ABSTRACT
Hatsune Miku is Japan’s leading virtual idol. Started as voice synthesizer software in 2007, thousands of fans have created her songs, and she has, in effect, become the world’s first crowd-sourced celebrity. In addition to being associated with hundreds of thousands of songs online, Miku appears in television commercials, videogames, and live concerts. What does this say about authorship and copyright? How has the creator of the software dealt with balancing openness and control? What does it mean to think of a character like Miku as a “media platform” that others can create with? This chapter tackles these questions using fieldwork in Tokyo and the United States, as well as interviews with the CEO of Crypton Future Media.
