, or simply Crypton, is a Japanese media company based in Sapporo, Japan. It develops, imports, and sells products for music, such as sound generator software, sampling CDs and DVDs, and FX and BGM libraries. The company also provides services of online shopping, online community, and mobile content.
History Crypton Future Media was founded in July 1995 by Hiroyuki Itō. The company began operations in Sapporo as a "trading house for sounds", importing and selling audio products such as sound effects, background music (BGM), and sampling CDs from international sources. Around 2000, Crypton expanded its digital content lineup to include sound effects for mobile phone ringtones and began operating mobile services.
Crypton subsequently entered the vocal synthesis market by collaborating with Yamaha Corporation, taking charge of the commercial releases for the first Japanese Vocaloids, Meiko in 2004 and Kaito in 2006. In 2007, the company released its own singing synthesizer software and virtual singer, Hatsune Miku. Miku's immense success shifted the company's focus toward character licensing and empowering digital content creators. In response to the explosion of user-generated content, Crypton launched the Piapro online community in December 2007 to allow fans to upload and share their derivative works.
In 2014, Crypton began organizing "Miku Expo", a series of worldwide augmented reality concert tours starring Hatsune Miku, further establishing the company's global presence.
Overview
Crypton Future Media started business importing audio products in 1995, and has been involved in the development, import, and sales of sampling CDs and DVDs, FX and BGM libraries, and musical synthesizer/synthesiser applications. Its main business partners in Japan include musical instrument shops, computer stores, and software distributors.
The company has licensed software to the following organizations: Video game publishers and developers, such as Konami, Sega, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Bandai Namco Entertainment, and Nintendo Public and private broadcasting media (television, radio, and cable), such as NHK American computer manufacturers, such as Apple Inc., Dell, and Microsoft Musical instrument companies, such as Roland Corporation and Yamaha Corporation Public institutions, such as local governments, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Educational institutions, such as high schools, universities, and vocational schools
Crypton Future Media also operates a number of Japanese mobile websites, mainly for i-mode of NTT docomo, EZweb of au by KDDI, and Yahoo! Keitai of SoftBank Mobile, to distribute ringtones, sound effects (SFX), and voice-based ringtones (chaku-voice), including: Hatsune Miku Mobile Pocket Sound Effect Pro Mazeteyo Nama Voice
Crypton Future Media imports products from more than 50 international suppliers based in Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In 2010, Crypton Future Media was announced as a number-one company for sound-related software, bringing a share of 21.4% of the marketing for its products.
Vocaloid products and services
Crypton is best known for production and sales of speech synthesis software for computer music. Its products use the Vocaloid singing synthesis engine developed by Yamaha Corporation; they were also charged with finding and contacting English studios in order to gain recommendations for the English version of the Vocaloid software. The company released Meiko in 2004 and Kaito in 2006, who were originally developed by Yamaha leaving the commercial release to Crypton Future Media.link The company then released the first Vocaloid developed by them, and member of the official Character Vocal Series, Hatsune Miku, which used the upgraded engine Vocaloid 2. The success of the Hatsune Miku Voicebank in Japan (and later in other countries) greatly raised Crypton's profile. The second Character Vocal Series are Kagamine Rin and Len and the third Megurine Luka. Because the popularity of these Vocaloids grew, Crypton launched the website Piapro to upload fan-made content and its own music label KarenT to sell Vocaloid songs.
On 31 August 2019, it was confirmed that Crypton ceased releasing new Vocaloid products on Yamaha's synthesis engine and Cubase editor. Instead, they will release new "Vocaloid" products on their newly-developed Piapro Studio engine-editor with the name NT (New Type) once Crypton has removed compatibility with the Cubase editor for their speech synthesis products.
They, however, reversed this decision on August 30th 2024 with the release of the PIAPRO SUPERPACK powered by the VOCALOID4 engine.
A new version of Hatsune Miku V6 was also announced. Originally planned for the end of 2024, she was then delayed to a 2025 release.
Vocaloid products Kaito was the only one sold using the Vocaloid 1.1 engine; the previous Vocaloids before him were sold as Vocaloid 1.0, which he was also supplied with. However, he needed the additional Vocaloid 1.1.2 patch to work on the Vocaloid 1.0 engine. A patch was later released to update all Vocaloid engines to Vocaloid 1.1.2, adding new features to the software, although there were differences between the output results of the engine. Even though Kaito and Meiko were Japanese and sung using Japanese phonetics, the main interface was written in English for both English and Japanese Vocaloids.
