Vocaloid
Originally, Hiroyuki Ito—President of Crypton Future Media—claimed that Hatsune Miku was not a virtual idol but a kind of the Virtual Studio Technology instrument. However, Hatsune Miku performed her first "live" concert like a virtual idol on a projection screen during Animelo Summer Live at the Saitama Super Arena on August 22, 2009. At the "MikuFes '09 (Summer)" event on August 31, 2009, her image was screened by rear projection on a mostly-transparent screen. Miku also performed her first overseas live concert on November 21, 2009, during Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore. On March 9, 2010, Miku's first solo live performance titled "Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39's Giving Day" was opened at the Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba, Tokyo. The tour was run as part of promotions for Sega's "Hatsune Miku: Project Diva" video game in March 2010. The success and possibility of these tours is owed to the popularity of Hatsune Miku and so far Crypton is the only studio to have established a world tour of their Vocaloids.
Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari
During the production of the 2009 anime series "Bakemonogatari", Supercell was asked to compose what would later become the ending theme song "Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari". It was already decided that Supercell would release their debut album "Supercell" in March 2009, which used the Vocaloid singing synthesizer Hatsune Miku as the vocalist. In place of Miku, Supercell employed the singer Nagi Yanagi, a vocalist who had previously submitted cover versions of songs to the Nico Nico Douga video sharing website under the name Gazelle. "Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari" was the first release by Supercell to not use Miku as the vocalist. Yanagi was chosen for "Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari" by Ryo, who had been a fan of her voice even before uploading his own songs to Nico Nico Douga in late 2007. Roughly the next day after Ryo uploaded Supercell's first song "Melt" onto Nico Nico Douga in December 2007, Yanagi uploaded a cover of her singing the song. Yanagi, who was herself a fan of Ryo's music, contacted him and the two talked about someday collaborating.