Steve the Pocket said:
Somehow I doubt this is the kind of "cred" that Vocaloids were searching for.
When I first become a Miku fan, in Sept 2012, the big news item giving Vocaloid "cred" was that Canadian techno artist deadmau5 had been seen wearing a Miku t-shirt. This shows how far we've come.
Most people don't realize that Miku is owned by a small software company in Sapporo, Crypton Future Media, and that organizing large complex concert tours for their Vocaloids is really not their line of business, nor is it a simple undertaking. This Gaga tour allows Crypton to learn from some of the best people in that business. And Crypton are benefiting from all this artistic, technical, logistical, and PR expertise, AT NO COST. I think it's brilliant.
I have a very strong suspicion, and it's been hinted at more than once, that this Gaga tour is just paving the way for a full Miku tour that is close to being finalized. Fingers crossed.
As for this "Miku is nothing but a marketing tool" thing, I just... I don't know. *deep breath*
Miku is the figurehead and focal point for a massive online creative collaborative community, all contributing however they can to bring life to Miku and the other Vocaloids. Around ten thousand create all of Miku's songs using the software Crypton sells. Tens of thousands more make art, design costumes, and create animations (using the free MikuMikuDance 3D animation software that was made by a Miku fan and has been extended by hundreds more; MMD is now one of the most widely used 3D animation programs). Others express Miku through dance, or cosplay, or make fansites, or online database systems for tracking many of her 100,000+ original songs (the best of which, vocadb.net, is run by a guy in Finland).
Miku may have started out as a "marketing tool" but she has grown and evolved and bifurcated in ways that nobody imagined possible. She is a vehicle for connecting an army of indie musicians to a massive fanbase, while completely blurring the lines between the two, and destroying our traditional notions of how media is created and consumed. She heralds a completely new way to produce, popularize, and distribute music, which has made the "Miku phenomenon" the subject of academic research across a half-dozen disciplines. At least one US university now teaches about Miku in their Anthropology department.
Sounds like a bit more than a marketing tool to me.
