I remember when i was 12 years old, growing up low income and on food stamps, being obsessed with Vocaloid and the idea of being part of it. For ten years my cracked copy of V4, Gackpoid V4, Kaito V3, Yohioloid and Maika have followed me, as I used to be hardcore into learning music and how to cover songs before mental health got in the way. Now 10 years later, I'm unemployed and in a new place, with a new computer, and finally decided to give Vocaloid a try again as I've ALWAYS wanted to be a producer. I just cannot afford to drop like a thousand dollars on something like that at the moment, but i trust it'll come with time. I never understood people that were anti piracy, and for so long i felt guilty for being lower class and "robbing" others thru piracy but now i realise i shouldnt feel bad. Like sure i could spend hundreds on securing a physically copy of Piko and Big Al, but i would rather eat and keep my lights on. Someday when i can profit off my music I'll buy them. But for now im so happy to just hear my silly little robots sing in my computer again. For some of us, piracy is the only way, and im glad to see the scene shift towards piracy appreciation rather than hate.
A lot of people forget a lot of people into vocaloid are minors and literally cannot buy a voicebank because they don't have a bank account and their parents won't buy them something so expensive that sounds stupid. Thats a reason i pirated for a while. And there's also just the fact a lot of people just want to play with vocal synths for fun as a hobby, and not to produce music for real. Ive never pirated a vocaloid cus since i got into it there are accessible freewares like synthV making piracy seem unnecessary but if someone did pirate a vocaloid i wouldn't blame them
yeah i pirated *a lot* of vbs, i do have a bank account but what i get isn't nearly enough to buy even the editor. i hate vocaloid4 though so i'm probably not going to use them that much.
@@another-niko-pfp-holder lol agter i commented this i downloaded pirated vocalaloid and i also hate it, I'll just keep using utau and synthV instead loll
i also pirated the vocaloids/voicebanks because i just wanna try it out, make sure i like it personally, my parents would probably let me buy it when they can, they like it. but im pirating it because i want to make sure it sounds good to me
real, If I do have a bank account managed by my parents, but if I asked them if I can buy vocaloid software/voicebanks they would be like “What the fck is a vocaloid and why is it so expensive?”
Also: Some voicebanks like SeeU have no digital copies and have to be bought physically, so piracy is one of the only ways, if the only way, to get them.
I really love vocaloid, but I truly don't have the money for the software AND the voicebanks. If I had the money, I would buy legal copies, but for now i can't
Side note, if someone's argument against pirating Vocaloid is "just use UTAU" that's how I know that they have never used UTAU in their lives. I love UTAU, prefer it vastly over using my copy of Vocaloid 4, but it is not an argument against piracy to just tell someone "UTAU's right there, use that." UTAU has a different enough workflow and setup that while it is my favorite editor, I'm not going to recommend it to someone who just really loves Vocaloid. Also thank you for making the point that it was Yamaha's greed and laziness that got them in this position, not some 13 year old in Eastern Europe or South America with pirated Maika. People in the piracy discourse seem to forget about WHY companies left Vocaloid in favor of other editors or left the industry entirely.
@@dezzydream I find tuning in UTAU pretty easy tbh, control points are really nice to work with, but I get that it's incredibly different from most commercial synths
Oh, definitely. It's like telling someone who likes Coke that they're gonna love Pepsi. They both have similar aspects, but are distinct enough to have different audiences. The engines are different (and in terms of UTAU, there are a whole bunch of different engines within the single software), the attitude towards commercial use is different, and the quality control is very different. It'd be better to recommend Synthesizer V, but even SynthV doesn't have Miku.
I've both pirated and bought Vocaloids before. My motives for piracy were 1) I had bought the Vocaloid without realizing the editor was sold separately (which ties into your segment about the buying process being annoying and shitty), 2) the voicebank was no longer available (Vocaloid 1) and 3) I wanted to see what the product was like, but had no intention of buying the product from the start.
I bought Daina and Nekomura Iroha legally but one day my motherboard died. I contacted Yamaha to redownload them and basically they told me I'm SOL. Cool, thanks Yamaha
I pirated vocaloidv5 because it was such an expensive confusing mess. Then I found out it was just too much of a pain and bought synthv and even preordered eleanor AI later. Browsing the vocaloid website felt like Yamaha was giving me the middle finger the whole time.
I think the biggest reason for piracy is just how inaccesible some of the older versions are... a lot of vocal updates remove charm/features that people like and then you're left with an update you don't want and a previous version that's impossible to find anywhere... (just look at V4 scalping lol) Like, personally I would buy KAITO V1 and VY2 V2 legally in a HEARTBEAT if I could get them as downloads due to my country's import taxes, but they simply don't exist as download versions. In that sense, I think old vocaloids are almost like ROM hacks. Sure, I can pay huge import fees, shipping, etc. to get VY2 V2 shipped to my house so I can legally say I own him, but the company isn't even profiting off of it anymore. Who would benefit from that except for the reseller?
Ah, and about Synthesizer V Studio. There's simply NO need to pirate! Like... only the R1 Editor and the Quadimension R1 girls get pirated because only Chiyu has a lite version and the R1 Editor is not sold anymore. To put it simply, Dreamtonics has put itself in a position where even if Studio has top-notch security, it is not needed because NO ONE wants to pirate it!
The technical failures and overall substandard quality v4x had on luka completely has fucked her up in terms of usage by the community, like, there are so few new songs for her after 2014 or so and as she's my favourite vocaloid it's so sad to see. Ugh I wish vocaloid post V3 had any redeeming qualities outside of how miku, rin and len sounded. As for piracy though: yeah I had a couple pirated vocaloids once or twice just to play around only to realise i don't like sound design or making music, which thank fuck, there's now still hundreds more pounds in my pocket and I got to see behind the curtain of vocaloid. I shouldn't have to invest such a huge amount of money on something that I'm not sure I would like. Instead I found I resonated more with the lighting, pyrotechnics and the projections at the concerts and found it infinitely more interesting cuz I have worked with the software they use to make light shows. For me this is like pirating Adobe Premiere/Sony Vegas etc - if I were not working class and entirely independent financially maybe I wouldn't see the cost of it as a problem, but I want to make content, and pirating it is the only accessible way me and millions of people have in doing that. I don't deserve to just suffer with movie maker because I happen to just grow up poor when there are alternative solutions to having the software. This is why I'm not surprised when i see that these rich kids do well artistically: this expensive shit was always within financial ease of their budget, on top of anything else you'd want creatively like studio lights, green screens, mic setups, top end pc specs and so on. Like, Billie Ellish wasn't exactly busking on the street and happened to be passed by an agent for a record label, she had that access to the industry from the start. It's not the only factor, sure, but I feel more pressure to do well at it if I invest in it compared to someone with a bit more financial freedom.
Thank you for making a video with a nuanced take on this topic, it always bugged me how there was a double standard online about how pirating, for example, Adobe and Nintendo products is seen as acceptable but pirating Vocaloid is the worst sin known to man. (Seriously, I've seen Twitter callouts where people treat Vocaloid piracy as a greater transgression than literal sexual harassment.) I think like you said piracy isn't a black and white issue where it's either always okay or never okay, and instead of immediately villifying people who pirate we need to ask "why is piracy of this particular product so pervasive and what did the distributor do to make it that way"
I'm new to using vocal synthesizers I've always wanted to try vocaloid but there are 2 things stopping me 1. The downloads are so confusing 2. IT'S SO EXPENSIVE Like it's 225 for the program it's self and the lowest I see voice banks are like 60 dollars, and this is in USD for example. I'm Canadian so to get vocaloid and the cheapest easy to find voice bank I would need to spend 390.88, which is insane. Synth v although limited is so much nicer, not only do they have a free trial without a timelimit and a lot of free lite voices but it's 89$ and comes with a free voice SO MUCH BETTER
my friend bought me miku v4x and let me tell you, its DEFINITELY very fucking confusing to install her. and at first, she didnt even want to make any noise or sound until randomly she started working and now she's been working since september
21:05 lol I remember when Yamaha changed their website and literally removed my account or atleast access to it so I couldn't even upgrade to v5 from my physical copy of v4 that was tied to that account. scummy corporate shenanigans.
4:41 keeping up with serials and registrations is REALLY messy (especially v2) personally despite owning legal things 90% of the time i end up using cracked copies because every time i use a new computer i'd have to spend time re-registering everything
Yeah, plus when you take into account that Vocaloid can only ever be used on one computer it makes sense why someone would pirate. Like it's kinda weird considering some DAWs can be used in multiple computers. But Vocaloid is so strict that I fear for the day my computer gets wiped.
Incredible video!!! I 100% agree with everything you said here, you've made every point I've been having for years about the Vocaloid community. I have to say you're incredibly brave to make a video like this in the first place. If anyone else made a video like this, I think they'd be all but cancelled by the community, so you're bravery to say this is so admirable!!! :D The idea of "Just use Utau" as an excuse to not pirate Vocaloid is a ridiculous one, and I'm so glad you mention that kind of excuse in the video.
4:41 this is literally my situation. i own a legal copy of miku v4x, but i choose to use a cracked copy because i don't have the actual vocaloid editor and piapro studio is a pain in the ass to use compared to a cracked copy of v4. regarding the "lost sale" thing, i would love to have legal copies of all the cracked vocaloids i have. unfortunately, i do not have the funds to acquire them legally, but if i did you bet i'd be purchasing them right now.
