice that only certain types of producers seem to have luck on NND nowadays, though.
Only the ones in the currently most-popular styles or already established ones seem to be able to get views there; everyone else fares better on YT.


Unrelated, but the more time goes on, the funnier Circus-P being lumped into an "edgy" group gets lol

 

[pico]

I do notice that only certain types of producers seem to have luck on NND nowadays, though.
Only the ones in the currently most-popular styles or already established ones seem to be able to get views there; everyone else fares better on YT.


Unrelated, but the more time goes on, the funnier Circus-P being lumped into an "edgy" group gets lol

I think this might be true in terms of raw “amounts of views”, for various reasons, but I also think there’s a strong “quality vs quantity” argument to be made for participation on nicodou. Like, 1,000 views on nicodou generally entails more general interaction with your video than on YouTube (IME).

 

[mobius017]

I think this might be true in terms of raw “amounts of views”, for various reasons, but I also think there’s a strong “quality vs quantity” argument to be made for participation on nicodou. Like, 1,000 views on nicodou generally entails more general interaction with your video than on YouTube (IME).

Meaning that 1000 views on nicodou would receive more comments/likes/etc. than 1000 views you YouTube?

 

[REDD]

I know this sounds a bit ambitious, but conversations like this really make me wonder if we could potentially have our own fandom-centred content sharing platform. Honestly, call me crazy, but I think it could work. The western fandom might not be nearly as big as our Eastern Asian counterparts, but i still think we're more than big enough to the point where if the right marketing was done, an English-speaking vocal synth content platform site could be quite sustainable if run correctly.

 

[Tortoiseshel]

I know this sounds a bit ambitious, but conversations like this really make me wonder if we could potentially have our own fandom-centred content sharing platform. Honestly, call me crazy, but I think it could work. The western fandom might not be nearly as big as our Eastern Asian counterparts, but i still think we're more than big enough to the point where if the right marketing was done, an English-speaking vocal synth content platform site could be quite sustainable if run correctly.

Indeed, the only way to really solve the issue of web hyper-centralization (short of like, anti-trust legislation or something, but I don't see that happening any time soon) is to build our own platforms and try to divest from the corporate-owned ones as much as possible. It's an incredibly difficult prospect, and will only get more difficult as time goes on and the internet landscape becomes increasingly hostile to smaller, independent entities. But it is possible and, in my opinion, the most likely way forward to a more equitable, slightly-less hellish internet. And this all applies to much more than just vocal synth fandom, of course.

 

[Blue Of Mind]

Indeed, the only way to really solve the issue of web hyper-centralization (short of like, anti-trust legislation or something, but I don't see that happening any time soon) is to build our own platforms and try to divest from the corporate-owned ones as much as possible. It's an incredibly difficult prospect, and will only get more difficult as time goes on and the internet landscape becomes increasingly hostile to smaller, independent entities. But it is possible and, in my opinion, the most likely way forward to a more equitable, slightly-less hellish internet. And this all applies to much more than just vocal synth fandom, of course.

I miss the days of sites like dA being massive fandom hubs, despite their reputation of being cringe. Tumblr was something of a last stand against an increasingly centralised internet as it still embodied that 2000s fandom spirit, but the userbase quickly gained a... reputation, so to speak. And said userbase ended up collapsing once the ban on 18+ content came in. (Then all the people who originally turned Tumblr into a dumpster fire moved to Twitter, which may or may not explain the current state of VocaTwitter lol).

Fandoms definitely feel more scattered and irritable on the main platforms. There are some fandoms which seem to be in a constant state of drama, which barring tentpole nerd franchises like Star Wars (where the fans have always had a bad reputation for being argumentative as hell), never used to happen so much pre-social media. Allowing everyone to voice an opinion online has definitely made fandom discourse far more toxic compared to when I was a kid, and I came of age with sites like 4chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica lurking in the background.

 

[sketchesofpayne]

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. So far, on the internet... not yet."

"No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood."

"These people sit at their keyboards all day long just waiting for the thrill of being offended."

Fandom vs Fandumb: "The key characteristics of a Fan Dumb tend to be people with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and/or victimization, and an underdeveloped sense of humor. [...] We can also mix this with the inability to distinguish fact from opinion, and/or disagreement from hatred, that so many people on the internet seem to be suffering from these days."

 

[Katastrophe]

I know this sounds a bit ambitious, but conversations like this really make me wonder if we could potentially have our own fandom-centred content sharing platform. Honestly, call me crazy, but I think it could work. The western fandom might not be nearly as big as our Eastern Asian counterparts, but i still think we're more than big enough to the point where if the right marketing was done, an English-speaking vocal synth content platform site could be quite sustainable if run correctly.

