"I DON'T OWN ANYTHING BUT MY VOICE": The Role of Multimedia and Copyrighting in my Youtaite Experiments

I kind of already exposed myself on one of the entries here so I feel a bit hesitant to talk about this again. I used to be an aspiring "Youtaite". I got strung along when I was 17 years old when I first learned about the existence of this...community. It was the only time I could not deny that I, too, could be easily influenced.

To be broad and simple, "Youtaite" are people who sing covers of Japanese songs on Youtube and who conceal their true identities with avatar representation and an associated username. "You" is from Youtube, "utaite" is a sort of abbreviation or a shorter derivation from the Japanese term, "utattemita" (歌ってみた) that means "tried to sing". The songs covered are most particularly those that are sung by AI voice personalities known as "Vocaloids". I don't want to delve deeper on that because it's a whole another topic but if it wouldn't be so bad to act upon tickled curiosity. One may search about it on Google, and I can only hope they don't lead themselves to the side that may or may not elicit regret.

I was originally just supposed to be someone who was an avid listener of them. Some Vocaloid songs really stuck with me and when I discovered that there were actually renditions of them made by true, living people, I felt so elated. I watched one, then it led me to about a hundred of others. Youtube just knew what to recommend to me. Listening to them was a breath of fresh air back then.

UNTIL!

Until I discovered about this one particular Youtaite — who I wouldn't name anymore for confidentiality sake — who took me by the heart and confined me within the grasps of his heavenly, cool, smooth-as-silk voice. It was like being struck by an arrow. Up until then, I didn't know it was possible to adore someone so much without ever actually seeing them.

Getting past the awkward parts of that narrative, to put it simply, that person was the last push I needed to get into the Youtaite community.

I was 18 when I released this cover:

This is, I think, the only cover I was very proud of back then. I did all the singing, first voice, second voice, background voices and such, but I received a huge help from a friend I made on Twitter who was also a part of the Youtaite community. Not only did they volunteer to draw my avatar for me, they also offered to mix this recording. I had no idea how mixing made sense back then and I only used one software for everything which was "AUDACITY".

As mentioned earlier, making covers was very widespread at the time especially for the youtaites or utaites. The composers of songs themselves release the instrumental versions of their compositions so that many people could use them for covers. The multiple covers increases their exposure, or 'reach'. The original owners of the songs were credited by including their names in the video description as well as this particular passage:

Copyright Disclaimer: - Under section 107 of the copyright Act 1976, allowance is mad for FAIR USE for purpose such a as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statues that might otherwise be infringing. Non- Profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of FAIR USE. 

Of course, the covers were never monetized but they were just shared for fun, purely for the consumption of vocaloid and utaite enthusiasts. Should the covers also be used as background music for animations, the same copyright disclaimer would often be observed in their descriptions once they were uploaded.