Wildly Famous Japanese Pop Star Sells Thousands of Tickets in NYC. Also, She's A Hologram

Move over, Tupac. A new hologram just rocked the U.S.

Hatsune Miku, the computer-generated singing sensation, just finished the U.S. leg of her North American tour at New York's Hemmerstein Ballroom. And she appeared in person—well, in hologram.

Miku is known as a 'vocaloid,' or a virtual musician, whose music is created by 'singing synthesizer' technology that mimics a human voice-- specifically the voice of Japanese actress Saki Fujita. The software powering her is an application developed in 2007 by Crypton Future Media, a media company located in Sapporo, Japan.

 

The cool thing about Miku is that any fan can use the program to compose her songs. For about $200, aspiring producers can purchase software loaded with Hatsune Miku proprietary voices and begin making songs. After they've created a song, they can upload and share what they made.

Should a track take off within Miku’s active internet community, the song can become part of her onstage act. Miku’s albums are sold as compilations, and credit the online username of each song’s creator as its track artist.

With the increasing development of virtual reality technology, artists like Miku will certainly get a lot more common in the years to come.