“I got 99 performances and Facebook ain’t the only one": The musical persona revisited: music performance and self-staging on social media

Abstract

In this article, I will look at three contemporary music artists and how they present their musical personae on social media. Based on theatre, performance and media studies, it is an attempt to shed light on the several colourful elements constituting the total spectacle of music performance in terms of musical persona. The dynamic that arises between the performances being staged online and the simultaneous emergence of a new virtual stage, will be the central focus point. Relying on Hannah Arendt’s theorization on public space in terms of space of appearance and Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this research introduces a framework that will help to comprehend the current ubiquity of selfies, videoclips and Instagram in the specific context of music performance beyond the live show.