Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is now better known by her stage name Lady Gaga. Since 2008 she has sold more than 15 million albums, 40 million singles and countless downloads worldwide. In 2010 she became the krst living person to achieve 10 million fans on Facebook and her following is still growing. At the same time she has more than 5 million fans on Twitter and is the krst, currently performing artist to reach a billion views on YouTube. As the eldest daughter of an Italian American family based in New York, she had an interest in music from a relatively early age, taking piano lessons and participating in school musical productions, but accounts of her early life suggest she was a normal student rather than an exceptional talent. Contrary to her current image as a fashion icon, she described her early look as a refugee from Jersey Shore, with big black hair, heavy eye makeup and tight revealing clothes.1 She gained early admission to New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts but dropped out within a year in order to pursue her music career. It is reported that her father only agreed to pay her rent during this period on the condition that she would re-enrol for Tisch if unsuccessful. She managed, at age 19, to gain a recording contract with the record label Def Jam Recordings but was dropped after just three months. Despite this setback, she continued to write songs and formed a band with her friends, playing in small venues in the Lower East Side of New York. In 2007 she adopted the stage name Lady Gaga (derived from a reference to the song Radio Ga Ga by the band Queen) and with the help of music producer, Rob Fusari and record executive, Vincent Herbert, began to achieve success as a songwriter and vocalist, releasing her debut album, The Fame, in 2008. Whilst Stefani, like many other children, enjoyed performing from an early age, her talents as a songwriter, musician, vocalist and fashion designer cannot be described as exceptional. The visual images she projects are always unusual and her public appearance is always striking but few would consider her a great beauty. The extent of her innovation has also been questioned: she has been criticised by artists such as Grace Jones as being imitative rather than original and, although she has courted controversy to make her name, not everyone considers her a trailblazer. Camille Paglia, writing in the Sunday Times,2 asserts that Gaga is more an identity thief than an erotic taboo breaker, a mainstream manufactured product who claims to be singing for the freaks, the rebellious and the dispossessed when she is none of those. Her journey to worldwide fame has often been compared to that of Madonna. Like Madonna, Lady Gaga recognises herself as a brand. Both trademarked their names early on in their careers and have promoted their brand image relentlessly. Both have maintained control over their image, music and management (Lady Gaga, for example, heads her own creative production team, the Haus of Gaga). Both are exponents of continual reinvention: changing their stage personae and public images frequently as a means of maintaining the interest and involvement of fans and media alike. Lady Gaga is particularly known for the enticing and immersive story worlds she creates for each of her videos and for her extraordinary costumes, including those made from raw meat and plastic bubble wrap. Finally, both have attracted attention and controversy through their use of religious, sexual and violent iconography. Despite the seeming chaos and unpredictability of her rise to fame, Lady Gagas product development and marketing have been well adapted to the wrenching changes that have transformed, and almost destroyed, the music business over the past decade. Digital technologies and the ease of internet kle sharing have drastically reduced the revenues from recorded music, elevating live performances as the dominant revenue source in the music business. Such performances are multimedia events where visual imagery and the overall theatrical experience are at least as important as the music. Most of the money Gaga and her record label earn does not come from video and record sales but from concert tickets. Lady Gaga and her team have also been quick to recognise the opportunities that the internet and social media omer. Her songs are simple to sing in any language and her videos, which also raise revenue through product placements, appeal to any age, gender or nationality. She makes extensive use of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to build her fan base and by personally generating the majority of her own online content, she constantly engages with fans and engenders feelings of friendship and loyalty. This loyalty is further reinforced by giving fans the pet name of monsters and releasing video extracts to them prior to more general release. Gagas second album, Fame Monster, was dedicated specikcally to her fan base. Lady Gaga argues that, unlike some other celebrities, she doesnt spend her money on mansions but ploughs it back into her shows. She is reported as favouring what is known as 360 deals, namely contracts in which music labels invest a higher than average amount of money up front, for example in marketing and promotion, but in return keep a percentage of merchandise sales, touring revenue and other earnings that artists traditionally have kept for themselves. It remains to be seen whether Lady Gagas success will be as enduring as that of individuals like Madonna, Donatella Versace and Grace Jones, who she cites as her muses.