I personally remember from the earlier days of the voca synth community the stigma surrounding pocaloid, I never ended up pirating any vocal synths and just settled with the idea of only using free voca software became I'm not willing to spend so much to play with singing robots
And oh, that's when I was a young girl and I could literally not buy or have my parents buy the software for me. As a working woman now, I still choose to not buy it because I'd rather spend my money else where
Ppl who flex with the amount of legaly purchased vocaloids they have are so full of themselves tbh I used to pirate vocaloid from time to time as a kid when I first found out about it. Can't imagine me, a 13 y.o. kid with no music talent, coming to my parents and asking for 200+ dollars for a software I barely used for making godawful covers. Once in a blue moon I come back to it just to see if a certain vocaloid would fit my cover and delete it after about ten minutes of use lmao I ain't buying all that
For me pirating is a necessity, since i live in a third world country things are 10x more expensive for me compared to those in the first world. Sadly, for many of us that's the only way to experience many software in general.
i'm a longtime vocasynth veteran (started years and years ago on an old account), and i'm extremely surprised to see someone talking about this in 2021. it's really relieving that the community isn't just filled entirely with elitists anymore, and has branched out to people who actually know what they're talking about from either side. great work!
Looking forward to this. UPDATE: Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Admittedly, I have basically no experience in this side of the community, so I can't really say anything about whether or not what you're saying is correct beyond how it applies to other things I do understand so... Having Run Lads Run in the background while going over everything VOCALOID did wrong was nice.
23:38 yeah, i know, I AM BRAZILIAN. And thats why i believe pirating vocaloid is acceptable, in third world countries, even for privileged people, is realy hard to get legal vocaloids. And also, the currency sometimes has low value and paying in dollar is sooooooo fucking expensive ( 1 dollar in brazil currency (Real) values 5.30 reais today, but the minimum wage is 1,212 reais) making literally an abnormally expensive and anti-consumer value
I'm at that point in life where I can't be assed to be angry at some teen downloading Miku to sing Despacito or Tomato Town or whatever popular song. I'd love a day where most voice synth banks can get to the 25-50$ mark (barring UTAU, which, to be honest, desperately needs a Windows update), but I'm doubting we'll get to that point until we get Universal Basic Income and can invest in non-essentials.
@@15_heidune72 it wasn't developed by the creator of UTAU, so technically no. That said, I'm grateful for its existence, despite its bugginess at the moment
I'm a minor, I don't have the money to even get the software let alone the voicebanks expecially because v4x miku as an example is 617 ron for me as i live in Romania, not only that i don't have a stable job as i do commisions and i bareley make any money off of it (most i did was 61 ron or 11 british pounds) but even if i made the money for it my parents wouldn't even allow me use my money to buy a virtual voice, yet even with that in mind im afraid to post anything vocaloid related (only songs, i posted short vids tho) because im afraid people will harrass me after they realize that i pirated both the software and the vocaloids i use
I feel ya. I got literally harassed for pirating Vocaloid even though I don't even produce music and am hard of hearing. No Yamaha didn't lose money because some rando wanted to see how their Vocaloid software works.
I think a lot of people also pirate vocaloid because of the price to get the editor AND the expense of buying the voicepack on top of that. I checked recently to get vocaloid 5 it's currently 225$ in US currency. If you want other voicepacks besides the default ones for Gummi (megapoid) it's literally another 202 bucks just to get her.... This makes a grand total of at least over 500 dollars which a lot of people don't have to throw around. Not that is still not an excuse to pirate but I get it.
I didn't expect piko to be brought up so much in here, but sang, I ended up sobbing when you mentioned how Sony didn't really advertise him. Piko is my most favorite vocaloid, and his entire discontinuation was very painful to me, I was saving to buy him but couldn't do it in time, (but I also keep thinking if I had bought him circus would have never got him and we wouldn't even have my own, so I'm at least glad that last copy went to someone who could do him justice) I'm currently using piko and rana vbs that belong to my friend. I am saving up money to buy Rana, and once I own her I'm gonna stop using that piko VB and just get renders from friends of vocaloids I don't own. I really do wanna become a producer but I won't do it until I actually own a vocaloid myself, and General Nuisance made a really good point. Utau is VERY different from vocaloid. Ya can't just tell people Utau is right there. Every synth is different and has it's own unique layout. Even Deepvocal that has a very similar layout to vocaloid has some significant differences. I really love vocal synths in general, and if I had to pick one to say is my least favorite to use it'd be Utau. Utau to me is very tedious, it can sound SUPER GOOD but I am lazy and like simpler editors. The most fun I've had working in so far are deeovocal and synthv. Deepvocal is free and bro when I found out synthv had a free version I nearly cried because I wanted rikka so bad (don't like her as much as Eleanor or Maki now vshkvvsjvjs) But from my perspective vocaloid seemingly has more fans, which could be do to the fact that Miku has introduced them to vocaloid and Miku is undeniably popular. Then there is the fact that a lot of us get very attached to certain characters, whether it be because of an emotional connection or just a straight up adoration. We love these characters, and to us, they are way more than just synthesized voices. As silly as it sounds, they've become like friends and family to us. And when someone is that attached to someone they will do anything they can to be with that person, so when they find out they can pirate their favorite, they most likely will. Now where I stand, I think piracy is only viable if 1. You want to seriously spend time with software and see if this is actually a hobby you wanna pick up before purchasing a VB that costs a crap ton of money 2. You only wanna meme and have no intention of taking this seriously 3. And this really goes along with 1 and 2, but you're not making money on what you create. Thank you for coming to my Kasane Ted talk
23:48 and as a person who is not that fortunate, you just spoke facts their. Not everyone is capable of getting these products legally because they aren't as privileged
From what I've seen; trying to pirate synth-v (editor or voices) has been an absolute bastard. A vocaloid is cracked within a few days but synth v? Fuck all. If you give people a lite demo, that's usually enough for the type of people who'ld pirate a voice synth. The type of person who downloads a voice for just one test cover and never again isn't going to drop $100 on it - that's just how it is.
As someone using synth V and tried to pirate it: it's mostly a matter of genuine enjoyment of the basic version that I find myself willing to support paying the reasonable price for the pro version. It's the extra on voice banks that kills me, especially for cross lingual. The process of pirating it requires like three different tools that, if you're lucky they work out of the box on windows. As a Linux user: synth v just working on my distro is one of the best things they could've done, and I have no need to break that for extra features when upgrading isn't that much work. Cracks exist, but do you really want to do all that extra work to validate your voice bank every single time you open the software? I'm as anti drm as they come but this is called good competition from my perspective.
Yeah some people live paycheck to paycheck, i can't expect everyone to be rich enough to throw money at something like vocaloid. The people that seriously expect that from everyone (even those that don't even know how to use that software or produce music in general) are severly priviledged and out of touch with the reality of the reasons why people pirate software in general. I don't produce music but I'm an artist. I use pirated art programs, and I would have never improved to the point i am right now if I didn't pirate. I bet that a good amount of Vocaloid producers started out with a pirated software and then moved onto buying it if they either saw enough success with their work and started profiting off of it. With Nintendo for example, pirates are the reason why their games gets archived. Some countries (such as Russia where I am ethnically from) have a whole culture around piracy because there's just no other way to experience media and software. The people that think all of piracy is evil clearly have no idea about how other people live are and how other people spend their money. There's a thing called ethical piracy. It's like a majority of people pretend it doesn't exist.
19:55 Doesn’t Sachiko and Nemu suffer the same problem as Fukase , a shitty license (or at least from what I heard)? Sachiko being from Kobayashi sachiko and Nemu from Yumemi Nemu, kinda explains why they have barely any originals
It's not shitty. It's protecting the artists voices and jobs. The restrictive licence allows people to do things without stealing job from the real voicers.
Bold of them to assume vocalsynths can emulate the exact same results and contribute to the same markets as professional singers and voice actors and to assume that the license doesn’t harm sales by negating the core purpose of the product. It’s shitty.
@@huhuhuhurricanestreamwow7937 if they wanted to "pRoTeCt tHeiR vOicEs" then they shouldn't have voiced a vocal synth. The whole point of the voice synth is that you can purchase and use the voice however you wish, including commercially. That's like eating a chili pepper and then complaining that it's spicy. Like, that's the point of the chili pepper. The licenses make the product pointless. They're shitty.
Agree with you Joe but the Piapro Voicebanks Miku V4X KAITO V3 etc, coming with piapro studio and studio one is a good thing as crypton said in a video interview about miku V3, that they did it for people who don't have the separate vocaloid editor.
@@sashikun34 Well in my case it's good because I got Miku english bundle from an ebay auction and as it come's with Presonus Studio One and Piapro Studio but I use vocaloid6 editor mainly because of a better UI.
Hilariously enough, I bought VY2v3 a week before they released the V5 version, because I was *not* on board with them getting rid of the falsetto VB, and the 'reworking' of the recordings that made exactly zero difference. So, in the end, you basically lost his falsetto bank, and got the same thing for MOAARRR MUNNY. I'll still buy VY2 AI if it comes to it. Because I love his voice 💙
I pirated vocaloid and use it twice in my life. After it I deleted it. Thanks for pirates that I have an opportunity try it free and understand that I don't wanna work in that programm. BTW I don't have so much money for editor and VB's. I love how Dreamtonics made two versions of synthV editor. I can buy only VB and use it right now. I don't need a time buy editor in a future.
Well said! While I personally would have added a few more bits I think everything you said is pretty clear. Even though it’s not going to up and disappear one day, it is important to acknowledge the motives towards why someone might pirate. I might not like seeing it but that doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge the benefits that it does bring like Archival and being able to try some banks before ya buy. I don’t think it should be the first option but in some cases it’s unavoidable. There is one thing that not a lot of users seem to know and that’s that if you contact support about having all your activations used up, there’s a chance they can remotely deactivate it for you, but in the event that they can’t for some reason, piracy is a last resort. I imagine if I lose all my Piko activations one day, I’ll likely have to pirate. Also before the crazed elitists come in saying Vocaloid is dying because of piracy: Vocaloid sales are doing fine, it’s not dying, the lack of new voicebanks has pretty much nothing to do with piracy and is more so the fault of Yamaha themselves making development more expensive.
