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Help / About

VocaDB
Vocaloid
Guidelines

Overview

VocaDB is a free to use database for discography information about Vocaloid and related voice synthesizers such as UTAU. The main goal of the site is to have accurate, translated entries for as many artists, their albums and songs as possible. At the same time, we try to promote the Vocaloid artists by making their works more widely known, and if available, offer ways to purchase those. Anyone is able to contribute and correct existing information by creating an account. Vocaloid artists are encouraged to add their own information, thus providing a way to promote themselves. Registered users may add lyrics and PVs to songs. Entries may be tagged with specific genres and other meta-information. Popular doujin events such as The Vocaloid M@ster may also be tracked. The site is designed so that it would be comfortable to use by fans around the world, including both western and Japanese users.

We specialize in Vocaloid and UTAU content, both Japanese and overseas, so the site includes multiple features designed with that in mind. For that reason, the site supports embedding media, such as PVs from Niconico, YouTube and piapro (among other sites), that are popular among the community. Users can choose to view titles in the original language or see translated names instead.

VocaDB is not a music sharing site. Illegal album downloads are not allowed. However, we are eager to promote artists who are sharing their music for free. Whenever possible, album entries contain links to websites where you can purchase the albums.

Registration benefits

As an unregistered user, you can browse and search for Vocaloid songs, producers, circles, PVs and song lyrics.

A free registration is required in order to

customize your display language and date formatting
contribute information to VocaDB
add songs to your favorites and songlists
list your personal collection of Vocaloid albums
participate in the discussions
tag albums, artists and songs
among other things

I found an error, what should I do?

If you encounter incorrect or missing information, you can let us know by using the report feature, or better yet, create an account and correct it yourself. Please read the guidelines first, though, and familiarize yourself with the conventions of this site by examining old entries. If you have a technical problem with the site, please contact us.

For artists and other content creators

Are you a producer, illustrator, animator, or some other content creator working with Vocaloid/UTAU music or videos? If you have published any songs/videos on services like Niconico, YouTube or SoundCloud, we welcome you to add an entry for yourself (and your circle) to our database. First, make sure that your entry hasn't already been added by someone else. After your entry has been added, you can submit an account verification request, which allows you to be marked as the legitimate owner of that entry.

For developers and webmasters

Do you have a site or service that concerns Vocaloid/UTAU discography? We'd be happy to help you, and we're prepared to share the information on our site with other similar services. Currently, we have a limited public API for basic queries, supporting XML and JSON, and it's possible to expand it as needed.

We're offering our own embeddable VocaDB player. VocaDB embeddable player can be used on any website, just like you'd embed YouTube or NND. With VocaDB's embeddable player, you'll get translations for the song title and artist name, and the user can switch between video services. There's also a link to VocaDB for additional information. The embeddable player supports OEmbed.

Finally, we have a tooltip library that can be used to add informational tooltips to VocaDB links on your site.

Please contact us for more details and requests.

Licensing and data sharing

VocaDB's contents are considered open data. You're free to use the information from this website in the way you see fit. However, we ask that when directly copying information from VocaDB you'd include a note stating that you got that information from VocaDB. Generally, when downloading data from VocaDB to your site, it's a much better idea to use the programmatic APIs rather than copying by hand. This also ensures the data stays up to date.

Scraping a large number of pages using an automated bot is forbidden without an explicit permission and may lead to banning your IP from accessing the site. Please contact us if you wish to download all entries from the site. We can provide an XML dump of the complete contents of the site upon request.

Privacy policy

VocaDB respects the privacy of its users. We will not share your personal details with third parties in any case. Email addresses, IP addresses and passwords are considered sensitive information and will never be exposed through the APIs. Users' passwords are stored in the database as encrypted and salted.
VocaDB offers some privacy options: for example, all edits made by the users are public, but users are able to restrict whether their name should appear on the front page. In order to prevent abuse, we log the IP addresses of the users accessing the site, but this information is strictly available to moderators only. We do not use cookies to track user activity. However, cookies are used to store certain user-related settings such as the display language. We use Google Analytics to track the number of users accessing the site, but Google Analytics will never identify individual users. For avatars, we use Gravatar, which retrieves a user's profile picture based on their email address. The original email address is never revealed - only the hash.

Staff

A big thank you to our major contributors: digited, Zakudono, salanos, kyllakivi, Goship, mi.chan, gaminat, Wiktor, Shiroizu, Ota-kun, Hissori, nebulasresolution, megaki11, faerimagic and others.

