Image source: みっれ

The views expressed here are the opinions of a single user, and are not necessarily affiliated with Vocaloidism and its staff.

Recently, there has been a lot of hype and reaction to iroha removing his famed “Meltdown” video from Nico Nico Douga.  I myself have submitted my opinion on it elsewhere and will not waste time by repeating it here.  Ever since, there have been theories emerging as to how the Countdown will be affected by this new development.  Thanks to my peers on this blog, I have come to realize that it is not actually “Meltdown” being pulled that is causing the rankings to fall, it just triggered and brought to light an issue that would have eventually happened anyway.  The rating system for the Countdown is on the verge of collapse.

Ever since Meltdown disappeared from the countdown, we’ve all been keeping an eye on the points, and them steadily dropping.  Some people are fearing that Vocaloid is fading out of popularity, but that isn’t the case at all.  The case is that Nico Nico Douga is running out of new users.  There are over 170 million people in Japan inhabiting under 146,000 square miles.  Nico Nico Douga was launched December 12, 2006.  That nearly three year timespan is more than enough time for everyone and their mother in Japan to have a user account.

If you look at the way the countdown works, points are awarded when a user either views a video or when the video is added to the user’s MyList.  More points are awarded for MyList adds than views.  This is where the wrinkle arises.  If you look at MyList itself, it is finite in its capacity.  Free users can only create twenty-five MyList folders (usually one is reserved for your own works) and 100 videos in each.  That leaves, potentially, 2,400 possible spots to fill with favorites.  The paid subscription increases the folder size to 500 videos in each, leaving potentially 12,000 possible spots to be filled.  That may seem like a lot of videos at first, however this statistic overlooks the fact that you can only have one instance of a video in a folder at a time!  This means that no matter how many video spots you have available, one user can only have a maximum of 25 MyList subscriptions go towards the points!

With Vocaloid producers ever expanding their boundaries, more users are finding songs they like and adding them to their lists, removing some of the old ones to free up more space.  And as users are getting wiser, they’re saving some of their folders for later, just in case they want to make different playlists as the amount of videos increases.  This is the reason for the reduction of points in the countdown from MyListers.  They are using finite entries to take stock on videos that may very well exist forever.

What we are seeing in the aftermath of the “Meltdown” meltdown is nothing that wouldn’t happen eventually.  It’s just more noticeable now.  New users are not adding multiple instances of the videos to their MyList folders, and there are fewer applicants to NND, since most of Japan has already signed up.  So the MyList amounts are starting to slip and reduce.

Though I have no right to tell them anything, there are two ways to save the Countdown, and all the other Countdowns within NND.

1:  Recalculate the Ranking Formula to rely less on the limited MyList entries, and more towards the infinite hits and downloads.  With people trying to conserve their folders, popularity can’t be judged heavily on it anymore.  Hits, barring spammers, are more indicative of popularity, and should be better represented.

2:  Open up NND to the world.  Create English-language pages and registration, and spread the smiles out to every nation.  That would open a floodgate of new users, hits, and MyList subscriptions never before seen.  With the amount of users that await, there wouldn’t be a tapering off of MyList subscriptions until long after NND is obsolete.

As the weeks continue on, we will most likely see more reduction in MyList subscriptions, and many will be knocked from the Countdown because of it, even though the videos themselves are extremely popular.  I feel that the Countdown is no longer indicative of a video’s true popularity, and needs to be adjusted to be more fair to it.

Editor’s note: Please try to include an starting image for your future posts, thanks. – DT

Today, #8, #7, #6, #5, #4, #3, #2, and #1 are awesome. Yes, that’s all of them. (And yes, no songs in #a to #f is awesome, although #b and #c is pretty awesome…). It’s rare for the daily ranking to be this good… Read on for the complete details.

• #8 This is another song made to celebrate Hatsune Miku’s birthday. It’s truly awesome. Calm, but nice, and awesome overall. I love this song!
• #7 Now, don’t ask me what this is, since I don’t know either. Anyways, it seems that it’s a new version of Black Rock Shooter, with a hilarious PV (watch it yourself and you’ll understand).
• #6 Of course, Hatsune Miku -Project DIVA-. Read more about it in my recent post. This PV received 35,000 points…
• #5 Another thing that I don’t know, but it’s World is Mine on the background… Why is the daily VOCALOID ranking filled with randomness and craziness nowadays?
• #4 The title said “Vocalomania SPEED” by Hatsune Miku, and the preview song features a speedy version of Miku Miku ni Shiteageru… And if you look at the tag, “SweetAnn” is there. So that means that SweetAnn is singing in the song too… Interesting…
• #3 This is BEYOND wierd. An Anime-Style PV for Nico Nico Douga Kumikyouku with Anime Cameo appearance such as Yu-Gi-Oh! It’s awesome! Can’t wait for the finished full version!
• #2 Ah, finally another *normal* song (enough craziness on this daily ranking). This song is really awesome, and it’s calm and pretty light, about the countryside (correct me if I’m wrong…)
• #1 Nico Nico Douga Ryuuseigun… After the Orchestra, there’s now the All-VOCALOID version. And it is epic. So epic that it received 500,000 points in one day, beating the last week’s weekly ranking winner by double the points. Anyway, in this song, each VOCALOID takes turn in singing the song (in some song, like in the Okkusenman!! Okkusenman!! part, each and every VOCALOID sings the song), you could see who’s singing by seeing the icons at the bottom right part of the screen on the video. (Leek, Orange, Banana, Ice, or some sort of can?)
• #b A pretty good song by Kagamine Rin and Len… The background instruments sound awesome!
• #c This Hatsune Miku song is also pretty good…

That’s it for today, see you tomorrow!