How to listen old Vocaloid songs

You are new to Vocaloid/Miku? You’re wondering which songs should you listen first?

Then come read this post and I will introduce you 2 quick ways to get familiar with Vocaloid/Miku 🙂.

1. Prerequisites

Before we get started, let’s make sure you have access to the following sites:

• Niconico
• Youtube

It’s better if you can understand some basic Japanese, or use a translator to understand Japanese.

2. The Main Idea

Vocaloid has been around for 10+ years. Numerous Vocaloid songs were created by various Vocaloid Producers. Some of these songs are famous and become the symbol of Vocaloid throughout the years.

Therefore, listening famous Vocaloid songs in the history is the best way to get familiar with Vocaloid.

Of course, it can’t be that easy to get known to Vocaloid history by just listening songs. Hence, when you listen a song, it’s also better to search about the background of this song, like the Vocaloid Producer who made that song, the wiki about that song, or any interesting story behind that song. We hope that by searching these information, we can gather pieces of information and slowly build up the whole picture of Vocaloid history.

Ok, so we get the main idea, but where can we find these famous Vocaloid songs? Well, there are 2 ways.

3. Way 1 - The Hall of Legend song list

Talking about a list of famous Vocaloid songs, Hall of Legend is the best candidate. It is a list of songs with 1,000,000 views on Niconico. Here is the list of Hall of Legend:

• VOCALOID伝説入りの一覧
• UTAU伝説入り
• CeVIO伝説入り

Similarly we have a YouTube version, but for ten million views: (because hitting 1 million views in Youtube is too easy)

• YouTube上播放数量超过1000万的VOCALOID歌曲

Nice, we have the song list, but hold on, there are（by the time of writing this post) 800+ songs in the list 😱. We don’t have the effort to listen all of them, don’t we? So, we can sort the Hall of Legend song list in a certain order, and then based on your patient level, you (as a Miku fan) decide how many songs do you want to listen.

3.1. Sorting the Hall of Legend song list

First, let’s draw a table like following:

The same table can be used for the YouTube list, but instead of 1M views, we use 10M views, same applied for all “1M views” mentioned in the rest of this post

Basically, we divide the song list into cells based on release date and the time taken to reach 1M views. Next, we walk the table row by row. In each row, we walk the cell from left to right. In each cell, we find songs that satisfy the condition. For example, the first cell is songs that released in 2007 and hit 1M views within 100 days. Then we listen to these songs before moving on to the next cell.

So what is the point of this table? Well, each row has a significate meaning:

• First Row: These songs hit 1M views in the very short time (within 100 days). These songs make great impact to the Vocaloid history. Hence we should listen to these songs first. Some examples are メルト, 千本桜, 砂の惑星, 乙女解剖, and etc.

• Second Row: These songs hit 1M views within 365 days. A year of time tbh is still a short period. These songs, although are not as famous as the first row, usually becomes the symbol in the year. For example, magnet from 2009, 夕景イエスタデイ from 2013, 太陽系デスコ from 2017, まにまに from 2022, and etc.

  If you are impatient

  The first two rows together around 100~200 songs should be enough to give you a rough understanding of the Vocaloid history.

  For those who are impatient, you can stop by here, but I still highly recommend you keep on going to the third row if you can.

• Third Row: This row contains many songs (probably around 300-500?). These songs took a considerable amount of time to reach 1 million views, but still, they achieved that milestone. In this row, you will experience the different styles of Vocaloid songs from different eras, showcasing the diversity of Vocaloid music styles that has accumulated over the years. That’s why I strongly recommend listening to the Vocaloid songs in this row.

Upon here, you should be pretty familiar with Vocaloid and know decent amount of famous Vocaloid songs, and even have some understanding of the Vocaloid history. If you are still interested in listening more, or want further understand more about Vocaloid, you can continue the last row, but it is optional.

4. Way 2 - Music Game

Simply following the Hall of Legend song list one song at a time may still be quite tedious, even though we have sorted the list. So is there a more funnier way to listen Vocaloid songs? Fortunately, yes! Let’s play music games 😄!

The idea is like this, if a song is included in a music game, then such song should be quite popular. So, by playing music games, you get the fun, and at the same time you get known to some popular Vocaloid songs.

The music game that all Miku fans must play (Yes, must play, I am serious) is:

• 初音ミク -Project DIVA- series

And choose at least one of the following music games to play:

• Fan-made Project DIVA simulation like PPD or Project HeartBeat. Or fan-made song packs added on top of official Project DIVA games.
• OSU
• Project SEKAI
• Arcade music games like CHUNITHM series or maimai series

The drawback of using music game to get known to famous Vocaloid songs is that you can’t sort songs by release date. Fortunately, I have a workaround for you for Project DIVA series.

Anyways, let’s talk about how can you get familiar with Vocaloid while having fun with music games.

4.1. Must play: Project DIVA series

The best Vocaloid music game is Project DIVA series with no doubt. Here is the image of the Project DIVA series.

4.1.1. Two options

Project DIVA series included around 250+ songs.

