The Current Situation
Some Statistics
2014 -
The last Vocaloid work to past the million replay mark on Niconico Douga was uploaded.
5% -
The percentage of Vocaloid works played more than 5000 times on Niconico Douga.
The last Vocaloid work to past the million replay mark on Niconico Douga was uploaded.
The percentage of Vocaloid works played more than 5000 times on Niconico Douga.
1
Due to their strong connection with the Otaku subculture that the media has never been too fond of, misinformed reporters have scared away new potential audiences from the Vocaloid community by portraying them as shallow, appearance driven, male dominated objectification of women with no real musical, art or social value, despite clear statistics pointing to the contrary. The community has so far been silent about their mistreatment, which makes it them a perfect scapegoat. Potential new audiences shies away due to the fear of being associated with negative bias, rendering the community unable to replenish its audience pool.
2
While popular music has gained respect of scholars and the general public as reflections of society, their values and dreams, Vocaloids are Relegated to the fringe, overlooked and dismissed. This disheartens producers who poured countless hours into their work, Some reacted by resorting to the exploitation of stock elements guaranteed to grab the attention of a small niche instantly but does not resonates with millions of members of public, leading a perception of reduced of quality of new Compositions, others abandoned Vocaloid content creation altogether.
3
The drop in both quality and quantity of new compositions reduces the level of interest existing audiences held towards Vocaloids, accelerating the drain on the already shrinking audience pool.
The Galapagos syndrome consuming the Vocaloid community is caused by misinformation and a lack of authoritative voices in refuting them. Project Hashi aims providing exactly that, a scholarly, authoritative examination of the Vocaloid community, their works and the message embedded in the works by the producers. We will be conducting the world’s first popularly supported academic inquiry, which means connecting the community interested in a common topic and the academia, enabling scholars with resources from the community to conduct research on that topic.