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The Harsh Realities of VOCALOID on Nico

14 CommentsWednesday • January 4, 2012 • by

Video screenshot

A video detailing the “harsh realities” of VOCALOID videos on Nico Nico Douga had been uploaded recently. In it, the video draws on statistics collected about VOCALOID tagged videos that were uploaded between July 1 and December 15 of last year and highlights some conclusions, such as the fact that less than five percent of these videos had reached 5000 views. The author used Keynote to do the animations and had the VOICEROID+ version of Yuzuki Yukari narrate the entire video. The raw data for the video can also be downloaded as well.


Here’s a play-by-play of what was mentioned in the video:

  • The 28,587 videos considered in the statistics received the following long-tail breakdown in terms of number of views:
    0~99 100~249 250~499 500~999 1000~4999 5000~
    3853 (13.48%) 8053 (28.17%) 6750 (23.61%) 4530 (15.85%) 4048 (14.16%) 1353 (4.73%)
  • The top 4.73% could be further broken down into:
    5000~9999 10000~24999 25000~49999 50000~99999 100000~249999 250000~
    612 (2.141%) 361 (1.263%) 154 (0.539%) 121 (0.423%) 78 (0.273%) 27 (0.094%)
  • The breakdown by number of comments was:
    0~9 10~24 25~49 50~99 100~500 500~
    12771 (43.91%) 7815 (26.87%) 3483 (11.97%) 2239 (7.70%) 2056 (7.07%) 723 (2.49%)
  • and the breakdown by number of mylists (faves) was:
    0~9 10~24 25~49 50~99 100~500 500~
    11219 (39.25%) 6881 (24.07%) 3917 (13.70%) 2602 (9.10%) 2800 (9.79%) 1168 (4.09%)
  • The six VOCALOIDs with the highest number of videos uploaded were:
    Miku Rin GUMI Luka Len KAITO
    9904 2811 2107 2103 2021 1404

    with Miku way ahead of the pack and Rin managing to pull slightly ahead of the rest and the rest of the VOCALOIDs having less than 1000 videos each.

  • When sorted by number of total views (or by number of mylists) across all videos for a particular singer, Miku still came out on top with 23847081 views and 1943303 mylists, followed by GUMI this time, with 9538464 views and 929810. Rin came in third with 5327456 views and 477046 mylists, and Len managed with 4555580 views and 413901 mylists to edge past Luka, who had 3855998 views and 301640 mylists. KAITO rounds up the top six with 1561894 views and 118479 mylists.
  • When sorted by average number of views per video, GUMI managed to come out on top with 4527.04 views (and 441.3 mylists), followed surprisingly by VY2 with an average of 3972.28 views per video (and 314.21 mylists). Miku came in third with 2407.82 views per video (and 196.21 mylists). Len followed with 2254.12 views per video (and 204.8 mylists, which was more than Miku’s). Rin’s 1895.22/169.71 and Luka’s 1837.94/143.78 round out the top six. The overall average number of views per video regardless of singer was 2309.14 and the average number of mylists was 195.67.
  • The video then went into talking about the difference between the average(mean) and the median, noting that the median gives a better view of what is the “typical” video. The reasoning was that a famous producer who uploaded a popular song would gain so many hits that it would skew the average by a large amount, with VY2 cited as an example of this happening and “Ie no Ura de Manbou ga Shinderu P” being the famous producer in question. The median number of views per video was 316 and the number of mylists was 14. When sorted by median number of views, GUMI still remains on top with 485 views and 34 mylists. However, second place is now taken by MEIKO with 423 views and 21 mylists. She was followed by KAITO with roughly the same numbers — 414 views and 19 mylists. GAKUPO also appeared now with 375 views and 17 mylists. Len and Rin rounded out the top six with 355 views/16 mylists and 349 views/16 mylists respectively. The narrator noted at this point that Miku, who had been in every ranking so far, failed to make the top six.
  • The video then moved on to compare videos tagged with VOCALOID on Nico Nico Douga with videos from some other major tags that the video creator chose — Utattemita (videos of people singing other people’s songs), Touhou, IDOLM@STER, Let’s Play (videos of people playing games both popular and niche while commenting on them), and Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play (videos where the commenting is done by the yukkuri voice synthesizer).
  • In terms of total number of videos, Let’s Play came up on top with 151558 videos, followed by Utattemita with 92431, VOCALOID with 28587, Touhou with 26011, Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play with 21356 and IDOLM@STER with 20888. When sorted by total views, Let’s Play was again on top with 128831932 views, followed by Utattemita with 100604483 views. Even with its small number of total videos, Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play managed to snatch third in terms of number of total views with 82572199 views. VOCALOID, Touhou and IDOLM@STER finish with 66011483 views, 62125502 views and 39801816 views respectively. However, when sorted by total number of mylists, Utattemita comes out on top with 6189936 mylists, followed closely by VOCALOID with 5593727 mylists. Touhou, Let’s Play, IDOLM@STER and Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play finish with 2307034 mylists, 1912968 mylists, 1453916 mylists and 1152802 mylists respectively. The narrator at the point comments on the possibility that it’s easier to get mylists for music-centric videos.
  • When sorted by average number of views per video, Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play comes out on top with 3866.46 views per video (which were only surpassed by GUMI and VY2 if only VOCALOID was considered), followed by Touhou with 2388.43, VOCALOID with 2309.14, IDOLM@STER with 1905.4, Utattemita with 1088.48 and Let’s Play with shockingly only 850.05 views per video. In terms of mylists, VOCALOID dominated with 195.67 mylists per video, followed by Touhou with 88.69, IDOLM@STER with 69.60, Utattemita with 66.97, Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play with 53.98 and the normal Let’s Play with 12.62. When sorted by median number of views per video, IDOLM@STER now came up on top with 560 views, followed by Yukkuri Voice Let’s Play with 523, Touhou with 359, VOCALOID with 316, Utattemita with 86 and Let’s Play with 57. When sorted by median number of mylists, VOCALOID came out on top with 14, followed closely by IDOLM@STER with 13, Touhou with 6, Yukkuri Let’s Play with 5, Utattemita with 3 and the regular Let’s Play with 1 (i.e. at least 75000 videos are only on one mylist, most likely the uploader’s).