I pirated an old free version of vsynth studio and Eleanor Forte because it would be stupid to drop $80 on something before even knowing how it works, now that I do understand it and am satisfied with the quality I'm gonna buy it. That's at least $80 in sales they'd wouldn't have had otherwise.
I'm new to this entire vsynth community and I really appreciate the work you made to shed light on what is happening in the entire vsynth industry! I learned so much from your videos, I hope the vsynth ecosystem continues to grow because I really like the entire concept of vsynth
And about the last point. I have ALWAYS descarga'd VOCALOIDs. I only planned on buying MEIKO V3, and maybe V5 if I saved up. But Synthesizer V came, and changed my whole view. Hell, I own Saki+AI and I plan on buying Eleanor Forte AI with Studio Pro, because it's just better!
vocaloid is overpriced. yamaha treats it like dogshit. a lot of banks are discontinued. you literally cant get past versions legally anymore and v6 is confusing. I think it's okay
I’m confused. Around 4 or so years ago when I was most involved in the community, most people were anti-piracy. When did this positive attitude towards piracy start becoming more popular? Im not disappointed about this shift, im more baffled than anything.
That’s ultimately a loaded question that can lend itself to a variety of factors! But the picture that’s ultimately painted of why this shift has occurred is that the vsynth industry is in a new era of competition and financial security that piracy is less of a prominent issue, and the presence of competition has made the community more critical of the products they consume, in other words, the market is dynamically reacting to the current status of the industry and the community is no longer as reliant (read: fanboyish) toward YAMAHA as it was before. If I had to spitball some potential answers here and now, it’d probably be the following: - Immense decrease in fan anxiety about the potential downfall of the vsynth industry, other vsynth competitors have made themselves known, so there’s less of a need to be overprotective of VOCALOID specifically as there are alternate engines to fall back on like SynthV, CeVIO and Piapro NT, even UTAU has a chance of being a worthy competitor as it’s currently entering a new technical era with OpenUTAU, and thus, there’s less of a worry that the vsynth market is fragile or easily harmed. - Decreased goodwill toward YAMAHA and VOCALOID due to product and service grievances, such as the reception of the VOCALOID5 editor and the growing scrutiny of VOCALOID4/5 era voicebanks. - Merely speculation on my part, but a possibility that members of the community who were externally “anti-piracy” were in reality being performative and were either ambivalent to or secretly engaged in it in private, previous eras of the VOCALOID community were infamous for staging all out harassment campaigns as soon as anyone mentioned the usage of pirated VOCALOID products. - Generally increased tolerance over the utility of pirated VOCALOID goods, the VOCALOID engine has been ongoing for decades, leading to many editors and vocalists being discontinued, with piracy being their main source of archival, combine that with the main demographic of pirated VOCALOID goods being mostly hobbyists making works for free, and we’ve just learned over time that when taking context into account, software piracy is kind of No Harm, No Foul. You still find members of the “Anti Piracy” front, but some bundle their view with the asterisk of “But it’s a necessary evil that will never go away”.
@@joezcafe I was kind of anti-piracy back when I was more active in the community, but I was like 13/14 and not very smart lol. Even though I was vaguely anti-piracy back then, some people took it WAY too far. I didn’t agree with pirating vocaloid, but I didn’t like when people got so ANGRY about it.
I actually had to pirate Vocaloid. My Friend had a official copy of Miku V3 English and allowed me to use it because he didn't need it anymore. The problem was: His product key was in a E-Mail, which he can't find anymore and the seller couldn't give us a new product key, because Miku V3 English was too old at this point. That was very very much fun **sarcasm mode off** I still have the pirated version of Vocaloid with Miku V3 English, but I also searched for alternatives and now have OpenUTAU and Synth V. I still want a official legit Miku VB tbh (yes there is the V3 English Ver. of my Friend, but as I said, because of the fact, that we can't get a product key anymore and with the fact that Miku V3 is not really usable without key, I don't really have a legit option to use Miku). Maybe Miku NT idk, but for now, I will use these options I have
Thanks for this well made video about your thoughts on Vocaloid piracy, absolutely loved it! And that one point about not knowing how to purchase is really true! I wanted to purchase them a few times, but the complexity just compelled me to stop. Synthesizer V Studio is by far my favorite, but I wanted to purchase a english voice bank for it. Eleanor Forte doesn't seem to be available yet (will that get released someday?) and I've seen Tsurumaki Maki has been released? Are there other English voice banks coming out? It's still a bit confusing with AI. voice banks and all. Tsurumaki Maki seems to be available in JP / EN too, but I still don't really understand the Synthesizer V Studio voice bank landscape
Thanks! As of right now, there are four known English vocalists coming to SynthV or are on SynthV already: Eleanor Forte - Her lite version (Standard Monopitch with no commercial license) is available on SynthV’s website and her full AI voicebank is up for preorder on Anicute for a release later this year. Tsurumaki Maki - A standard and AI bilingual vocalist, she’s on AH Software’s own website and probably a few other storefronts. SOLARIA - By an independent team known as Eclipsed Sounds, she just recently finished her crowdfunding campaign and is being released early next year. Unnamed Male English SynthV - Shown off in the preview video for SynthV’s Gen3 infrastructure, no other known details.
@@joezcafe Thanks a lot for those infos! It really feels like hunting for intel on JP only sites and ... I even learned Kanji now just to understand the process. The hint that Eleanor Forte is up for pre-order on Anicute and SOLARIA are great! I saw SOLARIA in the video and saw it was funded already. Would have bought her probably. Really looking forward to the scene, I'm just a newbie though (but long-term Vocaloid listerner). Enjoying your content a whole lot due to that
I've been thinking about pirating, I don't have the money to even dream about buying any vc. It's ridiculous. I also don't plan on making any big hit song or monetizing anything. I just want to mess around with the product to see if I'll work for me. I don't want to buy something expensive and them find that I don't want to use it.
I'm gonna throw in my experience/opinion here. When I tried to look into Vocal Synth engines and looked more into Vocaloid because I really liked Luka. I realized that you can't actually buy the older vocal synth engines officially and the some voices aren't even supported on newer synths. This honestly made me want to stay away from Vocaloid since the ecosystem felt very anti consumer. Vocaloid is also not very well presented/advertised in my opinion. Then again, I could be wrong and lack some information.
I'm 3 years late to the discourse but one another thing that piracy benefits the community is accessibility, which means all this pirated copy users may turn into actual professionals that contributes financially and culturally back to the community and the company. How many of indie game developers or even just developers in general that becomes who they are because they loves games they played when they was a kid, games that probably were pirated. Heck, even for scientist and research. Access to journals and scientific paper are very expensive to say the least. It's one thing for a paid researcher, but if you're a student, goodluck paying those with your money. Without piracy, many of the things we're enjoying (and will be enjoying) may need years or even decades longer to be discovered. I believe the same thing could've happened with synthvoice. People who started their music as a teenager who pirated most of their softwares could become an actual professional years to come, paying back all and even more of what they owed on top of creating new songs for fans to enjoy. People who pirated are usually are amateur or hobbyist that can't buy but wants to create. Which is why I'm really grateful with how synth v does their thing. Providing free option for both the editor and VB means people can play around and study it. Giving them a way to jumpstart their career. Personally Because I'm trying to go professional, I decided that I can't forever uses Synth V free and bough the pro version without additional VB. I really really really wish I could've bought Miku or Rin&Len or Luka or IA or VFlower but the prices is just not something I can afford and justify. Maybe one day I will be able to, but while I will forever be a Miku fan, at that point I may have just become too much of a synthV fanboy that I don't give Vocaloid and Cryptonloid any glance. In short, lack of legal and accessible option makes Vocaloid and crypton lost one of their potential customer.
22:13 as a DID system with a completely mute alter. That argument is just invalid in its sheer ableism and classism. Sometimes ppl's only option to get revenue is through music or other art mediums and you just can't change that. Our system been trying so hard to keep a job in the later years but we still ended up being taken advantage of because of our memory issues, and even got fired for dissociatiating too much and having a mute alter effing up with costumers. All of this because many ppl believes that disabilities can't possibly be that bad. And while we want to sing for a living. It's just not that adapted to us as a medium because 1. Lyrics aren't constantly shown in your face unlike vocal synths which does. 2. Our DID led to us genuinely being alone, so traditional methods of committing to the music industry is just not possible 3. Ppl have all kinds of negative judgement regarding our disability and equates alters to being delusional which honestly is 100% not the same thing And even if we had delusions you should mostly be scared for the delusional person's security over your own because delusional ppl tends to hurt themselves more than they hurt others. All of this to say that. No the "Vocal synth is a luxury" argument is really just completely insensitive to other's reality in the end because not everyone can find a band so easily and I see many DID systems who wants to get in the music industry, but just can't because it's just inaccessible to begin with.
Btw i know people dont do 2 comments on one vid but yes, u should. pirate vocaloid. Just dont try to make money off it, and i think bc ez piracy = more users
If you were around pre-TH-cam and Spotify times, it's wild that we now have anti-piracy moral panics lead by people getting all their music for free and wanting artists to pay more for the privilege of making it. At least anti-piracy of yesteryear needed to pretend to be pro-artist and wanting fair economic models in order to gain sympathy. Now it's clear it's about big corpa being able to do whatever it wants. (side-note, the fact that Yamaha offers decent physical keyboards for cheaper than Vocaloid Editor lives rent free in my head. So much for Vocaloid being the great equaliser.)
This is going to be a big decision before I buy or download it! and the developer has to adjust a price so the customer can buy it while them making a profit!
I’d personally suggest just going for Synthesizer V Basic and trying some of the Lite banks, it’s free, less risk on your machine and Miku NT is a bit lacking anyway.
