Karaoke Instagram

Abstract

In this study, I compare and contrast online and offline performances of karaoke and ask, what are the material phenomena associated with the two practices? How are they different and/or the same? What does this tell us about the connection between performance and technology, especially in relation to amateur singing and its mediatized forms? Following this mode of enquiry, I find that examples of online and offline karaoke provide useful insight into ways amateur performances are inevitably permeated by commerce. I also offer hope and guidance towards how future networks of amateur performances might escape this fate. I have begun a new study of karaoke in and around Columbia, Missouri (USA), with a special focus on local singing in rural communities. Alongside this I am examining how karaoke has grown into a pervasive online genre of amateur performance. I’m doing extensive research of performances of karaoke presented on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. This ongoing study seeks to reveal connections between desire and materialism – drawing parallels between karaoke, online commerce and commercialism – as well as exploring the flattening and globalizing of local performance when presented on social media. In a brand new world where ‘anyone can do it’, businesses keep finding new ways to draw people in and capitalize on their desire for celebrity, even if they are only famous for a few minutes. While karaoke may begin as a kind of amateur local singing that provides consumers with an open media text, the possibility of agency in its interpretation becomes closed the instant it hits the global network. Once these performances are reactivated on social media, any ‘voids’ that karaoke opens up are almost immediately commodified and closed.