Thousands of fans wave green glowsticks and scream as they wait for their idol to come on stage. Suddenly, she appears – or, more accurately, materializes in front of the audience, who roar in response.
The pop star commanding the crowd is Hatsune Miku, an influential virtual idol. Like a human act, virtual idols perform generally upbeat music while dabbling in a variety of other entertainment fields, all the while maintaining a strong bond with their fans. Yet they appear as a character – usually an anime-style one, though not always – and play live, utilizing projections and screens.
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Virtual idols come in different types. Some are simply ‘digital costumes’ for human artists, who prefer to become someone else and hide their real identity. Others serve as avatars for singing-synthesizer software, such as Miku, who is the personification of Yamaha Corporation’s Vocaloid technology. Users of Vocaloid create the music she sings, and Miku represents a large musical community.
Whatever form they take, virtual idols have become real stars around the world. This corner of J-pop can sell out arenas in Japan, with many idols beginning to tour outside of their home country. Few have been as busy as Miku, who has appeared in dozens of countries, played the famous Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and opened for Lady Gaga.
She plays London’s The O2 on 12 November 2026, the first virtual musician to headline the venue and another sign of how big virtual idols are becoming.
The first virtual idols
The extreme growth in popularity of idols in Japan began in the 1970s , when young women such as Sakurada Junko and Yamaguchi Momoe became stars. In the years that followed, groups such as Pink Lady and solo performers like Matsuda Seiko further defined what a female idol was, while male acts such as Gō Hiromi or Shōnentai showed how men could exist in the role.
Efforts to create a ‘virtual’ version of this began in earnest in the 1980s. The fictional singer Lynn Minmay from the Macross anime series achieved real-world success with her 1984 single “Do You Remember Love?” which went as high as number seven on the Oricon music charts. Still, the voice behind Minmay – Iijima Mari – focused on her own career rather than fully becoming a character. A similar story unfolded in 1997 when video game character Fujisaki Shiori scored a hit.
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In 1996, the virtual pop star Date Kyōko debuted to much media coverage. She was purely digital, made using computer graphics, and presented as the world’s first virtual idol. Despite the hype, Date fizzled out and soon vanished from a landscape where humans still dominated. At this point, human idols still weren’t impacted by virtual attempts at creating a pop star, with the latter being niche at best.
Vocaloid and Hatsune Miku change the game
Yamaha started developing a singing-synthesizer technology and software it would eventually call Vocaloid (stylized in all caps) in 2003. It emerged from earlier experiments in voice transformation, starting as something that would make singers sound better at karaoke before being developed into fully synthesized vocal software. The aim was to create a digital voice that sounded as human as possible.
A commercial version arrived a year later, allowing customers to generate human-like voices on their computer. Yamaha worked with various other companies to help fine-tune the product, including Crypton Future Media in Hokkaidō which created a character named Meiko to appear on the box.
Sales of the first generation of Vocaloid were slow. The best-performing version was Crypton’s Meiko option. For the second instalment of Vocaloid (Vocaloid2), Crypton created a new character to represent the software. That was Hatsune Miku, launched in 2007.
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Miku became a smash hit. Priced at around ¥15000 (roughly £70), an estimated 40,000 units of Miku’s vocaloid were sold over the following year. A vibrant online community devoted to Vocaloid music developed on the then-emerging video site Nico Nico Douga. Anyone could create music featuring Vocaloid voices, and over the years nearly every genre has been explored with Miku’s voice. It was a way for anyone to share their creativity. Fanart of Miku and other Vocaloid characters started appearing all over the internet.
‘Hatsune Miku has captured so many hearts in Japan because she is designed as a wonderful blank canvas, a character with no set personality, which lets every single fan and creator project their own feelings, stories and musical dreams right onto her,’ Yuki Madoka, artist relations manager at YouTube Japan who works with many Vocaloid creators, says. She also points to Crypton’s copyright policy, allowing fan works to flourish.
As Vocaloid artists started gaining more recognition with a diverse range of sounds featuring synthesized singing, Miku herself became an entertainment force. She starred in ads, collaborated with Louis Vuitton, appeared in video games and played sold-out shows across the country. Despite being a character tied to software, Miku became a true celebrity.
Virtual YouTubers
Miku remained a force in Japanese music during the 2010s, but halfway through the decade a new kind of virtual idol appeared online called ‘Virtual YouTubers’ or VTubers. This new development started in late 2016 with the arrival of Kizuna AI, an anime-style woman wearing a big pink bow who operated a YouTube channel where she shared music, played video games, took part in various challenges and just talked to viewers. She was like an influencer, but one portrayed by a cartoon avatar.
Whereas Miku represented an entire community of creators, VTubers were individuals who preferred using an avatar to perform, utilizing motion-tracking technology to generate realistic movement. Kizuna AI quickly became a hit, inspiring more Japanese creators to adopt anime-style images. Some specialized in gaming, others were singers or rappers, and some focused on just chatting. Entire companies such as Cover Corp. and Anycolor Inc. started to get into the world of VTubing.
VTubers and other virtual singers function closer to traditional idols or influencers than the user-controlled Miku. Fans develop a connection with them like they would a traditional singer or YouTuber, but with an added fantasy element thanks to the anime style most embrace. Similarly, they work with producers and songwriters to create original music, which can range from ballads to rock numbers to experimental tunes winning praise from music critics.
VTubing, like Vocaloid before it, has become mainstream. VTubers collaborate with major brands, appear on TV and put on concerts to sold-out crowds. Virtual idols like KAF and Hoshimachi Suisei have made history by playing the Nippon Budōkan, the Tokyo venue where The Beatles once played. Some of their songs, such as Suisei’s 2024 single “BIBBIDIBA”, became mainstream hits, bringing virtual artist music to a greater audience.
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‘In a world where there is so much pressure on how we look or act, the avatar acts as a liberating mask that lets creators bypass those real-world anxieties and just share their raw, authentic selves,’ Yuki says. ‘Because of this, fans feel like they are connecting with pure talent and personality.’
From online to the world
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Virtual idols of all types have started to become more prominent around the globe. Hatsune Miku has played shows all over the world, while also appearing at major music festivals and popping up on TV shows. Vocaloid artists utilizing her voice now come from the US, UK, South Korea and beyond.
VTubers, meanwhile, have begun collaborating with global brands and putting on sold-out concerts in places like New York and Los Angeles. VTubers from every nation can be found on YouTube, while major companies have started branches in places like the US and Indonesia to capitalize on growing interest. Reports say the entire VTuber market in 2026 is worth over US$3 billion, with expectations for it to grow in the next decade.
At its core, though, is the same connection with fans that was so important to human idols in Japan, now going international. Fans of Hatsune Miku and other singing-synthesizer characters can buy the software to create and share their own works starring them, while also easily being able to create fanart and videos. VTuber fans can join live chats to interact with their favourite personalities… or, using innovations in technology, become one themselves.
‘The future of Hatsune Miku and virtual artists is heading toward a world where the boundary between “virtual” and “real” completely dissolves, progressing towards an era of fully integrated, hybrid entertainment,’ Madoka says.
About the writer
Patrick St. Michel is a writer based in Tokyo covering Japanese music and pop culture. His work has appeared in The Japan Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork, NME and more. He founded the blog Make Believe Melodies in 2009, and has contributed an entry to the celebrated 33 1/3 music book series.