@@sweetloutstea1688 V2 is different to the VOCALOID editors that came after it because it would bundle alongside VOCALOID2 voicebanks rather than be sold seperately, and some VOCALOID2 banks are still on the market like Prima, Tonio, Sweet Ann, Big Al and Sonika.
@@joezcafe Do you think you could do a video talking about the different vocaloid characters and who and If they would be good for beginners or not ? O:
Probably not, I feel I don’t exhibit the sufficient knowledge to differentiate characters for newbies, although I do provide a tutorial on making works regardless of the VB.
I downloaded the vocaloid 4 and some of the voicebanks on the internet to know how does synthesizer work(i also download synth V along) So from the explanation above,am i doing something wrong for downloading from third-party instead of like purchasing directly? I still kinda confused a bit
My thoughts: If you're hella broke and just want to make non-profit covers, go ahead. If you're hella broke but want to make commercial music, find a way to make money. If you're hella rich? No excuse for piracy.
The 'don't pirate Vocaloid because it is a digital luxury' arguments just does not sound like a good arguments to begin with. It does not tries to address the arguments that piracy does not hurts vocaloid's sale significantly. To me it feels like a thought cancelling arguments. Like 'don't think whether piracy is that harmful or not, you don't need to pirate it!'.
I don't have problems with people pirating voicebanks to try, mess around with or make some covers. They are quite expencive I get that. I do have problems with people using pirated voicebanks for financial gain. By that point you're using something without the proper lisences and without premission from the creator. As far as I'm concerned that's theft.
Would you say the same about graphic designers who pirated photoshop? What about non-vocalsynth music producers who pirated a digital audio workstation? The layman's entry point into making *any* kind of creative work is often piracy due to the excessive upfront cost. Some people want to make pleasant noises and be able to pay their bills, dude.
AI reproductions of Standard sample voicebanks are a whole different can of worms that would require their own separate discussion and are immaterial to the discussion of piracy. At the very least, piracy does not give the user access to a different fidelity or aspects of the provider’s voice they did not consent to in a way that’s any different to a legitimate purchase, so the argument can be made that piracy doesn’t harm or defame the voice providers in a substantial way beyond the monetary.
@@joezcafe so its ethical to use AI versions. because The biggest flaw that non vocaloid fans say that vocaloids sound robotic. and AI completely solves just that. but the vocaloid fandom complety rejects it because it does not sound robotic
Should you pirate? No. Not out of any other issue other then 1:The fandom reacts badly at times when producers get found out (mistrust) 2:Not all studios were super sucessful (we're talking about a software that is expected to sell 10,000 units per voicebank at most) 3:ITs a luxary item not an essential 4:UTAU exists and is free and using that software supports UTAUs fandom 5:A real singer can end up cheaper and honestly better if you have the right singer, Vocaloid isn't *THAT* good yet it can fully replace a human singing. I think there is an argument for the out of print V1 and V2 software, but... You still can't sell anything with them and you're not suppose to put them on any format that can lead to money gain. But for your own pleasure? Maybe not so bad. The UK law I know tends not to care about pirating for private use, but get a bit more scarier when you sell pirated copies of things. Most also don't shun those using it as a trial version with the intent to buy later. And to be fair... I'd say in terms of westerners, most of those buying it to begin with aren't taking it seriously, the number of people I've seen doing the "its a toy" routine basically is sad for a product aimed for professionals and amateurs. I've seen fans happy they own Kagamine Len, great, but you're not doing anything with it. In addition, you can't in the west make a career out of this and showing up to a demo reel or a university course with a demo of a song in Vocaloid... Isn't going to get any favors, the west is just tht bias against vocal synths. I've always been a bit neutral on pirating, I am a casual pokeon fan and I own all the Ds-3DS era games, but... I origianlly pirated the GB-GBA era games and thus the pirating fuelled what I'd legitly own later. Pirating can be good, I think the sole thing that makes Vocaloid a hard thing when it comes to pirating is just the cost to studios. Yeah, miku sold 60,000+ Vocaloid 2 units, but... She actually had over 500,000+ pirated copies if I recall, most pirated versions were done via builk torrents. 500,000+ units is a scary high number. Singly, VY2 Vocaloid2 version had 40,000+ units pirated via torrent. When you go back to the V1 era and to be successful, kaito had to sell 1000 units and he sold a mere 500... You can sit there and work out... Hey... Somethings not right. ITs not like Minecraft where millions of copies were sold and a few pirated versions ain't hurting anyone. This is a legit cost to the companies at times. But... ITs not the fans who can't afford to buy legit though that will be the ones hurting sales; its the ones who flat out refuse to pay for the software legity -full stop- even if they can afford it. Andf I've eben on the net since 1998/1999 and I know that the existence of pirated versions DOES have this consquences. I remember when there was drama with Ruby's release over the cover art, you can look this up, and someone said they should pirate Ruby to hurt her company PowerFX. EXcept... The sales meant that not only would her developer Syo get a bonus if she sold well, but they'd consider extra voicebanks. So PowerFX wouldn't be the one hurt; it was Syo who the fans were trying to support. I think the main problem is people are putting far, far too much value on Vocaloid to begin with, right now... Vocaloid 6is supposedly due to be released in 2022, we're not sure when and how, but its due at somepoint. The Vocaloid brand as a name is famous, super famous, but in 2021 there are two other legit software called "CeVIO" and "Synth V" who are great contenders and are about to leap ahead of V5. So right now Vocaloid is relying on Yamaha to release a better software for V6 then whatever CeVIO and Synth V is doing. 2020 was a good year for Vocaloid but from 2013-2019, it was in a slump, in 2014 all vocal synht interest on Nico video dropped by between 40-60% with Vocaloid being one of the lesser hit and UTAU being one of the worst hit. What happened to sum it was; the Vocaloid craze ended. Still people call non-Vocaloid vocal synths "Vocaloid" showing how much the brand name has meaning to some people. The truth is, its not as good right now as it has been and it was always a chunky, clunky software to begin with. The one thing is Yamaha also knows its brand has value and thus all their vocal synth tech now carries the name "Vocaloid" and "Vocaloid:AI" if its got IA in it. Yamaha's biggest issue is while it has access to resources other companies don't, its one of the many products it sells. With Miku having left for Miku NT, Vocaloid no longer has the voicebank its relied upon since 2007 to get 1/5 of all sales in. So when talking about vocaloid and pirating, the reality of the situation of the vocaloid software can be summed at as; people react as though this will excel them to fame or they simply are giving the software far too much value to the point they'd steal it to own it, plus can forget only Miku was ever super popular to begin with.
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king shit
I’m about to do what’s called a Monarchy Move.
I remember when i was 12 years old, growing up low income and on food stamps, being obsessed with Vocaloid and the idea of being part of it. For ten years my cracked copy of V4, Gackpoid V4, Kaito V3, Yohioloid and Maika have followed me, as I used to be hardcore into learning music and how to cover songs before mental health got in the way. Now 10 years later, I'm unemployed and in a new place, with a new computer, and finally decided to give Vocaloid a try again as I've ALWAYS wanted to be a producer. I just cannot afford to drop like a thousand dollars on something like that at the moment, but i trust it'll come with time.
I never understood people that were anti piracy, and for so long i felt guilty for being lower class and "robbing" others thru piracy but now i realise i shouldnt feel bad. Like sure i could spend hundreds on securing a physically copy of Piko and Big Al, but i would rather eat and keep my lights on. Someday when i can profit off my music I'll buy them. But for now im so happy to just hear my silly little robots sing in my computer again. For some of us, piracy is the only way, and im glad to see the scene shift towards piracy appreciation rather than hate.
For me it's less "Is it right to pirate Vocaloid", and more "Where and how do I pirate Vocaloid"
same 😭😭
el rincon del kitsune
A lot of people forget a lot of people into vocaloid are minors and literally cannot buy a voicebank because they don't have a bank account and their parents won't buy them something so expensive that sounds stupid. Thats a reason i pirated for a while. And there's also just the fact a lot of people just want to play with vocal synths for fun as a hobby, and not to produce music for real.
Ive never pirated a vocaloid cus since i got into it there are accessible freewares like synthV making piracy seem unnecessary but if someone did pirate a vocaloid i wouldn't blame them
yeah i pirated *a lot* of vbs, i do have a bank account but what i get isn't nearly enough to buy even the editor. i hate vocaloid4 though so i'm probably not going to use them that much.
@@another-niko-pfp-holder lol agter i commented this i downloaded pirated vocalaloid and i also hate it, I'll just keep using utau and synthV instead loll
i also pirated the vocaloids/voicebanks because i just wanna try it out, make sure i like it
personally, my parents would probably let me buy it when they can, they like it. but im pirating it because i want to make sure it sounds good to me
real, If I do have a bank account managed by my parents, but if I asked them if I can buy vocaloid software/voicebanks they would be like “What the fck is a vocaloid and why is it so expensive?”
Also: Some voicebanks like SeeU have no digital copies and have to be bought physically, so piracy is one of the only ways, if the only way, to get them.
Or she has been taken off of sale!
I really love vocaloid, but I truly don't have the money for the software AND the voicebanks. If I had the money, I would buy legal copies, but for now i can't
Side note, if someone's argument against pirating Vocaloid is "just use UTAU" that's how I know that they have never used UTAU in their lives. I love UTAU, prefer it vastly over using my copy of Vocaloid 4, but it is not an argument against piracy to just tell someone "UTAU's right there, use that."
UTAU has a different enough workflow and setup that while it is my favorite editor, I'm not going to recommend it to someone who just really loves Vocaloid.
