Even the most naive pop fan knows that most of today's popular music is conceived and produced by record companies rather than by the dancing apes miming away on MTV.
But the trouble with using real humans to do your promotional work is that they tend to be too unpredictable.
A couple of years ago, Japanese music promotion company Horipro caused a small stir when it launched a new star named Kyoko Date, or DK-96. Kyoko was young and good-looking, could dance in any style and held a pretty good tune. She was also entirely digital.
Not all digital stars are of the sexy variety. One of the biggest stars on the Internet is Boogie Baby, who owes his fame not to marketing but the simple fact that his first public appearance was small enough to be sent as an attachment and simple enough for dozens of talented enthusiasts to customise his performance.
Officially known as Baby Cha Cha, the Boogie Baby was born three years ago in the studios of Kinetix, a division of Autodesk, as a demonstration of its Character Studio software.