Her popularity skyrocketed when the viral song 'Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru' and Otomania and Tamago's 'Ievan Polkka' video released to Nico Nico Douga, and she retains a prominent presence there to this day: the synthesized voice that sings the site's jingle is her, and she and her content creators still make and distribute videos for the platform. Her bio stated she was an android that came from a future with no music, and she wanted to spread her love of song to the world to keep that future from happening. Originally released as a Vocaloid program in Crypton Future Media's 'Character Vocal' series of singing synthesizers, Hatsune Miku note Eastern order 'Hatsune' being the surname set a lot of milestones for the software: not only was she the first Japanese vocal for the VOCALOID2 engine, she also was the first to have a real avatar (Most of the English banks of the day used stock photos, V1 predecessors KAITO and MEIKO's initial character designs were more decorative, and while Sweet Ann did have a themed avatar, it wasn't fully incorporated into the voice bank), the first to be marketed as a 'character''s voice rather than a replication, and the first to have any kind of story attached to her. Whatever you want to call her, if you're familiar with the Japanese music scene or especially the vocal synthesizer scene of the early 21st century, then chances are you've heard of her.