Also thank you for making the point that it was Yamaha's greed and laziness that got them in this position, not some 13 year old in Eastern Europe or South America with pirated Maika. People in the piracy discourse seem to forget about WHY companies left Vocaloid in favor of other editors or left the industry entirely.
utau is also a bitch to tune compared to vocaloid, in my opinion. i hate tuning in utau, but i still do love the software itself
@@dezzydream I find tuning in UTAU pretty easy tbh, control points are really nice to work with, but I get that it's incredibly different from most commercial synths
Oh, definitely. It's like telling someone who likes Coke that they're gonna love Pepsi. They both have similar aspects, but are distinct enough to have different audiences. The engines are different (and in terms of UTAU, there are a whole bunch of different engines within the single software), the attitude towards commercial use is different, and the quality control is very different. It'd be better to recommend Synthesizer V, but even SynthV doesn't have Miku.
Also, Utau doesn’t work 100% well on Mac. So it’s not a fix-all solution.
@@Eosinophyllis yeah i hear utau synth is a nightmare
I've both pirated and bought Vocaloids before. My motives for piracy were 1) I had bought the Vocaloid without realizing the editor was sold separately (which ties into your segment about the buying process being annoying and shitty), 2) the voicebank was no longer available (Vocaloid 1) and 3) I wanted to see what the product was like, but had no intention of buying the product from the start.
I bought Daina and Nekomura Iroha legally but one day my motherboard died. I contacted Yamaha to redownload them and basically they told me I'm SOL. Cool, thanks Yamaha
I pirated vocaloidv5 because it was such an expensive confusing mess. Then I found out it was just too much of a pain and bought synthv and even preordered eleanor AI later. Browsing the vocaloid website felt like Yamaha was giving me the middle finger the whole time.
I think the biggest reason for piracy is just how inaccesible some of the older versions are... a lot of vocal updates remove charm/features that people like and then you're left with an update you don't want and a previous version that's impossible to find anywhere... (just look at V4 scalping lol)
Like, personally I would buy KAITO V1 and VY2 V2 legally in a HEARTBEAT if I could get them as downloads due to my country's import taxes, but they simply don't exist as download versions.
In that sense, I think old vocaloids are almost like ROM hacks. Sure, I can pay huge import fees, shipping, etc. to get VY2 V2 shipped to my house so I can legally say I own him, but the company isn't even profiting off of it anymore. Who would benefit from that except for the reseller?
Ah, and about Synthesizer V Studio. There's simply NO need to pirate! Like... only the R1 Editor and the Quadimension R1 girls get pirated because only Chiyu has a lite version and the R1 Editor is not sold anymore. To put it simply, Dreamtonics has put itself in a position where even if Studio has top-notch security, it is not needed because NO ONE wants to pirate it!
And even the people who do want to pirate it generally don’t- it’s not worth it.
@@Eosinophyllis lmao i do
edit: but it's near impossible tbh
This, no one wanna to pirate it
The fact that they try to make sure most voicebanks have a lite makes Dreamtronics a godsend.
im so emotionally attached to the medium but no way in hell am i paying over $200 for a crash-on-startup simulator
The technical failures and overall substandard quality v4x had on luka completely has fucked her up in terms of usage by the community, like, there are so few new songs for her after 2014 or so and as she's my favourite vocaloid it's so sad to see. Ugh I wish vocaloid post V3 had any redeeming qualities outside of how miku, rin and len sounded.
As for piracy though: yeah I had a couple pirated vocaloids once or twice just to play around only to realise i don't like sound design or making music, which thank fuck, there's now still hundreds more pounds in my pocket and I got to see behind the curtain of vocaloid. I shouldn't have to invest such a huge amount of money on something that I'm not sure I would like. Instead I found I resonated more with the lighting, pyrotechnics and the projections at the concerts and found it infinitely more interesting cuz I have worked with the software they use to make light shows.
For me this is like pirating Adobe Premiere/Sony Vegas etc - if I were not working class and entirely independent financially maybe I wouldn't see the cost of it as a problem, but I want to make content, and pirating it is the only accessible way me and millions of people have in doing that. I don't deserve to just suffer with movie maker because I happen to just grow up poor when there are alternative solutions to having the software. This is why I'm not surprised when i see that these rich kids do well artistically: this expensive shit was always within financial ease of their budget, on top of anything else you'd want creatively like studio lights, green screens, mic setups, top end pc specs and so on. Like, Billie Ellish wasn't exactly busking on the street and happened to be passed by an agent for a record label, she had that access to the industry from the start. It's not the only factor, sure, but I feel more pressure to do well at it if I invest in it compared to someone with a bit more financial freedom.
Thank you for making a video with a nuanced take on this topic, it always bugged me how there was a double standard online about how pirating, for example, Adobe and Nintendo products is seen as acceptable but pirating Vocaloid is the worst sin known to man. (Seriously, I've seen Twitter callouts where people treat Vocaloid piracy as a greater transgression than literal sexual harassment.)
I think like you said piracy isn't a black and white issue where it's either always okay or never okay, and instead of immediately villifying people who pirate we need to ask "why is piracy of this particular product so pervasive and what did the distributor do to make it that way"
I'm new to using vocal synthesizers
I've always wanted to try vocaloid but there are 2 things stopping me
1. The downloads are so confusing
2. IT'S SO EXPENSIVE
Like it's 225 for the program it's self and the lowest I see voice banks are like 60 dollars, and this is in USD for example. I'm Canadian so to get vocaloid and the cheapest easy to find voice bank I would need to spend 390.88, which is insane.
Synth v although limited is so much nicer, not only do they have a free trial without a timelimit and a lot of free lite voices but it's 89$ and comes with a free voice
SO MUCH BETTER
my friend bought me miku v4x and let me tell you, its DEFINITELY very fucking confusing to install her. and at first, she didnt even want to make any noise or sound until randomly she started working and now she's been working since september
Synth V costs a LOT in my country 😭😭😭😭 its like a thousand
21:05 lol I remember when Yamaha changed their website and literally removed my account or atleast access to it so I couldn't even upgrade to v5 from my physical copy of v4 that was tied to that account. scummy corporate shenanigans.
4:41 keeping up with serials and registrations is REALLY messy (especially v2) personally despite owning legal things 90% of the time i end up using cracked copies because every time i use a new computer i'd have to spend time re-registering everything
@suni / leo No, he has a good point.
@suni / leo because they have an opinion? Why are you here?
DRM schtinkee
No more DRM
Yeah, plus when you take into account that Vocaloid can only ever be used on one computer it makes sense why someone would pirate. Like it's kinda weird considering some DAWs can be used in multiple computers. But Vocaloid is so strict that I fear for the day my computer gets wiped.
Incredible video!!! I 100% agree with everything you said here, you've made every point I've been having for years about the Vocaloid community.
I have to say you're incredibly brave to make a video like this in the first place. If anyone else made a video like this, I think they'd be all but cancelled by the community, so you're bravery to say this is so admirable!!! :D
The idea of "Just use Utau" as an excuse to not pirate Vocaloid is a ridiculous one, and I'm so glad you mention that kind of excuse in the video.
Legal copies of V6 can brick themselves beyond repair at the smallest air flow.
@@SourSalty Hard facts, I knew someone whose V5 completely bricked itself like that and they had to pirate V5 anyway because no update fixed it ._.
4:41 this is literally my situation. i own a legal copy of miku v4x, but i choose to use a cracked copy because i don't have the actual vocaloid editor and piapro studio is a pain in the ass to use compared to a cracked copy of v4.
regarding the "lost sale" thing, i would love to have legal copies of all the cracked vocaloids i have. unfortunately, i do not have the funds to acquire them legally, but if i did you bet i'd be purchasing them right now.
I have a question. Where do you find them? I can't find them on TOR!
@@15_heidune72 el rincon del kitsune
I personally remember from the earlier days of the voca synth community the stigma surrounding pocaloid, I never ended up pirating any vocal synths and just settled with the idea of only using free voca software became I'm not willing to spend so much to play with singing robots
And oh, that's when I was a young girl and I could literally not buy or have my parents buy the software for me. As a working woman now, I still choose to not buy it because I'd rather spend my money else where
Ppl who flex with the amount of legaly purchased vocaloids they have are so full of themselves tbh
I used to pirate vocaloid from time to time as a kid when I first found out about it. Can't imagine me, a 13 y.o. kid with no music talent, coming to my parents and asking for 200+ dollars for a software I barely used for making godawful covers.
Once in a blue moon I come back to it just to see if a certain vocaloid would fit my cover and delete it after about ten minutes of use lmao I ain't buying all that
For me pirating is a necessity, since i live in a third world country things are 10x more expensive for me compared to those in the first world. Sadly, for many of us that's the only way to experience many software in general.
i like it when you say words
I like your funny words, magic man.
i'm a longtime vocasynth veteran (started years and years ago on an old account), and i'm extremely surprised to see someone talking about this in 2021. it's really relieving that the community isn't just filled entirely with elitists anymore, and has branched out to people who actually know what they're talking about from either side. great work!
Looking forward to this.
UPDATE: Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Admittedly, I have basically no experience in this side of the community, so I can't really say anything about whether or not what you're saying is correct beyond how it applies to other things I do understand so... Having Run Lads Run in the background while going over everything VOCALOID did wrong was nice.
23:38 yeah, i know, I AM BRAZILIAN. And thats why i believe pirating vocaloid is acceptable, in third world countries, even for privileged people, is realy hard to get legal vocaloids. And also, the currency sometimes has low value and paying in dollar is sooooooo fucking expensive ( 1 dollar in brazil currency (Real) values 5.30 reais today, but the minimum wage is 1,212 reais) making literally an abnormally expensive and anti-consumer value
So, irmao can I pirate vocaloid 5!? With the voices and stuff!? Where can I get it ?!? 🤔
@@sleepyfeelings6285 IDK, I don't pirate (I have fear of virus in my PC) only think is acceptable to pirate
@@sleepyfeelings6285 dunno if you already found it but use (el rincon del kitsune neo)
@@Burity28 both blogs from el rin con de kitsune has safe cracks for vocaloid.
