Singer Hatsune Miku is crossing the Pacific next year with her first U.S. and Canadian tour. Sadly, fans won't be able to get her autograph, because Miku is a hologram.
The Japanese "virtual pop star" has opened for Lady Gaga and even appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman." Created by Crypton Future Media, Miku is an avatar for the "singing voice synthesis" software Vocaloid.
"Hatsune Miku is a Japanese music sensation, a 16 year-old blue-haired girl with a unique voice and prodigious energy," the company wrote online.
The Vocaloid software lets people enter lyrics and melodies to generate fully formed songs. Confusingly enough, Miku is technically classified as a "vocaloid," a more general term that describes personalities built around specific voice samples. (Yes, there are others, including a male singer named Kaito. They just don't have holograms).
At her concerts, fans see an image of Miku projected on a transparent screen, where she sings and dances a programmed routine with a live backing band.
While Miku has performed in New York and Los Angeles before, this is her first major tour in North America, which includes dates in Seattle, Dallas and Toronto in spring of 2016.
Despite being a hologram, Miku has garnered more than 2.5 million followers on Facebook, where she released the "theme song" for the upcoming tour.
And in case you were wondering, yes, there will be Miku-themed merchandise available for purchase.