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  • http://twitter.com/soft_n_fluffy Anonymous

    I saw this video before on the ranking.  Thanks for the translated info.  I don’t think this data is too harsh, it’s pretty much what I expected.  Not every song can be a zinger. 

  • Redemption2

    I see a major issue with these results, mainly the fact that a lot of Vocaloid videos on both Nico and Youtube are extremely unpopular vocal replacements, which essentially are the original VSQs using different voices and only minor tweaks.  These garner very few hits and even less in popularity because they are not original.  There are a few, such as the Rin/Len duet arrangements of Unhappy Refrain and Bad Bye, which are essentially their own PVs with remixed audio along with the vocals, that do make it into high popularity because the work was actually put into it.

    I’m reasonably certain that these results would be skewed at least slightly to the left because of these entries.  It would be near impossible to filter out these duplicates.  If we looked at the same thing for the Utaran, I’m sure it would also look similar if not even further skewed because of the amount of Utau to duplicate with.

  • Dasd

    Thanks for the translation on the stats. Not too shocking though – the distribution of views looks pretty sensible to me. There are so many videos and only so much time to watch, and even less time to weed through all the mediocre stuff and uninspired remixes to get to the good stuff.

    This is why I only watch the Weekly Rankings and branch out from there based on videos and composers featured in it. I’m sure there are wonderful songs that don’t get many views but how am I supposed to watch much more than (if even) one percent of over 28 thousand videos *in only five and a half months*?

    I cat even keep up with all new songs from Ps I really love.

  • http://twitter.com/sn0w75 Ben C.

    I don’t think it’s too surprising. Not many people actually became rich in gold rushes, not many singers become hits, not many businesses become giants, etc. etc.

    The thing that sets Vocaloid apart is the community that has grown around it, a community that praises amateurs as well as professionals, and encourages collaboration and pooling of talent to make even greater creations.

  • http://twitter.com/xheidenx ヘイデン

    Extremely useful translation, hightrancesea-san! Thanks for the hard work!!

  • FormX

    Thanks for the translations.

    My response: “Duh?”

    “So why the title?”

  • http://twitter.com/BenjRose Benjamín Rosa

    Not surprising at all. I mean, that’s nearly as how a normal music industry moves. There are thousands of songs every year and only a few dozens of them become popular. There are surelly good songs, but for every good song or hit, there are fifty parody songs, covers and squeaky works from amateurs that make a song in an afternoon quickly…

    Surely this stats of Youtube singers and producers would be more or less the same thing.

  • tropi

    Not that harsh, not that surprising, but great read nonetheless. Though I am surprised VY2 got a rank in there…

  • http://twitter.com/mrquadrant4 MrQuadrant4

    It’s nice to see the hard numbers like this. I’m at least happy Luka still does well enough to be in the top six :D

    As mentioned by others, the realities are not all that surprising. There are too many videos competing for our attention and only the very best work is going to be recognized and that even depends on good networking so the word gets out. That is the harsh reality of user-generated-content.

    I also stick with the weekly Vocaran or specific P’s I like for most of my Vocaloid needs. Even with the Vocaran I tend to ignore everything that is below rank 30 for that week. Its just overload trying to listen to every new song released week after week. The top 30 is good enough for me.

  • Cerrid

    This is extremely interesting. I’m glad to see something like this get translated.

    Sadly, it’s exactly as I expected it to be. People just rely on what other people say is popular to choose what to listen to, and so many amazing producers end up left in the dust, especially those that don’t use the Cryptonloids or Gumi.

    While I can understand people not wanting to spend time sorting thorough songs that they aren’t sure they’ll like, I still feel bad for the producers that get no comments or feed back when another producer is getting over 2 mil views.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Johanna-Knabe/100002679256446 Johanna Knabe

    very interesting but whats more stunning for me is how smooth yuzuki yukaris voiceroid version is

  • Huehuehue

    Now everyone go and listen to 赤シャツP’s music to get him over 5,000 on all songs.

  • Tan Guan Nian

    AWESOME!!!

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