As I said, playing music game can’t help to sort songs based on release date. However, we can sort the Project DIVA series based on release date of the game, as each Project DIVA includes the most popular Vocaloid songs of the time. By doing so, we can listen these 250+ songs in a roughly order of release date:

However, if you don’t care about the order (which I really don’t recommend to do so), you can play one of following masterpiece that include all 250+ songs:

• Project DIVA MegaMix+
  • Make sure you buy the VIP version
• Project DIVA AFT (Arcade Future Tone)
  • you would need to install MegaMix song pack to get the missing 10+ songs exists in MegaMix+, checkout the X Song Pack in Project DIVA Modding 2nd Discord server

4.1.2. Drawbacks of listening Vocaloid songs by playing Project DIVA only

There are two problems if you just use Project DIVA as the source of knowing Vocaloid songs:

1. Not be able to know new songs: Unfortunately, Project DIVA is already a dead title. Although MegaMix+ is released in 2022, it is pretty much a refresh of Project DIVA FT back in 2016, with only 10+ additional songs released in between 2017 to 2019 (The MegaMix song pack for AFT I mentioned earlier). Songs released in 2020 and after are not included in Project DIVA series at all.
2. Exclusive to Crypton Future Media (CFM) Vocaloid characters only: In another word. Project DIVA only contains songs sang by Miku, Rin, Len, Luka, Kaito, Meiko. Other characters like GUMI, IA, V Flower, Una, Kafu, etc are not included, despite they are also famous in Vocaloid history and have a lots of great songs.

That’s why playing one music game is not enough. We need a second one to fill these gaps.

4.2. Option 1: Fan-made Project DIVA simulation or mods

If you like the game play in Project DIVA, and you don’t want to leave Project DIVA to listen new songs, then you can try the following 3 options:

1. PPD: The first and oldest community-made simulation of Project DIVA on PC. It simulate the game play of Project Diva and brings it onto PC platform. PPD has its own rich community that is constantly creating new charts, which can be download from the PPD official website. Which charts should I play first? Well, that’s totally up to you 😁 because a song that worth to be made as a chart is already a quite popular song. Just be aware that there are also non-Vocaloid songs.
2. Project Heartbeat: A.k.a PH, similar to PPD but has more advance customization and features. You can find community-made custom charts from Steam Workshop. PH can even import charts from PPD and Project DIVA MegaMix+. Hence I personally prefer PH over PPD.
3. Project DIVA with mods: Instead of playing a simulation, you can choose to continue playing Project DIVA MegaMix+or AFT on your PC, but with MOD installed. Just head toward Project DIVA Modding 2nd Discord server and find the mod you want. The modding community is very active and you can find a large number of song packs to enrich your song list in Project DIVA MegaMix+ or AFT.

4.3. Option 2: OSU

OSU is a very popular rhythm game. It’s barrier is high, but if you can pass that barrier, you will find it very fun to play. OSU is not a Vocaloid specific music game, but it still has a lot of Vocaloid songs. Just like PPD, OSU has a very rich and active community so you can expect constant release of new charts for Vocaloid songs.

You can start by using Deardrop’s Vocaloid song pack as the starting point, which has a whopping of 570 charts.

Unfortunately, this is the only Vocaloid song pack I can find, and it has not been updated since 2015. However, you can always search “Vocaloid” on OSU official chart site, and sort results by chart release date to get newest Vocaloid charts.

4.4. Option 3: Project SEKAI

I personally would not recommend this game as many people including me have bad impression to Project SEKAI, but it is still worth to mention here.

Project SEKAI is a mobile game made by SEGA and released in 2020. Since then, SEGA proactively organize song commission events. Thanks for these events, the Vocaloid society got motivated and contributed a decent amount of songs. Some of them even reached 1M views and became a song in the Hall of Legend song list. Of course, qualified songs from these commission events became playable in Project SEKAI. So playing Project SEKAI can help you to get known to newer songs which Project DIVA doesn’t have, especially those released in 2020 and after.

Unfortunately, Project SEKAI also only include songs from CFM Vocaloid characters, so it doesn’t fully solve the problem of playing Project DIVA only 😪.

Another problem with Project SEKAI is that, initially only a few songs are unlocked. To unlock more songs, you have to spend effort and time to play this game, which sometime can be tedious and time-consuming.

Finally, Project SEKAI is a mobile game. So expect pay-to-win elements and Gacha in this game.

Due to these drawbacks, I would recommend to avoid Project SEKAI if possible, but if you really want to stay in Project SEKAI, I recommend you just to buy a second hand Project SEKAI account that has majority of songs unlocked to save yourself some times on unlocking songs.

4.5. Option 4: Arcade music games

Credit to Bilibili user 夜轮_Nightwheel for pointing out CHUNITHM and maimai

If arcade machines are available near your place, then try CHUNITHM series and maimai series.

Both series have 200+ Vocaloid songs each even though they are not Vocaloid specific (just like OSU). Not only that, both series are still proactively maintained (by SEGA. Yes, the same company who made Project DIVA series), and are not limited to Crypton Future Media (CFM) Vocaloid characters only. so you don’t need to worry about the two problems of Project DIVA mentioned above when playing CHUNITHM series or maimai series.

Obviously, the biggest disadvantage is that you need an arcade machine, which is only available in a few cities in the world unfortunately.

5. Way 3 = Way 2 + Way 1

Nothing prevent you from combining Way 1 and Way 2 together. You can start by playing Project DIVA, then you go to Way 1 and listen to songs that are not included in Project DIVA. Chance is that Project DIVA can save you a lots of time listening songs released in 2017 and before, so that you can focus on listening songs released after 2017.

This is also how I get familiar in Vocaloid 😂

6. Summary

Basically, you have two ways to find famous Vocaloid songs. You can either listen famous Vocaloid songs one by one in a certain order, or play music games. Of course, you can combine both ways. No matter what way you choose, you can become familiar with Vocaloid and the history.

That’s all for this post. I hope you like it and find it helpful. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below, or click on the “Report issue” link below to leave a comment in the GitHub Discussions. Any feedback is welcome.