Fans Negotiating Performer Personas: ‘Melt’ by ryo feat. Hatsune Miku

I do not recall listening to ‘Melt’ before I embarked on my fieldwork in early 2012. I had known that vocaloid music was popular in Japan, but the scale of the phenomenon, which I had tracked via chart rankings, message boards and video channels, had eluded me; instead, I focused on inter- and intra-generational reception of mainstream idol pop. In February 2012, after several focus groups with Japanese music listeners, a pattern began to emerge: vocaloid audiences were present and engaged, and virtual idols like Hatsune Miku represented the industry shift toward crowdsourcing, the voice of participatory culture in Japan—and a fascinating intersection of ideas of authenticity, reality and active audiences.