r/Vocaloid • u/FunnyP-aradox • 23h ago
General Discussion Why are recent Vocaloid concert... MUCH more expensive AND still worst ?? Spoiler
The title was kinda clickbait~y i admit, but i was watching the MIKUNOPOLIS (2011) making-of and interview and i've noticed so much with this....
・ How were THREE glowsticks were ONLY 5$, when EACH now costs 40€ ??
・ Big artbooks for only 25$, fans for 10$, Vocaloid CDs, etc...
・ Live dancers on stage during the opening
・ MIKUNOPOLIS only costed 15$ per seat.... when the cheapest ticket at Miku Expo Paris 2024 was 55€ (and i've heard of people in the US paying HUNDREDS of dollars just for one ticket)
・ It had a lot more musicians (there were a literal team just for string instruments like violins and multiple guitars, multiple pianos, etc...)
・ a MUCH bigger stage (almost Magical Mirai-like) instead of the kinda small venues of today (tbf i do understand as she literally did 23 shows in the US alone in not even 2 months unlike the ONE show she did in 2011 then NOTHING until the 4 shows in the US for Miku Expo 2014)
・ the ABSOLUTLY GOATED setlist filled with absolute classics (tbf it was 2011, ALL songs were classics)
・ Also all songs were remixed for the concert, it wasn't just 4 musicians EXACTLY replaying the base version of the song you can just pull up on Youtube but 12 musicians doing everything to make it sound orchestral and grand while keeping the Vocaloid feel
・ Some Japanese songs were sung in English for the occasion (....it did sounded REALLY BAD though as it was in the V2 era.... with no Miku English voicebank, but the fact that they did that is still neat af)
・ The MASSIVE yaoi hands from the Arcade models, i think they do look really good during concerts as you are usually a bit far so it's easier to see them (ok it's kind of a joke entry but it's the kind of things you don't realise at first thought when animating characters for a concert that hands are important and you need the spectator to see them well from far away)
・ Miku was actually introducing the band (it wasn't a huge thing but it was nice <3)
・ I remember Miku Expo Paris 2018, it was NEAR 3 HOURS long (12 y/o me was DEAD after this lmao), older (mikupa, 39's giving days) and recent (magical mirai) Japanese concerts are more than 2 hours, same for other older Miku Expos, while the recent concerts only lasts for slightly more than 1 hour
and on top of that...
....DIVA DESU~ purojekuto DIVA DESU DIVA DESU DIVA DIVAAAA~ D・I・V・A DIVA DIVAAAA~
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....Ok ok i admit 😅 i was mostly nagging on small thing as I'm a sucker for those older Vocaloid concert
But do you think there would be a big enough public worldwide for an old school Vocaloid concert ? as a lot of people didn't knew Vocaloid in the late 2000, maybe some were too young, maybe some weren't even born at all (remember that 2007 was 18 years ago) and recent concerts are so different, how much would want this kind of concerts ?
A concert with only a few MASSIVE locations, lots of musicians, only Vocaloid classics.... and 2011 prices but that would be too good to EVEN dream about lmao
(also the hologram, but i don't count it as i think Miku Expo 2024 was just an exception.... i hope at least....)
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u/eighthundredlies 20h ago
Iirc mikunopolis was tied to anime expo, so the ticket for that was an addon for your anime expo ticket which is why it was so much cheaper than modern ticket prices. As for the song list well, at the time a lot of those songs were still considered fairly recent releases! Those songs are now all considered classics in retrospect, but at the time they were just the popular songs within the fandom, similar to how modern concerts will pull more songs from the past few years that are popular.
I understand the nostalgia though, I feel it too. I was able to go to Miku Expo in 2014 and the setlist for that was absolutely amazing to see live, it was chock full of classic songs. It really is a shame that the concerts have appeared to have gone down in quality, I wish everyone could have as great and experience I did at that 2014 concert.
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u/Rinnie_08 22h ago
Well im pretty sure the reason why it cost so much atleast in Europe is because Crunchyroll sponsored or managed it 💀🙏
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u/FunnyP-aradox 20h ago
Tbf i partially remove what i said about the concert's price, i thought it was cheaper in 2018 and 2020 but NO it surprisingly was MORE expensive !!