Japanese translation by Japanese Ninja No.1.

Contact Us

support[at]vocadb.net
Code on Github
You can also contact the moderators or administrators directly on the site if you have questions.

Main description

Wikipedia article
Vocaloid wiki

Short description

Vocaloid is a unique subculture of user-created content (music, illustrations, videos, software, games, cosplay, events) based on voice synthesizers and their mascots.

Vocaloid synthesizer software is a digital musical instrument to create human vocals, allowing anyone to have their personal virtual singer.

The first Vocaloid "singers," Leon and Lola, were released in 2004 in the English language, but weren't successful. Vocaloid technology became popular in 2007 in Japan with the Japanese voicebank "Hatsune Miku" (first for the VOCALOID2 engine in Japan, second in the world after Sweet Ann).

Being a great and fresh combination of a decent V2 voicebank and a snazzy boxart illustration, Hatsune Miku gained unexpected, unprecedented and massive success and became the symbol of all Vocaloid technology and subculture.

Why in Japan?

The simplest language for synthesis in the world, Japanese has syllable-based phonetics as well as no accents and no rhyme concept in poetry
Popular anime style (moe catalyst)
A lot of dōjin (self-published) activity
Traditional high-pitched female vocal
Diverse and active musical scene--a lot of indie musicians
Pop-idols and virtual pop-star concepts in anime (Sharon Apple in "Macross Plus", 1994)

Japan happened to be the best country for a popularity breakthrough of the Vocaloid technology.

Features of Vocaloid

Vocaloid synthesizer software is treated as a musical instrument, so it is free to use for any purpose.
Piapro license initiative from Crypton Future Media permits the non-commercial usage of their mascot images.
Decentralization. No one commands the community what to do and how to do it. All content (music, videos, illustrations) is created by users themselves for their own purposes (fun, self-expression, selling).
Collaboration of song writers, musicians, illustrators, animators and programmers.
Self-promotion of Vocaloids and producers. Basically, the community chose Miku and made her popular (as well as GUMI).
Sharing of music and support principles. Most Vocaloid music and videos are freely available on NND, Piapro and YouTube, and still the community supports producers by buying their albums. It is possible for and being done by people who live outside Japan, too. Musical instruments, hardware, software and learning cost a lot, and producers are mostly indie musicians, so every sold CD is important for them. If you really like the music that was done by a Vocaloid producer, please support him.
Concerts are also a large part of the Vocaloid subculture. Vocaloid mascots are projected onto a transparent screen and perform "live" with a real band.

PV

Promotional Videos are being used to attract listeners to Vocaloid songs, becoming part of the songs, the form of art by itself and a part of Vocaloid subculture.

Japanese flash video streaming service Niconico (originally called Nico Nico Douga or NND) greatly helped in the popularization of Vocaloid in Japan and is used for uploading new Japanese Vocaloid songs and videos, live streaming of concerts, presentations and other events.

Sound quality of videos on YouTube and Niconico

NND videos have various sound quality - from MP3 CBR 64 kbps in "economy" mode to AAC VBR ~370 kpbs, but generally it is higher than on YouTube, that has AAC VBR ~128 kbps in most videos (same for all video resolutions).

MMD

MikuMikuDance (MMD for short) is a free, popular and powerful 3D animation software made by Yu Higuchi (HiguchiM) for Vocaloid Promotional Videos.

MMD is a part of the success of Hatsune Miku and is also a subculture itself, having MMD Cup championships and being used to produce animation for memes, Touhou, IDOLM@STER, etc.

Producer

Description on Vocaloid Wiki

"Producer" is the term used for any person that produces Vocaloid-related audiovisual material, generally original music or fanmade PVs.

Circles and Labels

Dōjinshi circle is a group of authors of self-published works that may act as a label for dōjin events (Comiket or Vocaloid M@ster).

Record label is a company that provides professional studio services (instruments, recording, mastering), production of CDs, various promotion and copyright protection. The most well known Vocaloid label is KarenT, created by Crypton Future Media.