Man, honestly that's my pipe dream website. For the longest time I've envisioned an international vocal synth content archive ala Archive of our Own where you can upload and tag your songs and have them be easily searchable to anyone on the site. The songs and song tags would be presented to the user in a straightforward reverse-chronological order by upload date by default so rookie producers can have the chance to be seen. There would be song rankings ala NicoNico, and users could even add community-translated closed captions to songs like what Youtube used to have. Basically, it would be the best parts of Youtube and Niconico combined, tailor-made specifically for the needs of the Vocaloid fandom, without any of the bullshit parts of modern social media (black-boxy recommendation algorithms and the like).

But yeah, it's very much a pipe dream website idea due to the fact that video hosting is prohibitively expensive. It's very nice to dream about though.

I do think that at some point we have to find some sort of solution of our own though, as the Vocaloid fandom as a whole lives and dies by its hosting platforms (Youtube and Niconico) and if either decline to the point of being unusable, it would be a massive blow to the entire scene.

 

[Blue Of Mind]

Man, honestly that's my pipe dream website. For the longest time I've envisioned an international vocal synth content archive ala Archive of our Own where you can upload and tag your songs and have them be easily searchable to anyone on the site. The songs and song tags would be presented to the user in a straightforward reverse-chronological order by upload date by default so rookie producers can have the chance to be seen. There would be song rankings ala NicoNico, and users could even add community-translated closed captions to songs like what Youtube used to have. Basically, it would be the best parts of Youtube and Niconico combined, tailor-made specifically for the needs of the Vocaloid fandom, without any of the bullshit parts of modern social media (black-boxy recommendation algorithms and the like).

But yeah, it's very much a pipe dream website idea due to the fact that video hosting is prohibitively expensive. It's very nice to dream about though.

VocaDB sort of does this already, but it's far more like the Vocaloid equivalent of Discogs rather than anything that encourages community discussions. (It's very handy for looking up and keeping track of what songs and albums producers have released, however!)

 

[Katastrophe]

VocaDB sort of does this already, but it's far more like the Vocaloid equivalent of Discogs rather than anything that encourages community discussions. (It's very handy for looking up and keeping track of what songs and albums producers have released, however!)

Yeah, I am aware of VocaDB and I'm glad it exists, especially when I'm trying to look up a producer's whole discography, hahaha. But unfortunately, it's up to volunteers to update the site with songs they've found, which means that rookie producers unaware of VocaDB get the short end of the stick since Youtube is a nightmare for discoverability.

(Thank god it's a bit easier to find new Ps on Niconico, though! A slight tangent but I'm extremely thankful that Niconico actually modified its infrastructure to support the Vocaloid scene, as well as hosting events such as VocaColle which actually deliberately try to bring rookies into the spotlight. Youtube would never do that for us, it's way too huge.)

What I have in mind is more of an alternative to Niconico and Youtube entirely, instead of a database describing what's on Niconico and Youtube. A video platform of our own, if you will.

 

[pico]

Meaning that 1000 views on nicodou would receive more comments/likes/etc. than 1000 views you YouTube?

Well, those features on nicodou and YouTube are not really comparable. Comments on nicodou aren't permanent and are socially very different than how YouTube's comments work, and "likes" themselves are a pretty recent feature addition that also interact differently with the website. Some people ignore them.

What I'm more trying to say is that when you get 1000 views on nicodou, it is far and away much, much more likely that those 1000 people actually have some kind of vested interest in the content you created and actually watched it just because of what kind of website it is. Small communities of vocaloid producers and their fans exist on Twitter thanks to people that discovered each other through nicodou. I have yet to ever see this kind of thing spin out from YouTube.

I'm not trying to devalue YouTube's importance either-- like, no doubt, YouTube also has immense value in sharing music with international audiences and has the capacity to push videos to numbers of viewers magnitudes upon magnitudes greater than would ever be possible on nicodou. But the culture of consuming videos on nicodou and YouTube is just different. Basically everyone on nicodou also uses YouTube, but they keep coming back to nicodou because it is different and fills a different niche. Content discovery there, is just different.