Due to the success of placing a character on the box art of Meiko, the concept was carried over to her successor Kaito and later Vocaloids to encourage creativity; however, neither Vocaloid's box art originally had the intention to represent that Vocaloid. Though Meiko experienced good sales, Kaito failed commercially, causing less demand for male voices for a while after Kaito's initial release. However, sales eventually picked up and Kaito later won the Nico Nico Douga second best seller award of 2008. In 2010, it was reported that Meiko and Kaito were in the discussion to receive updates. Several updated vocal expressions have already been recorded for Kaito that year. In April 2011, it was confirmed six vocal expressions had been created for Kaito, two of which were dropped and the remaining four were being brought forward with one having reached alpha stage at that point. The Character Vocal (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka) series Appends had been created from the vocal performances of their voice providers; however the new Kaito Appends were created by adding echo, force, and tension to the samples.
ProductLanguageGenderVoice actorRelease date Meiko Japanese Female Meiko Haigō November 5, 2004 Kaito Male Naoto Fūga February 17, 2006
Vocaloid 2 products
Crypton released Hatsune Miku, on August 31, 2007. The second of the Character Vocal Series is the first dual Vocaloid Kagamine Len and Kagamine Rin, a Japanese male and female, released on December 27, 2007. On July 18, 2008, the updated edition of Kagamine Rin and Len, named "act2" was released. For a period of time, users who had bought the old version were allowed to get the new version for free. On June 18, 2008, beta demonstration songs using the new version were released on the company's official blog. The expansion disc is an entirely different software and does not affect the original Kagamine Rin/Len installation in any way, giving the user options to either use the old or new voice sets exclusively or combine their usage. Crypton Future Media have now retired the sale of their old Kagamine Vocaloid and it is now no longer possible to buy the software from them. This was also the very first Vocaloid update to be done for any Vocaloid. The third product of Crypton's Character Vocal Series is Megurine Luka, the first bilingual Vocaloid.
On April 30, 2010, an updated version of Miku called Hatsune Miku Append was released containing a package of six different tones of Miku's voice: Soft (gentle, delicate voice), Sweet (young, chibi voice), Dark (mature, heartbroken-like voice), Vivid (bright, cheerful voice), Solid (loud, clear voice), and Light (innocent, heavenly voice). Crypton Future Media also released Kagamine Rin/Len Append on December 27, 2010. ProductLanguageGenderVoice actorRelease date Hatsune Miku (CV01) Japanese Female 2007-08-31August 31, 2007 Kagamine Rin/Len (CV02) Female (Rin), Male (Len) 2007-12-27December 27, 2007 Kagamine Rin/Len (CV02) Act 2 2008-07-18July 18, 2008 Megurine Luka (CV03) Japanese, English Female 2009-01-30January 30, 2009 Hatsune Miku Append Japanese 2010-04-30April 30, 2010 Kagamine Rin/Len Append Female (Rin), Male (Len) 2010-12December 27, 2010
Crypton has a "Project if..." with a mysterious, childlike voice. Crypton has also done some work on a "CV04" with a male voice
Vocaloid 3 products
According to Crypton, a petition started on Facebook exceeded the needed 39,390 members in November 2010 to join Hatsune Miku's account for an English version to be released; Crypton announced that they were working on an English Miku and was planned to be released in 2013. Hatsune Miku English was released on August 31, 2013. Hatsune Miku V3 was released September 26, 2013.
ProductLanguageGenderVoice actorRelease date Kaito V3 Japanese, English Male Naoto Fūga February 15, 2013 Hatsune Miku V3 English English Female August 31, 2013 Hatsune Miku V3 Japanese September 26, 2013 Meiko V3 Japanese, English Meiko Haigō February 4, 2014
Vocaloid 4 products
ProductLanguageGenderVoice actorRelease date Megurine Luka V4X Japanese, English Female Yū Asakawa March 19, 2015 Kagamine Rin/Len V4X Japanese Female (Rin), Male (Len) December 24, 2015 Kagamine Rin/Len V4 English English Hatsune Miku V4X Japanese Female August 30, 2016 Hatsune Miku V4 English English August 30, 2016 Hatsune Miku V4 Chinese Chinese (Mandarin) September 10, 2017Piapro Characters Super PackJapaneseFemale (Luka, Meiko, Miku and Rin), Male (Kaito and Len)VariousAugust 30, 2024
Piapro In response to the growing popularity of derivative works created with Hatsune Miku and the other Vocaloid applications, Crypton opened an online community Piapro (stylized as PIAPRO) on December 3, 2007. Vocaloid fans can upload their own content, such as music, art, lyrics, characters, and 3D models to the platform. "Piapro" stands for peer production and promotes consumer generated media.
Piapro Studio