General principles

Avoid submitting entries that already exist in the database. Duplicates have to be deleted or merged by the staff.
When editing entries that are finalized or approved (not drafts), make sure you have a good reason, and preferably state that reason in the edit notes unless it's obvious. If you're unsure of whether your edit is appropriate and necessary, ask in the comments, on Twitter, in discussions, or by email.
This is a database for Vocaloid content and related voice synthesizers such as UTAU. Instrumental songs and human-sung covers are allowed when they appear on albums together with Vocaloid songs, or there's a significant number of Vocaloid covers of those songs. Albums without Vocaloid vocals are generally not relevant to our focus. Completely unrelated content will be deleted.
Download links to illegal file-sharing sites that provide no useful information (like Mediafire/4Shared/Torrents) are NOT allowed. Links to informative blogs/forums/wikis are allowed but should be categorized as "Unofficial" or "Reference". The staff members reserve the right to remove any links deemed inappropriate.
Direct download links to media files (such as .mp3) are generally not allowed, even if they're official and legal. If the song/video is officially distributed, link to the artist's official download page (for example on piapro) instead.
Creating multiple user accounts is not allowed. Any kind of abuse, manipulation of ratings or spamming will not be tolerated.
VocaDB strives for objectivity. Advertising in comments or entry descriptions is forbidden without prior approval by a staff member. Verified artists are allowed to post advertisements in the "personal description" field for entries they manage.

Language

The official language of the site is English. Please prefer using English for all non-translateable information. For example, when adding external links, the descriptions of those links should be in English. Discussions and tags should also be mainly in English. Other languages are allowed with a good reason, for example, if a specific piece of information cannot be properly translated into English.
We're looking into the possibility of allowing other languages in the future, at least for descriptions and discussions.

How can I add new producers, albums and songs?

Names and translations

All names should primarily be written in the original language, which usually means Japanese, but it can also be English or Korean, for example. The system supports 4 language options:

"Non-English" covers original names in all languages that aren't English or romanized, for example Japanese.
"Romanized" is for foreign original names written in the Latin (western) alphabet. Usually this means Romaji.
"English" is for official names in English and known translations of foreign names.
"Unspecified" is for names where the language doesn't matter or it's unknown. Unspecified names will never be used as display names of an entry if a name of a different option is provided.

If the original language is English, the name should be written in the English language field. Otherwise, it's written to the "Non-English" language field. If those names have commonly used romanizations or English translations, those can be entered as well to make it easier for the international audience to find and understand those names. Other names, for example translations to other languages, should be marked as "Unspecified" according to current rules. Sometimes, an entry may have multiple names in one language, for example a producer's real name and artist name. In this case, the additional names can be marked as "Unspecified" so that they won't be used as display names regardless of the entry's display option.
Sometimes, the Romanization or English name of the artist is always used, even though the artist also has a name in Japanese. In this case, the Japanese name should be marked as Unspecified so that it won't be used as a display name.

For more guidelines regarding Romanization, check the wiki article.

If the entry has multiple names in one language and it's not clear which one of those should be the primary one, you should refer to official information, such as product packaging. If the name in the album's cover doesn't conflict with the other rules on the site, that name should be preferred as the primary one.
However, keep in mind that sometimes the official information contains the same name in multiple languages combined into one. In this case you should enter the name separately for each language. For example, if the song is uploaded to Niconico with the name 秘密警察 - Himitsu Keisatsu, you should enter both names separately: 秘密警察 in the Non-English field and Himitsu Keisatsu in the Romanized field.

Registered users can set their display language so that they will always see the names in that language, if available. Unregistered users and users who haven't set their display language will see the original names, which may be either English or something else. For example, if the non-English name of an artist is ナナホシ, the romanized name is nanahoshi, and the default language option is set to "Original", then by default, users will see ナナホシ unless they have chosen to prefer romanized names instead.

Generally, there is no need to add composite names, and those names should be broken into separate fields.

is incorrect: every field should contain only one name.

Entry statuses

Entries that are marked as drafts have missing or incomplete information. The draft status is indicated on the entry's page. All entries should meet certain requirements before they can be marked as finished/completed. For now, these requirements are only suggestions, but in the future, they may be enforced more strictly. Of course, when editing an entry that meets these requirements, you can still mark it as draft if you feel that the entry needs further attention.

After the entry has been finished, it can be approved by a trusted user or staff member. Most properties of approved entries cannot be edited by users with normal permissions. Tags can still be edited by anyone and comments can be added. Trusted users are also able to change the status back from Approved to Finished or even Draft.
A note for trusted users regarding entry approval: You're encouraged to mark the entry as Approved when you've checked that all the necessary information is provided and it's correct. However, songs shouldn't be marked as approved until they have lyrics. When approving albums, make sure that ALL the artists have been added.

Artists, producers and Vocaloids

Artist types

Every artist has a classification which also determines the artist's default roles. Roles can be overridden per album and per song-basis, but in many cases the artist is involved only in one role.

