Crypton Future Media

Crypton Future Media, Inc. (クリプトン・フューチャー・メディア株式会社), or Crypton, is a media company based in Sapporo, Japan. It develops, imports, and sells products for music, such as sound generator software, sampling CDs and DVDs, and sound effect and background music libraries. The company also provides services of online shopping, online community, and mobile content.

Overview
Crypton started business importing audio products in 1995, and has been involved in the development, import, and sales of sampling CDs and DVDs, sound effect and background music libraries, and musical synthesizer 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, such as Konami, Sega, Sony Computer Entertainment, Namco, and Nintendo
 * Public and private broadcasting media (TV, radio, and cable), such as NHK
 * Computer software and hardware companies, such as Apple Inc., Dell, and Microsoft
 * Musical instrument makers, 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 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, and voice ringtones (chaku-voice), including:
 * Hatsune Miku Mobile (初音ミクモバイル)
 * Miku to Utaou (ミクと歌おう♪)
 * Pocket Sound Effect Pro (ポケット効果音Pro)
 * Mazeteyo Nama Voice (まぜてよ☆生ボイス)

Crypton 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 were announced as the no. 1 company for sound-related software, bringing a share of 21.4% of the market for their related product.

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. The release of the first Character Vocal Series Hatsune Miku, which uses the upgraded engine Vocaloid 2, greatly raised Crypton's profile. The second and third Character Vocal Series are Kagamine Rin and Len and Megurine Luka. Because the popularity of these Vocaloids grew, Crypton launched a website Piapro to upload fan-made content and its own music label KarenT to sell Vocaloid songs.

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 in written using 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 was the only one who initially 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. Meiko and Kaito are reported to be in discussion for an update. Several updated vocal expressions have already been recorded for Kaito. In April 2011, it was confirmed six vocal expressions had been recorded for Kaito, two of which were dropped and the remaining four were being brought forward with one having reached alpha stage already. The Character Vocal (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka) series Appends had been created from vocal performances of their voice providers, however the new Kaito Appends were created by adding echo, force and tension to the samples.

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.

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.

The third product of Crypton's Character Vocal Series is Megurine Luka, the first bilingual Vocaloid.

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 are working on an english miku and is planned to be released in 2013.

Upcoming products

 * Crypton has a "Project if..." with a mysterious, childlike voice.

Piapro
In response to the growing popularity of derivative works created with Hatsune Miku and the other Vocaloid applications, Crypton opened an online community (stylized as PIAPRO) on December 3, 2007, where Vocaloid fans can upload their own content, such as music, art, lyrics, characters, and 3D models. "Piapro" stands for peer production and promotes consumer generated media.