I encourage everyone to get on nicodou and become a user of the website, because I think it's fun to be part of those kinds of internet communities. You also can help small producers yourself by being on the website and interacting with their content. I promise, new stuff is so much easier to find on nicodou.

conversation about starting an independent English otaku/synth vid sharing website, etc

I know this is a tempting idea: like, "man, these existing platforms don't fit our needs, we can do it better ourselves" and spin out. But remember that dwango is a significantly sized company with real financial assets. They are owned by Kadokawa.
YouTube itself is the most popular video sharing platform in the world, but Google still doesn't make money off of YouTube. In fact, they lose money every year.
Point being, independent video sharing websites are famously, famously hard to upkeep. There are a lot of historical examples. In addition-- I don't really think it's true that our community has enough financial capital to bring something like this up from the ground, either. It always has to start coming out from someone's pocket.

Completely detaching ourselves from existing communities is unlikely to be truly helpful because allowing people completely uninvolved with vocaloid to become vocaloid fans is also something that our community depends on to survive. Continuing to publish videos on YouTube and nicodou is still important for community growth, in my opinion.

If a completely new host is something people are sincerely excited about, though, I could still get behind that because sometimes it's fun to do things and bolsters a community's positivity when we do things just for fun! There are some independent communities that have existed for a couple of years successfully that run on the decentralized PeerTube framework, such as diode zone, but honestly they're more like video repositories than anything. Still, I think an open-source, decentralized software like PeerTube would be a great thing to build on, because the heavy lifting of the video sharing software development is already done. What's left is to develop features that are specifically useful to our own community. (PeerTube with danmaku comments? PeerTube with niconico style rankings? PeerTube with a forum? etc)

I really hope we can keep brainstorming ideas like these because I really do think a website that could foster genuine, positive collaboration between small creators and large creators in this space could exist. I personally think the ideal solution is something in-between an independent video host and a vocadb-style discogs repository, but I'll have to put more thought into that myself...

 

[Blue Of Mind]

If a completely new host is something people are sincerely excited about, though, I could still get behind that because sometimes it's fun to do things and bolsters a community's positivity when we do things just for fun! There are some independent communities that have existed for a couple of years successfully that run on the decentralized PeerTube framework, such as diode zone, but honestly they're more like video repositories than anything. Still, I think an open-source, decentralized software like PeerTube would be a great thing to build on, because the heavy lifting of the video sharing software development is already done. What's left is to develop features that are specifically useful to our own community. (PeerTube with danmaku comments? PeerTube with niconico style rankings? PeerTube with a forum? etc)

Had to go look up PeerTube just now, but a vocal synth community running on a decentralised/open source platform that's already been coded would be cool! Speaking as someone who's owned a YouTube account for around 13 years now, I've experienced all sorts of problems on there, ranging from the sadly typical copyright stuff to trolls mass downvoting my videos (looong story). I don't use monetisation myself, but I've seen tons of other channels struggle to make ends meet on YT no thanks to how strict the content requirements are to even gain ads on videos. When you consider how the vocal synth community enjoys songs with darker themes, and the strong association with anime art styles, I'm surprised I haven't heard about incidents involving YT demonetising vocal synth songs for not being ad-friendly.

I'm not on Niconico, but I've heard there are also some issues with that site too (like again, copyright, and Nico in general being a bit behind YT in terms of features). Using a premade video platform separate from YT and Nico might solve some of the issues regarding copyright (especially in relation to covers) and losing income if you post a song with darker themes. A specific vocal synth platform could also add features that neither sites currently have that might be handy or relevant to a vocal synth space.

 

[Katastrophe]

I encourage everyone to get on nicodou and become a user of the website, because I think it's fun to be part of those kinds of internet communities. You also can help small producers yourself by being on the website and interacting with their content. I promise, new stuff is so much easier to find on nicodou.

Seconding this, I personally pay for a Nico premium account myself, hahaha. It sure comes in handy when VocaColle rolls around and there are many songs I want to check out. Paying for an account also supports Dwango, which I consider as a kind of "thank you" for supporting us for so long.

[issues with making our own platform]

Yeah, if this idea was to be seriously implemented it's going to require a lot of capital investment just to get it started. Let alone having it scale to the size the fandom requires. That's why I mentioned that it was kind of a pipe dream. However, there ARE issues with Youtube as Blue mentioned and even with Niconico. Like, I have a feeling there are good reasons why a lot of Ps have gone over to Youtube lately. Youtube in general just runs better compared to Niconico. The reason why I pay for Nico premium at all is to get past the "you can't have more than two video tabs in the browser without closing one and refreshing" limit which was REALLY ANNOYING as a free user who loves opening browser tabs.

Of course, I'm not saying that a platform of our own would necessarily solve these issues. But if we're just brainstorming about the possible future of the fandom, they are worth thinking about.

[Peertube suggestion]

Now that's an interesting idea. :0 I never considered using an implementation of Peertube. That's really worth looking into, maybe!

