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YouTube Goes Classical
2-Dec-2008
Written by: Michael Pascua
The real question is why?
It truly has become a battle between high-brow versus low-brow over at YouTube. I will be able to fulfill a dream where I get to watch a video of my favorite Vivaldi track by an up-and-coming violinist, quickly followed by one of kids playing with Coke and Mentos. So that may not be the biggest thing for many subscribers, but YouTube has finally tapped the Classical music industry.
After negotiations with movie companies and play-testing high definition videos, YouTube’s next step is to get the instrumentally-gifted viewer. There have been two ideas being floated around: a “mash-up” where people’s different instrument videos will be put together to create an orchestra, and a more American Idol-esque contest looking for members of an orchestra. The project has been called the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.
The news is great and all for YouTube, but I don’t understand why people running classical music Web sites don’t just make their own niche-version of YouTube where all the orchestras could perform and players could submit videos. It seems like every site has some sort of video service to attract more hits. I don’t think that YouTube is the right place, due its fan base. Last month’s top videos included Sarah Palin pranks and Beyoncé videos. I doubt that a cellist like Yo Yo Ma will ever graze the top of YouTube unless he was mashed-up with a rapper.
YouTube has been making a lot of different changes since it was bought by Google. Google has a plan, but I can’t help but feel that they jumped the shark. Don’t get me wrong, I love classical music, but why YouTube? I understand that YouTube can’t go back to its roots because of high costs, but some of Google’s decisions are now alienating viewers.
Talk to other readers about this story.
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