"Producer" - the person who created the song (and in the case of a Vocaloid song, usually provided the vocals as well using Vocaloid). Not necessarily the original composer.
"Animator" - person who primarily animates PVs.
"Illustrator" - person who primarily draws static illustrations.
"Lyricist" - person who primarily composes lyrics for songs.
"Circle" - group that self-publishes and sells albums only at doujin events (such as Comiket or Vocaloid Master).
"Label" - a commercial company that publishes albums for other artists.
"Other group" - group that releases albums via Labels.
"Other vocalist" - human singers (NND vocalists/Utaite) and fan-made voice configurations (derivatives).
"Other voice synthesizer" - voice synthesizer voicebanks (machine voices) that aren't Vocaloid, UTAU or CeVIO.
"Other individual" - other people such as instrumentalists.

Artist pictures

When adding pictures to artists, keep in mind all the pictures should be related to the artist himself, not his works. Do not upload album covers for artist entries.
That said, there is no common rule for choosing the main picture of an artist. Photos of the artist himself as well as official logos are preferred. You may upload any number of these pictures as additional pictures for the artist, provided that they're relevant enough. Copyrighted pictures or pictures of artists may be taken down if the copyright holder requests it.
If no better picture is provided, any picture found on one of the artist's official profiles, for example on Twitter, is acceptable as well.

Should I create an entry for artist's personal circle?

Many Vocaloid artists have a personal band/circle through which they publish their albums. Often there are no other members in this circle. In this case, it's not necessary to create a separate entry for that personal circle, but it's not wrong either, and might be a good idea if the artist has separate websites/blogs for himself and his circle. If there is no separate entry for the circle, the circle name can be included as an alias for that artist. In that case, it would be advisable to mention this in the notes.

Completed artist entries should meet the following criteria:

The artist has at least one name whose language option isn't "Unspecified".
Artist type isn't "Unspecified".
The artist has a description OR at least one external link (to a wiki, artist's NND MyList etc.)

Albums

To assign producers and vocalists to songs in an album, add artists to the album first and then click on each added song in the song list to show a quick selection dialog.

Please note that the album must have at least one song with synthesized vocals (Vocaloid, UTAU and other voice synthesizers all count). Cover albums consisting only of human-sung covers of Vocaloid songs are unfortunately not allowed. Consider checking UtaiteDB. Unrelated albums may be deleted from VocaDB.

A note about fanmade compilations

Unofficial, fanmade compilation albums (bootlegs) where the authors don't have permissions to use the songs are generally not allowed. There can be some exceptions if the albums are widely known, for example the Hatsune Miku 1st Song Album. In any case, the staff members reserve the right to remove these entries should they deem it necessary.

Adding artists for albums

When linking artists to albums, at the very least you should add the responsible circle (usually there's only one) and vocalists. Individual producers and the associated record label (if any) can be added as well. At the moment, all artist types may be linked to albums.
Always enter artists individually. Artists such as "producer feat. vocalist", meaning "cosMo feat. Hatsune Miku", are not needed. The system will produce these "artists strings" automatically.
Sometimes, it's necessary to credit people that aren't in the database, and it doesn't make sense to add an entry for them. For example, if the song in the database is a remix/cover and the original isn't a Vocaloid song, the original composer doesn't need to be added to the database, but should be credited nevertheless. These "extra artists" can then be assigned into roles just like artists that are in the database. However, for all Vocaloid-related artists, it's necessary to create an entry for that artist.

Album types

The possible album types on VocaDB are:

"Original album" - Album that consists mostly of previously unpublished songs.
"Single" - Contains one or two individual tracks. Alternate versions (instrumentals and remixes) are usually not counted.
"EP" - Meaning extended play. Contains 3-4 individual tracks. Alternate versions (instrumentals and remixes) are usually not counted.
"Split album" - Collaboration between two or more (but usually just two) equal artists, where all artists have roughly the same number of songs.
"Compilation" - Collection of previously published songs, gathered from one or more earlier albums. For example, "best of" collections.
"Video" - Disc containing mostly music videos, usually a DVD or Blu-ray.
"Other" - For albums that don't fit into anything above.

These are only suggestions; use common sense when determining album type. For example, an album with a single song that by itself is as long as a regular album (the definition on Wikipedia says over 25 minutes) can be counted as "original album" instead of single. If unsure of which type to use, try to find out how the artists themselves call the album. For more elaborate descriptions, please refer to Wikipedia, Discogs or Musicbrainz.