I'm at that point in life where I can't be assed to be angry at some teen downloading Miku to sing Despacito or Tomato Town or whatever popular song.
I'd love a day where most voice synth banks can get to the 25-50$ mark (barring UTAU, which, to be honest, desperately needs a Windows update), but I'm doubting we'll get to that point until we get Universal Basic Income and can invest in non-essentials.
does OpenUtau count as a windows update?
@@15_heidune72 it wasn't developed by the creator of UTAU, so technically no. That said, I'm grateful for its existence, despite its bugginess at the moment
I'm a minor, I don't have the money to even get the software let alone the voicebanks expecially because v4x miku as an example is 617 ron for me as i live in Romania, not only that i don't have a stable job as i do commisions and i bareley make any money off of it (most i did was 61 ron or 11 british pounds) but even if i made the money for it my parents wouldn't even allow me use my money to buy a virtual voice, yet even with that in mind im afraid to post anything vocaloid related (only songs, i posted short vids tho) because im afraid people will harrass me after they realize that i pirated both the software and the vocaloids i use
I feel ya. I got literally harassed for pirating Vocaloid even though I don't even produce music and am hard of hearing. No Yamaha didn't lose money because some rando wanted to see how their Vocaloid software works.
I think a lot of people also pirate vocaloid because of the price to get the editor AND the expense of buying the voicepack on top of that. I checked recently to get vocaloid 5 it's currently 225$ in US currency. If you want other voicepacks besides the default ones for Gummi (megapoid) it's literally another 202 bucks just to get her.... This makes a grand total of at least over 500 dollars which a lot of people don't have to throw around. Not that is still not an excuse to pirate but I get it.
Nah it’s a good excuse to pirate.
They did my boy Fukase so dirty, smh
I didn't expect piko to be brought up so much in here, but sang, I ended up sobbing when you mentioned how Sony didn't really advertise him. Piko is my most favorite vocaloid, and his entire discontinuation was very painful to me, I was saving to buy him but couldn't do it in time, (but I also keep thinking if I had bought him circus would have never got him and we wouldn't even have my own, so I'm at least glad that last copy went to someone who could do him justice)
I'm currently using piko and rana vbs that belong to my friend. I am saving up money to buy Rana, and once I own her I'm gonna stop using that piko VB and just get renders from friends of vocaloids I don't own. I really do wanna become a producer but I won't do it until I actually own a vocaloid myself, and General Nuisance made a really good point. Utau is VERY different from vocaloid. Ya can't just tell people Utau is right there. Every synth is different and has it's own unique layout. Even Deepvocal that has a very similar layout to vocaloid has some significant differences. I really love vocal synths in general, and if I had to pick one to say is my least favorite to use it'd be Utau. Utau to me is very tedious, it can sound SUPER GOOD but I am lazy and like simpler editors.
The most fun I've had working in so far are deeovocal and synthv. Deepvocal is free and bro when I found out synthv had a free version I nearly cried because I wanted rikka so bad (don't like her as much as Eleanor or Maki now vshkvvsjvjs)
But from my perspective vocaloid seemingly has more fans, which could be do to the fact that Miku has introduced them to vocaloid and Miku is undeniably popular.
Then there is the fact that a lot of us get very attached to certain characters, whether it be because of an emotional connection or just a straight up adoration. We love these characters, and to us, they are way more than just synthesized voices. As silly as it sounds, they've become like friends and family to us. And when someone is that attached to someone they will do anything they can to be with that person, so when they find out they can pirate their favorite, they most likely will.
Now where I stand, I think piracy is only viable if
1. You want to seriously spend time with software and see if this is actually a hobby you wanna pick up before purchasing a VB that costs a crap ton of money
2. You only wanna meme and have no intention of taking this seriously
3. And this really goes along with 1 and 2, but you're not making money on what you create.
Thank you for coming to my Kasane Ted talk
Hi soley.
23:48 and as a person who is not that fortunate, you just spoke facts their. Not everyone is capable of getting these products legally because they aren't as privileged
From what I've seen; trying to pirate synth-v (editor or voices) has been an absolute bastard. A vocaloid is cracked within a few days but synth v? Fuck all. If you give people a lite demo, that's usually enough for the type of people who'ld pirate a voice synth. The type of person who downloads a voice for just one test cover and never again isn't going to drop $100 on it - that's just how it is.
As someone using synth V and tried to pirate it: it's mostly a matter of genuine enjoyment of the basic version that I find myself willing to support paying the reasonable price for the pro version. It's the extra on voice banks that kills me, especially for cross lingual.
The process of pirating it requires like three different tools that, if you're lucky they work out of the box on windows.
As a Linux user: synth v just working on my distro is one of the best things they could've done, and I have no need to break that for extra features when upgrading isn't that much work.
Cracks exist, but do you really want to do all that extra work to validate your voice bank every single time you open the software?
I'm as anti drm as they come but this is called good competition from my perspective.
I want piko so badly but the only way to get him now is to pirate him 😭😭😭
Yeah some people live paycheck to paycheck, i can't expect everyone to be rich enough to throw money at something like vocaloid. The people that seriously expect that from everyone (even those that don't even know how to use that software or produce music in general) are severly priviledged and out of touch with the reality of the reasons why people pirate software in general.
I don't produce music but I'm an artist. I use pirated art programs, and I would have never improved to the point i am right now if I didn't pirate. I bet that a good amount of Vocaloid producers started out with a pirated software and then moved onto buying it if they either saw enough success with their work and started profiting off of it.
With Nintendo for example, pirates are the reason why their games gets archived. Some countries (such as Russia where I am ethnically from) have a whole culture around piracy because there's just no other way to experience media and software. The people that think all of piracy is evil clearly have no idea about how other people live are and how other people spend their money. There's a thing called ethical piracy. It's like a majority of people pretend it doesn't exist.
19:55 Doesn’t Sachiko and Nemu suffer the same problem as Fukase , a shitty license (or at least from what I heard)? Sachiko being from Kobayashi sachiko and Nemu from Yumemi Nemu, kinda explains why they have barely any originals
Yeah. Sachiko, Nemu, Fukase, and Unity-chan are basically the shitty license gang.
It's not shitty. It's protecting the artists voices and jobs. The restrictive licence allows people to do things without stealing job from the real voicers.
Bold of them to assume vocalsynths can emulate the exact same results and contribute to the same markets as professional singers and voice actors and to assume that the license doesn’t harm sales by negating the core purpose of the product.
It’s shitty.
@@huhuhuhurricanestreamwow7937 if they wanted to "pRoTeCt tHeiR vOicEs" then they shouldn't have voiced a vocal synth. The whole point of the voice synth is that you can purchase and use the voice however you wish, including commercially. That's like eating a chili pepper and then complaining that it's spicy. Like, that's the point of the chili pepper. The licenses make the product pointless. They're shitty.
I swear, you can make a video talking about anything, and I'll still enjoy listening to it.
Agree with you Joe but the Piapro Voicebanks Miku V4X KAITO V3 etc, coming with piapro studio and studio one is a good thing as crypton said in a video interview about miku V3, that they did it for people who don't have the separate vocaloid editor.
???? They can add all the helpful software they want but it's their choice to make it mandatory and expensive
Like if they were so concerned with customers having to purchase a separate editor they wouldnt. Have them purchase another just as expensive editor?
@@sashikun34 Well in my case it's good because I got Miku english bundle from an ebay auction and as it come's with Presonus Studio One and Piapro Studio but I use vocaloid6 editor mainly because of a better UI.
Good video! Hope no one makes an hour long response video to you ♥️
Hilariously enough, I bought VY2v3 a week before they released the V5 version, because I was *not* on board with them getting rid of the falsetto VB, and the 'reworking' of the recordings that made exactly zero difference.
So, in the end, you basically lost his falsetto bank, and got the same thing for MOAARRR MUNNY.
I'll still buy VY2 AI if it comes to it. Because I love his voice 💙
I pirated vocaloid and use it twice in my life. After it I deleted it. Thanks for pirates that I have an opportunity try it free and understand that I don't wanna work in that programm. BTW I don't have so much money for editor and VB's. I love how Dreamtonics made two versions of synthV editor. I can buy only VB and use it right now. I don't need a time buy editor in a future.
watching this while I tune my totally legal copy of GUMI V4 power teehee
Me too with my totally legal copy of tone rion
and there were no crumbs left...
Well said! While I personally would have added a few more bits I think everything you said is pretty clear. Even though it’s not going to up and disappear one day, it is important to acknowledge the motives towards why someone might pirate. I might not like seeing it but that doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge the benefits that it does bring like Archival and being able to try some banks before ya buy. I don’t think it should be the first option but in some cases it’s unavoidable.
There is one thing that not a lot of users seem to know and that’s that if you contact support about having all your activations used up, there’s a chance they can remotely deactivate it for you, but in the event that they can’t for some reason, piracy is a last resort. I imagine if I lose all my Piko activations one day, I’ll likely have to pirate.
Also before the crazed elitists come in saying Vocaloid is dying because of piracy: Vocaloid sales are doing fine, it’s not dying, the lack of new voicebanks has pretty much nothing to do with piracy and is more so the fault of Yamaha themselves making development more expensive.
Tysm Izzy! I always felt my VSynth mutuals had more industry knowledge/experience so your thoughts are reassuring ~
I pirated an old free version of vsynth studio and Eleanor Forte because it would be stupid to drop $80 on something before even knowing how it works, now that I do understand it and am satisfied with the quality I'm gonna buy it. That's at least $80 in sales they'd wouldn't have had otherwise.
If you don't factor in the number of people who are going to go pirate your product, then you're just bad at budgeting, I think.
