utaite (Japanese: 歌い手) is a subculture of vocalists who perform song covers of anime, video game, and Vocaloid (or other singing voice synthesizer) songs on the internet. The name utaite is the kun'yomi reading of the standard Japanese word for "singer", kashu, 歌手; it's a somewhat archaic synonym for kashu, and was adopted by the community to distinguish the online-only indie utaite from mainstream professional singers.
The utaite culture originated from the Japanese video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga at around 2007 (though it can be further traced back to the karaoke community on 2channel), which featured a video category called Utattemita (歌ってみた, literally "tried to sing") focusing on song covers. A community of indie vocalists grew around this video category, and one of the earliest viral hits in the developing utaite community was the song "Omoide wa Okkusenman!".
utaite songs are primarily songs from Japanese anime and video games, as well as internet original songs, most notably Vocaloid songs, which the subculture has a strong relationship with. The indie nature of most Vocaloid songs made producing cover versions less of a hassle, and the artificial nature of Vocaloid vocals created interest for "natural" human vocals for Vocaloid songs. Many Vocaloid producers are in fact also utaite themselves.
As indie productions, utaite activities are primarily passion projects, and release their songs either completely independently or in doujin circles. However, some utaite have managed to become fully-fledged mainstream professional singers.
Though the subculture originated from Japan, it has gradually spread into English, Chinese and other international language internet. On the English internet, utaite-type cover singers primarily active on YouTube have received their own name called "Youtaite". On the Chinese internet (primarily on the Chinese NND/YT-analogue Bilibili), utaite-type cover singers are known under the name chàngjiàn (Chinese: 唱见), a calque of the kanji form of utattemita to refer to the singers.
Notably, the popularity of utaite culture on NND has also significantly impacted Japanese Let's Play and streamer culture, as many of them later became streamers or adopted streaming as a content creation method; it is not unusual for Japanese Let's Players and streamers to perform song covers (either as utattemita or as karaoke streams), even though this is very uncommon within the English YouTuber community. This in turn heavily influenced the Japanese-originated Virtual YouTuber culture, and many VTubers, including non-Japanese ones, produce utattemita content, or are utaite themselves.
The VTuber "sub-genre" of Virtual Singers, or VSingers for short, can in many ways be considered a direct synthesis of utaite and VTuber cultures.
Notable utaite
- Ado
- AmaLee
- ClariS
- Delutaya
- Mafumafu
- Machigerita
- x0o0x_
- JubyPhonic
- nayuta
- namirin
- nqrse
- Reol
- Riot Music, an agency of VSingers under Brave Group (formerly Unlimited Inc.), which owns several VTuber groups.
- Soraru
- Strawberry Prince, a male utaite group currently consisting of six members.
- XYZ Project, a group of male utaite that holds live tourneys and also produces their own original music. The lineup changes yearly, but frequent returning members include Mafumafu and nqrse.
