2000s Virtual Singer

The virtual singer novelty trend which came out of the mid-00s touched all of our lives. This post is to commemorate the european marketing format led by companies such as Jamba! (aka: Jamster) and Dada Mobile which aimed to sell ringtones through quirky animated music videos and juvenile humour. Europeans may recall many of these characters but globally the trend was mostly contained to the viral popularity of tracks and videos from Gummibär and Crazy Frog.

Productions are almost always bubblegum dance, europop, or some kind of novelty EDM. Mascots are usually 3D animated babies or anthropomorphic animals either singing or ad libing with pitched-up vocals. Songs would be often produced as mini "ringtone" versions –comparable to Jingles– as well as full-length songs in numerous languages and were advertised primarily on children's TV channels. As time progressed the aim of these characters changed from hocking ringtones to creating viral children's content. This is most evident with the ongoing success of the Crazy Frog YT channel.

The music is normally godawful, these companies just threw together stock beats from various eurodance producers with little to no care. Songs are either originals which have some kind of novelty theme like 'piss and shit', 'bedtime', 'cuddles', or 'nonsense' or are covers/parodies of viral meme-songs and popular club hits .

This has little to do with the vocaloid style of virtual singers although both trends emerged around the same time and permeated American culture throughout the early 2000s.