I don’t think it’s necessarily budgeting but more so negligence
Its Yamaha 🤦
They own. Just. So much stuff.
I'm new to this entire vsynth community and I really appreciate the work you made to shed light on what is happening in the entire vsynth industry! I learned so much from your videos, I hope the vsynth ecosystem continues to grow because I really like the entire concept of vsynth
Buying a voicebank in no way whatsoever guarantees any new updates and that's such a fallacious argument I'm glad you barely even addressed it.
And about the last point. I have ALWAYS descarga'd VOCALOIDs. I only planned on buying MEIKO V3, and maybe V5 if I saved up. But Synthesizer V came, and changed my whole view. Hell, I own Saki+AI and I plan on buying Eleanor Forte AI with Studio Pro, because it's just better!
vocaloid is overpriced. yamaha treats it like dogshit. a lot of banks are discontinued. you literally cant get past versions legally anymore and v6 is confusing. I think it's okay
I’m confused. Around 4 or so years ago when I was most involved in the community, most people were anti-piracy. When did this positive attitude towards piracy start becoming more popular? Im not disappointed about this shift, im more baffled than anything.
That’s ultimately a loaded question that can lend itself to a variety of factors! But the picture that’s ultimately painted of why this shift has occurred is that the vsynth industry is in a new era of competition and financial security that piracy is less of a prominent issue, and the presence of competition has made the community more critical of the products they consume, in other words, the market is dynamically reacting to the current status of the industry and the community is no longer as reliant (read: fanboyish) toward YAMAHA as it was before.
If I had to spitball some potential answers here and now, it’d probably be the following:
- Immense decrease in fan anxiety about the potential downfall of the vsynth industry, other vsynth competitors have made themselves known, so there’s less of a need to be overprotective of VOCALOID specifically as there are alternate engines to fall back on like SynthV, CeVIO and Piapro NT, even UTAU has a chance of being a worthy competitor as it’s currently entering a new technical era with OpenUTAU, and thus, there’s less of a worry that the vsynth market is fragile or easily harmed.
- Decreased goodwill toward YAMAHA and VOCALOID due to product and service grievances, such as the reception of the VOCALOID5 editor and the growing scrutiny of VOCALOID4/5 era voicebanks.
- Merely speculation on my part, but a possibility that members of the community who were externally “anti-piracy” were in reality being performative and were either ambivalent to or secretly engaged in it in private, previous eras of the VOCALOID community were infamous for staging all out harassment campaigns as soon as anyone mentioned the usage of pirated VOCALOID products.
- Generally increased tolerance over the utility of pirated VOCALOID goods, the VOCALOID engine has been ongoing for decades, leading to many editors and vocalists being discontinued, with piracy being their main source of archival, combine that with the main demographic of pirated VOCALOID goods being mostly hobbyists making works for free, and we’ve just learned over time that when taking context into account, software piracy is kind of No Harm, No Foul. You still find members of the “Anti Piracy” front, but some bundle their view with the asterisk of “But it’s a necessary evil that will never go away”.
@@joezcafe omg thank you for the in-depth reply I was NOT expecting this
@@joezcafe I was kind of anti-piracy back when I was more active in the community, but I was like 13/14 and not very smart lol.
Even though I was vaguely anti-piracy back then, some people took it WAY too far. I didn’t agree with pirating vocaloid, but I didn’t like when people got so ANGRY about it.
yeah no i dont wanna pay 20k to 44k yen to make miku say south park quotes
I actually had to pirate Vocaloid. My Friend had a official copy of Miku V3 English and allowed me to use it because he didn't need it anymore.
The problem was: His product key was in a E-Mail, which he can't find anymore and the seller couldn't give us a new product key, because Miku V3 English was too old at this point.
That was very very much fun **sarcasm mode off** I still have the pirated version of Vocaloid with Miku V3 English, but I also searched for alternatives and now have OpenUTAU and Synth V. I still want a official legit Miku VB tbh (yes there is the V3 English Ver. of my Friend, but as I said, because of the fact, that we can't get a product key anymore and with the fact that Miku V3 is not really usable without key, I don't really have a legit option to use Miku). Maybe Miku NT idk, but for now, I will use these options I have
Thanks for this well made video about your thoughts on Vocaloid piracy, absolutely loved it!
And that one point about not knowing how to purchase is really true! I wanted to purchase them a few times, but the complexity just compelled me to stop.
Synthesizer V Studio is by far my favorite, but I wanted to purchase a english voice bank for it. Eleanor Forte doesn't seem to be available yet (will that get released someday?) and I've seen Tsurumaki Maki has been released? Are there other English voice banks coming out? It's still a bit confusing with AI. voice banks and all.
Tsurumaki Maki seems to be available in JP / EN too, but I still don't really understand the Synthesizer V Studio voice bank landscape
Thanks! As of right now, there are four known English vocalists coming to SynthV or are on SynthV already:
Eleanor Forte - Her lite version (Standard Monopitch with no commercial license) is available on SynthV’s website and her full AI voicebank is up for preorder on Anicute for a release later this year.
Tsurumaki Maki - A standard and AI bilingual vocalist, she’s on AH Software’s own website and probably a few other storefronts.
SOLARIA - By an independent team known as Eclipsed Sounds, she just recently finished her crowdfunding campaign and is being released early next year.
Unnamed Male English SynthV - Shown off in the preview video for SynthV’s Gen3 infrastructure, no other known details.
@@joezcafe Thanks a lot for those infos! It really feels like hunting for intel on JP only sites and ... I even learned Kanji now just to understand the process.
The hint that Eleanor Forte is up for pre-order on Anicute and SOLARIA are great! I saw SOLARIA in the video and saw it was funded already.
Would have bought her probably.
Really looking forward to the scene, I'm just a newbie though (but long-term Vocaloid listerner). Enjoying your content a whole lot due to that
@@joezcafe Also ROSA! She’s currently getting a Japanese bank and there’s a good chance she’ll also get an English one. She’s also cul’s sister
justice for piko
I've been thinking about pirating, I don't have the money to even dream about buying any vc. It's ridiculous. I also don't plan on making any big hit song or monetizing anything. I just want to mess around with the product to see if I'll work for me. I don't want to buy something expensive and them find that I don't want to use it.
OOOh so many updates would be free patches if Yamaha wasn't so greedy and made even same engine updates be a completely new bank.
I'm gonna throw in my experience/opinion here. When I tried to look into Vocal Synth engines and looked more into Vocaloid because I really liked Luka. I realized that you can't actually buy the older vocal synth engines officially and the some voices aren't even supported on newer synths. This honestly made me want to stay away from Vocaloid since the ecosystem felt very anti consumer. Vocaloid is also not very well presented/advertised in my opinion. Then again, I could be wrong and lack some information.
this was really well written! you've definitely changed my mind about a few things.
I'm 3 years late to the discourse but one another thing that piracy benefits the community is accessibility, which means all this pirated copy users may turn into actual professionals that contributes financially and culturally back to the community and the company. How many of indie game developers or even just developers in general that becomes who they are because they loves games they played when they was a kid, games that probably were pirated. Heck, even for scientist and research. Access to journals and scientific paper are very expensive to say the least. It's one thing for a paid researcher, but if you're a student, goodluck paying those with your money. Without piracy, many of the things we're enjoying (and will be enjoying) may need years or even decades longer to be discovered.
I believe the same thing could've happened with synthvoice. People who started their music as a teenager who pirated most of their softwares could become an actual professional years to come, paying back all and even more of what they owed on top of creating new songs for fans to enjoy. People who pirated are usually are amateur or hobbyist that can't buy but wants to create. Which is why I'm really grateful with how synth v does their thing. Providing free option for both the editor and VB means people can play around and study it. Giving them a way to jumpstart their career.
Personally Because I'm trying to go professional, I decided that I can't forever uses Synth V free and bough the pro version without additional VB. I really really really wish I could've bought Miku or Rin&Len or Luka or IA or VFlower but the prices is just not something I can afford and justify. Maybe one day I will be able to, but while I will forever be a Miku fan, at that point I may have just become too much of a synthV fanboy that I don't give Vocaloid and Cryptonloid any glance.
In short, lack of legal and accessible option makes Vocaloid and crypton lost one of their potential customer.
22:13 as a DID system with a completely mute alter. That argument is just invalid in its sheer ableism and classism. Sometimes ppl's only option to get revenue is through music or other art mediums and you just can't change that. Our system been trying so hard to keep a job in the later years but we still ended up being taken advantage of because of our memory issues, and even got fired for dissociatiating too much and having a mute alter effing up with costumers.
All of this because many ppl believes that disabilities can't possibly be that bad. And while we want to sing for a living. It's just not that adapted to us as a medium because
1. Lyrics aren't constantly shown in your face unlike vocal synths which does.
2. Our DID led to us genuinely being alone, so traditional methods of committing to the music industry is just not possible
3. Ppl have all kinds of negative judgement regarding our disability and equates alters to being delusional which honestly is 100% not the same thing
And even if we had delusions you should mostly be scared for the delusional person's security over your own because delusional ppl tends to hurt themselves more than they hurt others.
All of this to say that.
No the "Vocal synth is a luxury" argument is really just completely insensitive to other's reality in the end because not everyone can find a band so easily and I see many DID systems who wants to get in the music industry, but just can't because it's just inaccessible to begin with.
Imagine if this video came out when Vocaloid 6 was released (; ^ ;)
I don’t even know how to find pirated programs 😭😭💀
Btw i know people dont do 2 comments on one vid but yes, u should. pirate vocaloid. Just dont try to make money off it, and i think bc ez piracy = more users
This is ironic given alot of expert vocaloid users pirate vocaloids than disown those tho do the same.
8:20 correction.
Len's voice is in the Masculine/androgynous range.
