She has more songs than Beyonce. She has over 2.5 million fans on Facebook (more than say, Twenty One Pilots). She just finished touring the United States, filling arenas with thousands of fans across the country. And she's not even human.

That's right; one of the world's fastest growing pop stars, Hatsune Miku, is, in fact, a digitally rendered musical entity, and she's taking the world by storm. To be entirely honest, Hatsune Miku boggles my mind and is seemingly rethinking how we consider the music industry at every turn.

Created by a company called Crypton in Japan, Hatsune Miku is a vocoder software, programmed to sing like a real human. Her name is apt; translated, Hatsune Miku is "the first sound from the future." Anyone can purchase the software and have Hatsune Miku's voice at their fingertips. This creates an entire world of songwriters, all publishing under the guise of one Japanese pop star. Miku is credited with having over 100,000 released songs, all of which have been curated and created by this consortium of software users.

Since her release in 2007, Miku has rapidly increased her following, in Japan and around the world. This is in part due to Crypton's choice to put a face to the voice, creating a blue-haired, anime-styled high school girl image to accompany the product. This encouraged fans to not only create music for her, but to create her videos, and album art as well.

With her image complete, Hatsune Miku rose to pop stardom. She performed her first live show in 2009, projected as a 3D hologram. Miku performs these hologram shows in Japan, France, and finished her first North American tour in May. Seriously. She even performs with a live band, who you can only imagine must be extremely talented to keep up with an artist who will never make a mistake.

Here's a video of Hatsune Miku performing one of her hit songs, "The World Is Mine," live in Japan. Trust me, it is one of the stranger videos you'll watch all day.

There are so many things about Hatsune Miku that baffle me. How do we address the idea of intellectual property? She is in many ways a creation of Crypton and the ultimate pop star for the people. But who is making money off of her? Miku goes on international tours performing songs written by everyday people, and you pay the ticket price to maybe see your song performed.

The flip side is that you can do whatever you want with her voice, envision the pop star you want to listen to. Our current model leaves those choices to upper echelon music producers and executives. Hatsune Miku takes the idea of a "manufactured star" and drives it home, for the people, by the people.

The way Hatsune Miku is embodied is also baffling. I am STILL uncomfortable with speaking about her like she is human. We write about her performances like she is a person doing something in the real world, at the same time as describing her as a software. Her image is so cultivated to the point that she has an age (16), a height (5.1), and a favorite tempo (70-150 bpm). These quintessentially human aspects of Miku make her more and less human at the same time, and I am always struck by how hard she is trying to fit into the human world.

Yet, can we argue that she is anymore by design than say, Katy Perry or Ariana Grande? Hatsune Miku is curated on a massive scale and appeals to a large audience on both a musical and visual level. The only difference between Miku and Perry is that in Miku's case, everyone has control.

Hatsune Miku is the first sound in the future of pop music, and that future is looking ever more digital by the day.