 

[AmazingStrange39]

I uploaded two videos of Miku English singing SPiCA; one uses Miku V3 English and has 381 views, the other uses Miku V4 English and has over a thousand views. Oddly enough I'm...kind of upset about this. It kind of discourages me from using V3 Miku even though I love her so much. Or maybe it's just dumb to explicitly state that a work uses Miku V3 English or else no one will listen to it...

It's a shame because Miku V3 English arguably fits SPiCA better than V4 does.

 

[pico]

I uploaded two videos of Miku English singing SPiCA; one uses Miku V3 English and has 381 views, the other uses Miku V4 English and has over a thousand views. Oddly enough I'm...kind of upset about this. It kind of discourages me from using V3 Miku even though I love her so much. Or maybe it's just dumb to explicitly state that a work uses Miku V3 English or else no one will listen to it...

It's a shame because Miku V3 English arguably fits SPiCA better than V4 does.

I wouldn't get discouraged because there are a lot of things that can affect videos receiving views beyond the title. YouTube doesn't always act "logically" and neither do viewers always make decisions for the reasons we expect.
The bottom line is-- make what you like!

 

[lIlI]

The most commonly cited reason for SynthV's lack of mainstream success is their lack mascot characters, but I think that's the least of their worries.

When recommending SynthV to someone, it requires so many caveats.

The first result on Google? That's the wrong version, don't download it. The manual? It's outdated, reading it will mislead you. By the way, the quality of most voicebanks was severely reduced in the latest update, use this installer instead, it's on Twitter somewhere I think. Remember not to update until several months after one is pushed, or your program will become unusable due to crashes. Don't worry that they send expensive products through Google Drive, I promise the companies are legitimate and you can trust them! Except for this one and this one and this one. You want to get the best deal? You'll need to go to a hentai website (which has NSFW enabled by default, and signs you up for some very to-the-point marketing emails). Are you interested in this really high quality voicebank? Unfortunately it's almost impossible to buy outside of China. But if you want a rock voice, a really deep voice, anything husky, super powerful, rougher, or specialised for a major genre: well, that's not available yet either. Although they've quadrupled their selection in the past year, the vast majority new options have used the same singing style, in a similar range, and presented no meaningful expansion to what SynthV could do.

SynthV has plenty of cute anime characters in its lineup, and it's still making more; but they never run ad campaigns, and have yet to address major issues with their general accessibility and communication. A great product will be overtaken by something half as good if the company isn't organised, reliable, and easy to purchase from.

Every engine has its advantages and disadvantages. The passion behind SynthV seems to be one for technical innovation, which has led to incredible achievements, alongside significant weaknesses.

Critique aside, recent developments suggest Dreamtonics is beginning to recognise their blind spots. The addition of third party voicebanks on the store, a new beta testing system, and tutorial videos, all show movement in the right direction. But I believe they need a major overhaul, and I really hope they make it their focus.

 

[___]

Genuinely been thinking about this.

At the risk of sounding doomsday-ish and maybe jumping to conclusion too soon, I have to wonder whether it's failed to prove itself when it actually mattered. It came into the scene when Vocaloid alternatives were in demand but said scene has yet not settled, like it has now.

I'd say it's 3rd party vb development has proven itself to be borderline unsustainable in the few years SVS had been around, like you said, the passion behind SVS is one for technical innovation, but in it's execution, it's also been detrimental to it's overall health.

In it's lifespan, it's introduced features requiring specialized data for quality and/or intended output, meaning that it doesn't matter if you invested a lot into making the highest quality vb now, in year's time, it has high chance of being dated due to it simply not having been developed with the specialized data on mind.

Anri is a more specialized vocal that's focused on consistency, had she been developed with vocal modes on mind, they might've been more diverse, the quality of pre-vocal modes vbs has generally dropped once they received vocal modes too, Stardust was pretty much just lucky in her timing to have been developed with crosslingual on mind, or else her vp's trilingualism would have not been taken advantage of, vbs developed with HDVM on mind should be fine going forward, however the nature of pre-HDVM vbs is forever changed ( if you want to stay up to date ), Solaria has drifted further away from her intended voicetype.

Obviously, this could be argued for other engines too to some degree ( like the emotion slider for Cevio AI ), however, the imbalance between SVS vbs is the greatest of any engine by a long shot, the older your vb is, the shorter end of the stick you're getting, and we're talking about vbs year or two apart.

There's always uncertainty, it carries itself, like DT's personal experimental pet project, rather than commercial product, that takes longevity into account too.

I feel like it gets downplayed a lot, but in the few years SVS' been around, they've just gradually painted themselves as more and more unattractive to develop for imo.