Vocaloid Popularity:
An Investigation
DATA COLLECTION
SURVEY
Primary Qualitative & Quantitative Data – Survey responses (Pham, Vocaloid Popularity - a Survey, 2017):
Answers to the following questions were gathered using a survey (published on April 3rd, 2017 on multiple Vocaloid discussing groups and forums) at https://goo.gl/forms/kt3MfKDWBPVl81Pe2:
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Which part of the world are you in?
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When did you first know of Vocaloid?
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Do you think the popularity of Vocaloid as a culture have decreased?
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If yes, why?
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When was the last time you found a good Vocaloid song that you liked?
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Do you have any other opinion on this topic that might be helpful for the research?
Responses were finalized on May 11th, 2017 with 252 records.
GOOGLE TRENDS
Primary Quantitative Data – Google Trends statistics (Pham, Google Trends, 2017):
Web search data (from August 31, 2007 to May 8th, 2017) and YouTube search data (from January 1st, 2008 to May 8th, 2017) recording worldwide interest over time, measured from 0 to 100 with 0 as less than 1% of peak interest and 100 as peak interest. This data was gathered using Google Trends for the search terms:
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Vocaloid
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ボーカロイド (Romaji: Vocaloid)
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Kagamine
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鏡音 (Romaji: Kagamine)
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Kagamine Len
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鏡音レン(Romaji: Kagamine Len)
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Kagamine Rin
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鏡音リン (Romaji: Kagamine Rin)
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Megurine Luka
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巡音ルカ (Romaji: Megurine Luka)
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Hatsune Miku
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初音ミク (Romaji: Hatsune Miku)
The search terms are English and Japanese equivalents of 6 common search terms relating to the topic. These were picked because of their popularity and how they generally represent the most popular Vocaloid terms as a whole. Screenshots of the data sets collected are provided below:
Figure 1. Screenshot of the first 24 entries in the Google Trends Web search data
Figure 2. Screenshot of the first 24 entries in the Google Trends YouTube search data
GRAPHS - FRITZ
Secondary Quantitative Data – Graphs (Fritz, 統計グラフ集, 2017):
Fritz is a person with great enthusiasm on Vocaloid songs and runs a web magazine, VOCALOID ORIGINAL at http://vocaloid.webcrow.jp/ that deals with information and statistics on original Vocaloid songs. The following graphs were gathered from the above site and has been translated from Japanese into English for convenience of research and interpretation.
Figure 3. Number of new Original VOCALOID songs posted to NicoNico weekly (Fritz, ↓ 週間投稿数 約１年間（５１週）、約半年間（２７週）、５週間の移動平均、１年前の５週平均, 2017)
Figure 4. Number of new Original VOCALOID songs posted to NicoNico monthly by Vocaloid voicebanks (Fritz, 投稿比較, 2017)
Figure 5. Weekly VOCALOID and UTAU song statistics (Fritz, 週刊VOCALOIDとUTAUランキングと, 2017)
VALIDATION
Electronic check:
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Survey: The survey was designed with electronic validation, requiring answers in questions necessary for the study (Existence check). Spell check was utilized when manipulating the data.
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Google Trends data: A range check for the data was implemented, checking the data for value between 0 – 100.
Figure 6. Examples of electronic validation in the survey
Figure 7. Example of the electronic validation in the Google Trends data
Manual check:
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The spelling and translation quality of the VOCALOID ORIGINAL graphs have been manually checked to ensure technical accuracy.
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Duplicated records or past records sent from the same participant with a new updated responses has been manually removed to avoid affecting the results
Data Integrity