Completed album entries should meet the following criteria:

The album has at least one name whose language option isn't "Unspecified".
All artists responsible for the album are specified. Usually there should be at least one producer and one vocalist. Whenever it makes sense, each of those artists should have an entry in the database. If you can't locate some of the artists, please leave the entry as draft.
Album type isn't "Unspecified". Try to find the correct type.
The album's release date, at least release year, is specified.
The album has a complete tracklist.

Songs

Song entries contain information about authors and vocalists (see "Artists" tab), PVs and lyrics.

is incorrect: all additional info (vocalists, authors, PV) should be added to appropriate fields. A song title should contain nothing more than the name itself.

Adding artists for songs

Most Vocaloid songs have one producer and one or more vocalists (i.e. Vocaloids). Circles, labels and other groups are generally NOT credited for individual songs, unless it's clear that the whole group worked on that song. Always prefer adding individual people to songs over adding circles or groups if possible. Note that different sources may swap producer and group names.

When tagging Vocaloids, you should use the information provided by the artist, not guess yourself. If the artist says the singer is Hatsune Miku, you should add Miku's original voicebank, even if you think the singer is actually an Append. Sometimes, the artist says the singer is Append, but doesn't specify which Append. In this case, you should choose Append (unknown). Do not guess unless you are sure.

In the case of a remix or cover, the original composer/lyricist of the song does not need to be credited if the original song is in the database.
If the original is a Vocaloid song, or a song featuring another voice synthesizer, add the original song to the database and link the original to the derived version, or if the original is not a Vocaloid song, add the composer as an "extra artist" (see album guide for more information). Remember to set this artist's role properly to Composer/Lyricist.

Song types

The most important distinction is between Original and others. Original always means that the song is a completely original production. If the song uses material from existing sources, it's a derived work and not original.

For instrumental songs, you should use the original song type if the instrumental version is the original. In this case, you should indicate that the song is an instrumental by tagging it with the instrumental tag. The instrumental song type is for instrumental versions of original songs. Usually, if the song is an original work and not a derivative, it should be marked as original. One exception to this rule is drama PVs. Because drama PVs are not songs, they should be separated from songs by using the Drama PV song type, even if the PV is a completely original production, like drama PVs usually are.

Song embeds and PVs

Songs may contain any number of embedded media files, such as Promotional Videos (PVs) on Niconico (NND), YouTube, Bilibili or Vimeo, or audio streams on Piapro or SoundCloud. All embeds should have the same version of the song, meaning the audio should be the same. Shortened versions are sometimes accepted. Do not add karaoke versions as embeds to the original song: either add the karaoke version as a link or create a new entry. Remixes should always be separate entries.
Very often, Vocaloid artists themselves upload their songs to NND, and sometimes to YouTube or SoundCloud as well, in which case these uploads are called "original". Original uploads, if available, are highly preferred to any others.
If a PV made for a song is remarkable or well-known in some way, you're encouraged to create a separate entry for that PV and link it to the original song.

"Original" - the first video with that song, usually uploaded by the author himself (may lack any animation). There may be multiple Original PVs if all are uploaded by the producer.
"Reprint" - should be identical to "Original"; most often it's a YouTube reprint of an original NND video, uploaded by someone other than the artist.
"Other" - any following PV with animation, translated subtitles, MMD versions, etc. May be better known than the original upload. Note that the audio should still be the same as the original.

Important note about raw file embeds: VocaDB supports embedding raw links to .mp3 files. For security reasons, the usage of this feature is limited to trusted users only. Only mp3 files are supported for now because it's the most widely supported format, but in the future we might allow other audio and video files as well.
To do that (assuming, you're a trusted user), simply input a URL pointing to a .mp3 file. The file must be publicly accessible and authorized by the artist - we do not support illegal distribution. If possible, try to make sure the artist has allowed embedding the file on other sites. Whenever adding a raw file as media, be sure to include a link to the official webpage where the link is from. If there is no such webpage, it's better not to add the media.
Finally, raw file embeds should mostly be used as fallback when the song isn't available on any other service. Especially if the song is officially on YouTube or SoundCloud, raw file embeds should not be added. Services like YouTube and SoundCloud have worldwide content delivery networks (CDNs) that most likely offer better performance than the artist's own server hosting the file.

Completed song entries should meet the following criteria:

The song has at least one name whose language option isn't "Unspecified".
The song has at least one artist (usually, there should be at least one producer and one vocalist).
Song type isn't "Unspecified".

Other guidelines

Applies to trusted users: when merging duplicate entries, prefer merging the newer entry to the older one, unless the new entry is finalized while the older one is draft.

Preferred display language