In response to our previous article Yohio Vocaloid’s Art & Voice Samples Leak Bil Bryant, CEO of PowerFX Systems AB has released this statement concerning the Yohioloid.
In the statement he apologizes on how VocaTone has handled the contest, confirms that the vocal sample was indeed Yohioloid, albeit in an unfinished work-in-progress form, goes over how the winning art was selected, and talks about YOHIO’s latest happenings including how he recently placed second in the Melodifestivalen Eurovision song contest.
You can find Bil Bryan’t full statement here, as a response to the article we published, and quoted in full below:
Hi, Bil from PowerFX here – It´s great to see such passion amongst Vocaloid users. I would just like to set the record straight on a few things and apologize for the way the contest was run.
The demo that was leaked is from a beta version and is not finished. I have no idea who leaked it and we did pass it around to a few people to get feedback. Remember it is a BETA version! Also, Yamaha did not pick the cover YOHIO did. YOHIO in March took part in the Melodifestivalen in Sweden a nationally televised event where the winner represents Sweden in the Eurovision song contest.
Yohio won the Swedish vote but became second because they had other counties voting. YOHIO in his gracious runner up concession endeared himself to many and this brought on an immediate tour of concerts and performances all over Sweden on top of planned Japanese, Swedish and English album releases this spring So having him review over 200 submissions was not easy.
Finally when he was in Stockholm for a TV appearance he came by our office and we once again reviewed every submission and selected one but YOHIO asked for the artist to change something before he would accept it, it took a couple days but it was done and then we announced. Then we could announce the runners up but then we wanted them reviewed again to make sure.
It was our mistake just not to communicate the delay better – apologies from PowerFX.
With the above statement we finally have some insight into how the contest was conducted, how the winners were selected, and what the root cause of the delays were. As stated in our original article Bil emphasized that all details are subject to change as Yohioloid is a Vocaloid still under active development.
