The Chopin Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions. It is held every five years in Warsaw, Poland and simultaneously broadcast via social media worldwide. Collecting the digital audience textual and visual posts from the competition platform chat-box, my presentation (and paper) examines the semiotics of the digital audiences in the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition through YouTube streaming. The data are the chats (written texts and visual emojis) and “super-chats” (currency tipping digitally offered by the audience). There are two goals for this study. By employing a semiotic triangle composed of referent, signifier, and signified and crafting a chain of signification, my first goal is to identify specific audience typologies, such as the “flower givers,” critics, and “notation police,” with a view to better understand the significance of the music streaming consumption platform. My second goal is to identify denotational and connotational exchanges within the audience community in connection to their reactions to Hayato Sumino, a Japanese contestant of the 18th competition. Sumino, not only a classical pianist but also a very accomplished and successful YouTube musician, received unusually positive and negative attention audience responses. Their expressions manifest an exemplary movement of coupling, decoupling, and recoupling of digital audience meaning-making in a globally significant, live-streamed media event. My presentation and scholarly paper offer a compelling look into an open source cyberspace event that exemplifies both utopian and dystopian semiotic aspects of contemporary social media.