- おふろ ♨ タイム -

If you have been following the trends in Vocaloid recently, you'll notice the massive efforts of Vocaloid companies to reach out to the fans outside Japan. It started with Anime Expo, then continued on until recently with Hatsune Miku's official Youtube channel. While Nico Nico Douga is still the prime haven for Vocaloid music, I personally think that Youtube's involvement aims to attract even more people to Vocaloid music and the use of the software in general. A few reasons for this include:

• the site is in English, and can be viewed in other languages;
• there is a more lax approach to uploading videos; and
• videos in the site can be embedded or viewed everywhere, resulting to a much bigger viewership.

Despite that positive outlook towards Vocaloid music in Youtube, there are few worries about the site, mostly coming from Japanese Vocaloid producers. Some have expressed concerns over video reprinting, especially without permission, which is why they're a bit discouraged to use the site and make their music more accessible to the Western viewers. However, there are many Vocaloid producers who have Youtube channels, active and otherwise. It is just a pity that despite the fact that they have their own channels, their music are still being reprinted and as a result, get less views than what their music deserves! There are many cases wherein reprints get more views than the original uploads, which doesn't only seem unfortunate but discourteous as well.

Youtube reprints are almost impossible to stop since it was made to be OK from the start. However, we would like to at least honor Vocaloid producers' official accounts. That is why stephieku and I made a list of official VocaloidP channels in Youtube. This list has three purposes:

• to increase viewership of the official uploads;
• to encourage people to recognize the original artists behind the songs they like; and
• to discourage reprinting.

We believe that since Miku herself is making a home out of Youtube, VocaloidPs shouldn't be afraid or discouraged to post their works there as well XD

( please click for more under the cut! )

When Vocaloid was still in its newbie stage, it was almost impossible to get CDs and other stuff online. Usually, you have to go to Comiket and other events to buy them. However, because of the slowly growing international fanbase, most of the Vocaloid CDs as well as merchandise related to Nico Nico Douga (utaite CDs) are readily available online. You just know where to look.

I've had some people asking how to buy Vocaloid CDs outside Comiket, so here's my guide to those who are interested in starting a Vocaloid or Utattemita collection, be it CDs or other merchandise. A word of warning that this guide will give you an incredible urge to buy things :).




HOW TO BUY VOCALOID/UTAITE-RELATED STUFF

First things first. You need money to buy stuff. And in order to use that money to pay for merchandise, you have to have a credit or debit card. Any card with Visa/Mastercard marks will do. If you are underage and you do not have a card, you'll have to find another way to buy things ^^;.

Second, you have to register for a Paypal account. Most shops use Paypal as a means for paying to their site. Also, it gives you more security when using your credit/debit card to buy online. You can learn about signing up for a Paypal account here.

Now that we're clear on the money issue, we can go to the shop issues.

( where to buy the delicious stuff )

In the Vocaloid and Utattemita fandom, most of the merchandise are either 1) in comiket/other conventions or 2) in Japan-only online shops. Most of the time, Vocaloid and Utattemita CDs are sold in Toranoana, Animate, Amazon Japan and more recently, Three!!. If you are a non-Japan resident, it's a bit hard getting stuff from those shops (except Amazon, unless you wanted an item that is not shipped internationally). In order to buy from these shops, you need to use a deputy service.

note 1: I will not be talking about shopping assistance for comilket/vomas, since it's an entirely different thing. This will only be about items sold in online shops.

note 2: As most utaite and producers discourage auctions (like Clear), and because of my inexperience with it, I will also not discuss auctions and how to bid on them using these services.

( sort of a guide but not really )

One of the important parts of your Nico Nico life, especially if you're into utaite/Vocaloid producers, is joining communities. If you like listening to namahousou (live broadcasts), you need to join the communities of the people you listen to because sometimes, they lock their namahousou. There are also some people who lock some of their uploads to their communities, so you have to join to view them.

The most basic thing to do here is to go to the person's community page and click the join button:



After clicking it, you will get a "do you really want to join this comm?" message and you just have to click the black button to continue. There are times, like in ASK's comm, that you have to type a small message before joining (these are moderated communities). You have to type in Japanese your reasons for joining and you'll be approved within a week.

There are more to communities than just for listening to namahousou, though. This is a very basic guide to what you can see in a community page.

( guide to communities )

While Nico Nico Douga can be enjoyed even with a non-premium account, it is definitely a much better experience to have a premium account. There are a lot of benefits, not to mention you can enter namahousou which are hard to view. Here are some of the benefits of having a paid account:

1. Paid users are given the priority os they can avoid congestion in watching both video uploads and straming.
2. During busy, congested times, the quality of the videos are lowered (economy mode) so non-premium members can still watch the video/stream although in low-res. As a paid user, you can avoid watching in economy mode.
3. A free user can mylist only up to 100 videos. A premium user can mylist 12,500 ^^;.
4. You can turn off announcements from games and surveys while watching videos.
5. Non-premium members can only use 10 colors for comments. Paid users can use any in hexadecimal form.
6. You can preserve/add to memories interesting comments (up to 250). Regular users can only memory 50 comments.
7. When a video has too many views, the earliest comments disappear under the newer ones. As a premium user, you can review those old, erased comments. A regular user cannot.
8. Even if a namahousou/live broadcast is full, you can still enter it even if you are viewing it late.
9. Even without timeshift reservations, you can watch any timeshifted namahousou for 7 days.
10. You can reserve up to 30 namahousou with timeshift. A regular user only has 10 slots for reservation.
... and a lot more.

This is a guide to getting a paid account in Nico Nico Douga. Note that since we cannot use credit cards (the site only accepts Japanese credit cards, it seems), we're going to use Webmoney. Many thanks to aserett and yueqian for teaching me this method and helping me with my first premium registration last year :).

( guide to getting a paid account )