Or if you will
High pitched masculine vocal range.
great video
I was so distracted by the coffee in the background
👁️👁️☕
I would literally buy every vocaloid voicebank i can if it weren't for me being brokie💔💔💔
Same,I only have vocaloid2 kaai yuki cause I got her for cheap
@@Nyamihatecoffee so real (I only use pirated Miku V4X, Vflower V4, Otomachi Una V4, Tohoku Zunko Natural V4)
@@Nyamihatecoffee should I get kaito next
@@Leah_Lusdoc yes
Thank you for this video, I’m saving it to send to people.
If you were around pre-TH-cam and Spotify times, it's wild that we now have anti-piracy moral panics lead by people getting all their music for free and wanting artists to pay more for the privilege of making it.
At least anti-piracy of yesteryear needed to pretend to be pro-artist and wanting fair economic models in order to gain sympathy. Now it's clear it's about big corpa being able to do whatever it wants.
(side-note, the fact that Yamaha offers decent physical keyboards for cheaper than Vocaloid Editor lives rent free in my head. So much for Vocaloid being the great equaliser.)
This is going to be a big decision before I buy or download it!
and the developer has to adjust a price so the customer can buy it while them making a profit!
Chat i MIGHTVE found this while seaeching how to pirate Adobe
I buyed today in my bday miku luka and the kagamines from V2
always click on your videos when they pop up.
What if I donate yamaha needed amount of money but keep using FE because it's more efficient and convenient? Is it fair?
I only wanted to pirate VC to only post covers with it but like im so scared of the consequences of going to jail i think im gonna stick with synth v
@@laaliyahdixon4883 sweetheart do you think the law will be after you for downloading nekomura iroha
@@joezcafe I-- HOPE NOT!!...
I would pirate vocaloid, but not synth V.
Besides: UTAU is free.
Honestly If I could figure It out Id do It cuz god knows my mum wont pay for the vocaloids ;-; I want miku nt sooo bad a
I’d personally suggest just going for Synthesizer V Basic and trying some of the Lite banks, it’s free, less risk on your machine and Miku NT is a bit lacking anyway.
@@joezcafe I also heard people are getting v2 still ? How Is that possible ? Im not very good with calculating the japanese price.
@@sweetloutstea1688 V2 is different to the VOCALOID editors that came after it because it would bundle alongside VOCALOID2 voicebanks rather than be sold seperately, and some VOCALOID2 banks are still on the market like Prima, Tonio, Sweet Ann, Big Al and Sonika.
@@joezcafe Do you think you could do a video talking about the different vocaloid characters and who and If they would be good for beginners or not ? O:
Probably not, I feel I don’t exhibit the sufficient knowledge to differentiate characters for newbies, although I do provide a tutorial on making works regardless of the VB.
I downloaded the vocaloid 4 and some of the voicebanks on the internet to know how does synthesizer work(i also download synth V along)
So from the explanation above,am i doing something wrong for downloading from third-party instead of like purchasing directly?
I still kinda confused a bit
no you arent doing anything wrong.
HEY BRO , NOW MAJORITY OF DETAILS HAS BEEN RELEASED FOR DEEMO 2 , PLEASE MAKE A NEW VIDEO
Gravity rush soundtrack (◍•ᴗ•◍)✧*。
My thoughts:
If you're hella broke and just want to make non-profit covers, go ahead.
If you're hella broke but want to make commercial music, find a way to make money.
If you're hella rich? No excuse for piracy.
23:41 buy me both physical version of SeeU(if she's available) and UNI.... pleeease 🥺👉👈 ❤
The 'don't pirate Vocaloid because it is a digital luxury' arguments just does not sound like a good arguments to begin with. It does not tries to address the arguments that piracy does not hurts vocaloid's sale significantly. To me it feels like a thought cancelling arguments. Like 'don't think whether piracy is that harmful or not, you don't need to pirate it!'.
I don't have problems with people pirating voicebanks to try, mess around with or make some covers. They are quite expencive I get that. I do have problems with people using pirated voicebanks for financial gain. By that point you're using something without the proper lisences and without premission from the creator. As far as I'm concerned that's theft.
Would you say the same about graphic designers who pirated photoshop? What about non-vocalsynth music producers who pirated a digital audio workstation? The layman's entry point into making *any* kind of creative work is often piracy due to the excessive upfront cost. Some people want to make pleasant noises and be able to pay their bills, dude.
Yar har illegal content
Games, music and movies on the internet!
All the world's treasures available now
But we're not pirates!
this is so based
so like, anyone know how i can yargh vocaloid?
el rincon de kitsune and rin rins utaus (for pirated vocaloid to utau ports)
long story short: pirate vocaloid since it's shit
Now what about miku RVC ai?
AI reproductions of Standard sample voicebanks are a whole different can of worms that would require their own separate discussion and are immaterial to the discussion of piracy.
At the very least, piracy does not give the user access to a different fidelity or aspects of the provider’s voice they did not consent to in a way that’s any different to a legitimate purchase, so the argument can be made that piracy doesn’t harm or defame the voice providers in a substantial way beyond the monetary.
@@joezcafe so its ethical to use AI versions. because The biggest flaw that non vocaloid fans say that vocaloids sound robotic. and AI completely solves just that. but the vocaloid fandom complety rejects it because it does not sound robotic
Should you pirate?
No. Not out of any other issue other then
1:The fandom reacts badly at times when producers get found out (mistrust)
2:Not all studios were super sucessful (we're talking about a software that is expected to sell 10,000 units per voicebank at most)
3:ITs a luxary item not an essential
4:UTAU exists and is free and using that software supports UTAUs fandom
5:A real singer can end up cheaper and honestly better if you have the right singer, Vocaloid isn't *THAT* good yet it can fully replace a human singing.
I think there is an argument for the out of print V1 and V2 software, but... You still can't sell anything with them and you're not suppose to put them on any format that can lead to money gain. But for your own pleasure? Maybe not so bad. The UK law I know tends not to care about pirating for private use, but get a bit more scarier when you sell pirated copies of things. Most also don't shun those using it as a trial version with the intent to buy later.
And to be fair... I'd say in terms of westerners, most of those buying it to begin with aren't taking it seriously, the number of people I've seen doing the "its a toy" routine basically is sad for a product aimed for professionals and amateurs. I've seen fans happy they own Kagamine Len, great, but you're not doing anything with it. In addition, you can't in the west make a career out of this and showing up to a demo reel or a university course with a demo of a song in Vocaloid... Isn't going to get any favors, the west is just tht bias against vocal synths.
I've always been a bit neutral on pirating, I am a casual pokeon fan and I own all the Ds-3DS era games, but... I origianlly pirated the GB-GBA era games and thus the pirating fuelled what I'd legitly own later. Pirating can be good, I think the sole thing that makes Vocaloid a hard thing when it comes to pirating is just the cost to studios. Yeah, miku sold 60,000+ Vocaloid 2 units, but... She actually had over 500,000+ pirated copies if I recall, most pirated versions were done via builk torrents. 500,000+ units is a scary high number. Singly, VY2 Vocaloid2 version had 40,000+ units pirated via torrent. When you go back to the V1 era and to be successful, kaito had to sell 1000 units and he sold a mere 500... You can sit there and work out... Hey... Somethings not right. ITs not like Minecraft where millions of copies were sold and a few pirated versions ain't hurting anyone. This is a legit cost to the companies at times.
But... ITs not the fans who can't afford to buy legit though that will be the ones hurting sales; its the ones who flat out refuse to pay for the software legity -full stop- even if they can afford it. Andf I've eben on the net since 1998/1999 and I know that the existence of pirated versions DOES have this consquences. I remember when there was drama with Ruby's release over the cover art, you can look this up, and someone said they should pirate Ruby to hurt her company PowerFX. EXcept... The sales meant that not only would her developer Syo get a bonus if she sold well, but they'd consider extra voicebanks. So PowerFX wouldn't be the one hurt; it was Syo who the fans were trying to support.
I think the main problem is people are putting far, far too much value on Vocaloid to begin with, right now... Vocaloid 6is supposedly due to be released in 2022, we're not sure when and how, but its due at somepoint. The Vocaloid brand as a name is famous, super famous, but in 2021 there are two other legit software called "CeVIO" and "Synth V" who are great contenders and are about to leap ahead of V5. So right now Vocaloid is relying on Yamaha to release a better software for V6 then whatever CeVIO and Synth V is doing. 2020 was a good year for Vocaloid but from 2013-2019, it was in a slump, in 2014 all vocal synht interest on Nico video dropped by between 40-60% with Vocaloid being one of the lesser hit and UTAU being one of the worst hit. What happened to sum it was; the Vocaloid craze ended. Still people call non-Vocaloid vocal synths "Vocaloid" showing how much the brand name has meaning to some people. The truth is, its not as good right now as it has been and it was always a chunky, clunky software to begin with.
The one thing is Yamaha also knows its brand has value and thus all their vocal synth tech now carries the name "Vocaloid" and "Vocaloid:AI" if its got IA in it. Yamaha's biggest issue is while it has access to resources other companies don't, its one of the many products it sells. With Miku having left for Miku NT, Vocaloid no longer has the voicebank its relied upon since 2007 to get 1/5 of all sales in.
So when talking about vocaloid and pirating, the reality of the situation of the vocaloid software can be summed at as; people react as though this will excel them to fame or they simply are giving the software far too much value to the point they'd steal it to own it, plus can forget only Miku was ever super popular to begin with.
i wonder if you even watched the video you humanoid pile of fecal matter jelly.
ok but u r english..... :/
And
@@joezcafe and the english are tories..... :/
Nah, just most of them
WHY IS THIS COMMENT SINGING LMAOOOO IT'S SO UNRELATED
They will need an official Zatsune miku patch for me to buy.