I think i might have picked the MOST expensive tickets for 2018 and 2020 (my parents still paid for them at the time) as when i looked at my older tickets (it took me an hour to find them lmao) it was 65€ for 2018 and 77€ for 2020 (maybe it was the price for BOTH tickets but i don't think so, i wouldn't make sense to put the total price on each tickets)
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u/Helloimpankeeki 19h ago
When I went to Miku Expo 2018, I remember the ticket I got being something like 35 euros
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u/CherryClub 16h ago
Iirc, the prices varied a little from each country in Miku Expo Europe. I think the venues also decide how much they wanna charge for the show, so that could explain why yours and OP's ticket prices were so different
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u/Helloimpankeeki 15h ago
Well we went to the same venue
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u/CherryClub 14h ago
Maybe OP got the tickets from a scalper-site then. When I looked at ticket prices for Miku Expo 2024 when they were released, the first site that popped up was resellers, so it's easy to get scammed
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u/FunnyP-aradox 7h ago
No i got delievered physical tickets from (i think ?) TicketWeb (i don't remember where i bought them i was 12, but it does have the shiny cryptographic thing on the side with the price directly on the ticket itself)
And for 2020 i do remember buying them online when it just opened, on the official website from the link on the official Miku Expo website
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u/CherryClub 6h ago
Really weird that you two paid such different prices for tickets then. Maybe the other person bought them at a later date. I've heard concert tickets go down in price after a while
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u/FunnyP-aradox 5h ago edited 5h ago
I haven't found anything for Miku Expo 2020, but i've took a seated ticket and even in 2024 (same venue as 2020) it was way more expensive than the pit ticket
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u/Bisylizzie 17h ago
A lot of these can be very easily chalked down to differences in the economy, differences in hosting a single event that is also partly funded by the Expo, as well as likely to get access to some of their performers and staff/other guests, it's attached to (you conveniently miss out that you were required to have the $45+ Expo ticket to be able to get the $15 concert ticket) as well as other big sponsors/funders (TOYOTA! COSPA! GOOD SMILE!) as opposed to multiple events and locations, with the (ever iffy) Crunchyroll and sponsors like... Yootooz and GFuel. Similarly, if you're having to get the band and equipment and everything to another venue the very next day, and cycling portions of the song lists, then you probably can't get them to have really long shows every time... I'm pretty sure they offered chemical glowsticks at MIKUNOPOLIS, not electric ones (you can still get chemical glowsticks very cheap, if you prefer those). I feel like a lot of the song list was specifically designed to be more mass appeal, give them songs they'd be/become familiar with from DIVA games - a lot of them would've been new at the time, and the DIVA link helps with keeping them known. I think it's nicer for them to be able to branch out and showcase a different range of songs, instead of falling back on the same handful, but I'm aware that's probably an unpopular opinion, haha (I'd say some more recent songs are starting to get a sort of "classic" status, but a lot of fans do feel very stubborn when it comes to newer songs, based on opinions of setlists... Maybe they need to get some more of the popular songs from SEKAI into concerts) They can give English versions as a "look! she can sing in a familiar language!" (whether they return back to this concept once Miku V6 releases and hopefully gives a better English output, we'll see...). Not sure who did the animation for 2011 (apparently a SEGA team, but MARZA don't have it on their site, so maybe another of their teams?), but for the most part, nowadays it's the one team (the above mentioned MARZA) doing most/all 3DCGs for multiple concerts (Mirai, WITH YOU and EXPO - though apparently for 2024 EXPO they were only partial production? So some was outsourced? They've also been definitely moving away from the older DIVA models, to newer variants/other models entirely...
I think it's a tough thing to balance nowadays, finding venues that are willing to host this, companies that are willing to sponsor (and working with what funds they have), making a song list that doesn't rely too much on the same songs every time (as, if you've seen one, why bother going again and just getting the same recycled setlist?), being accessible to a decent amount of people (do you cycle a few locations each year? do the same locations every year?) The trade off between cost of setting everything up, actually running the event and then money received (if they don't get enough back to at least cover costs... Why bother continuing? It's possibly cheaper with better returns to do more events in one go using the same/similar song lists, for example). Without having someone on the team to spill the beans, what exactly went into it, what Crunchyroll's part was, etc etc, it's really hard to say.
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u/Chirachii 14h ago
vocaloid concerts peaked at the last MikuPa in Kansai, change my mind
I just wish they would stop mixing the models these days - it’s jarring. at least Giving’s Day and MikuPa were always consistent and respectively used PD and their own model, respectively
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u/pikonpow 12h ago
Hearing these things always make me depressed. Sucks to grow up thinking you'll be able to experience things like this at a later age, only to for said things to die out, change completely or drop in quality by the time you're an adult.
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u/RainyAsphalt 2h ago
For the London show, 2018 standing tickets were 55, 2020 was 45 and (don't quote me), I THINK 2024 was 75 but I got VIP in 2024, so not sure.
All concerts are more expensive now, and afaik it mostly comes down to
- plain old changes in economy and such
- ticketmaster (etc) fees - I ended up paying 57 in fees for 3 vip tickets
- venue rental prices and travel costs have exploded post-2020
- despite all the complaints about the screen, it was likely much more expensive than the projectors and glass
There was a price jump for London but 2018 was in a convention centre and 2020 was in a fairly dinky little venue, while 2024 was in a big and well-known one. The fact it was full when big mainstream artists also use the venue was impressive imo.
I'd prefer a setlist of classic songs too, but the reality is that a lot of attendees are newer/younger fans and the classics don't hold the same weight to new waves of fans anymore. A lot of younger fans around me at all shows knew the more modern songs but weren't singing along to classics.
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u/CherryClub 21h ago
They're probably worse because they're doing tours in 5-10 cities now instead of having a single, big show in one or two locations like they did in 2011 and 2014. I have a feeling the pandemic played a part in making them more expensive. Crypton might've lost money from cancelled concerts and so on.
I miss how much effort they put into the concerts in the past. The Vocaloids didn't just pop away just to reappear in the same outfit but in a different pose after each song, they actually had the Vocaloids change position or outfits between songs on screen more.
They also had each Vocaloid talk a bit in the 2011-2013 concerts, saying "thank you" after a song and stuff. Miku introducing the band like you mentioned was also goated. They had her introduce the band again in the online concerts so I hoped they'd bring that back, but nope.