33 million streams in 189 countries around the world: The YouTube Symphony Orchestra Grand Finale
On March 20, the Grand Finale of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 was held at Sydney Opera House and live-streamed to the world on YouTube During the week-long festival leading up to the finale, 101 musicians from 33 countries joined together for the first time—immersed in new cultural experiences, musical mentorship and performances in one of the world’s most iconic symbols of the arts.
During the three-and-a-half hour Grand Finale—and as people in different timezones awoke to re-broadcasts—the event was streamed 33 million times around the world to 189 countries. This included 2.8 million mobile live-streams—making it one of our biggest ever streaming events to date, on mobile and desktop. That means the event was streamed to nearly one-and-a-half times the entire population of Australia, where the event took place.
One of the goals of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is to make classical music accessible; the total data transferred by the stream was a whopping 422 terabytes—the equivalent of 145 million MP3 files of classical music being emailed around the world.
The top 10 countries viewing the performance online were:
1. U.S.
2. Germany
3. Italy
4. France
5. Poland
6. Russia
7. Australia
8. U.K.
9. Brazil
10. Taiwan
Enormous thanks go to all our Symphony members who flew to Sydney from around the world and put their hearts and souls into an extraordinary performance. You surprised and moved people and had some fun along the way!
For the rest of you, you can read about the experience of YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 cellist Mathisha Panagoda in a guest post on the YouTube Australia blog. And if you missed the Grand Finale, you can watch the full concert and highlights from the last week anytime at youtube.com/symphony.
Ed Sanders, Group Marketing Manager, recently watched “YouTube Symphony Sails highlights”.
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6 comments:
Nice!!! Hey YouTube, when are you going to accept Greece for partnership its getting a boring question !!!
Uplifting, divine, extraordinary, fantastic, heavenly, just to name of few of the superlatives for this performance. Just like being there. Thank You to YouTube!!
I thoroughly enjoyed the excellent performance of the Grand Finale of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011. From the structure of the concert it seemed obvious that they really wanted to showcase the music and the musicians, and to show the world just how much they loved classical music. It seemed to me that one underlining message throughout this concert is that classical music is as versatile as each and every human being. There is something in classical music though for each and every one of us. At the same time too, there is a “spirituality and peacefulness of music” (Michael Tilson Thomas) and unites all musicians and all listeners of music. This concert brilliantly helped show that classical music is not dead; it is not music from the past; it is very much alive today. Classical music appears to be ever changing and adapting to the present and the future. Michael Tilson Thomas summed it up best when he stated that, “Classical music really does connect the past and the present, and it even predicts the future. Over the centuries as new thoughts, new instruments, new technologies have come along, classical music has initiated many of them, made use of them, and absorbed them, and it’s still going on.” Well done YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011. Rebecca Chambers 05/13/11.
This really opened my eyes into how far classical music can really go. William Barton was one of my favorite performancs along with the Mothership performance.
After viewing the grand finale of the 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra, I am truly awed by this amazing experience and experiment in classical music. This is proof positive that classical music is alive and well in the 21st century, and one of the main reasons is that it has adapted to reach contemporary audiences through digital technology. As a result, music that has traditionally existed in time and space, now exists in a new dimension – cyberspace. This provides limitless possibilities for creating, accessing and experiencing classical music of today, yesterday and tomorrow. YTSO 2011 demonstrates that the future of classical music not only lies in its ability to innovate and look towards the future, but also relies on its commitment to honor and maintain the continuum of its musical past. The works selected for the concert exemplify the best of the classical music tradition, and provides the viewer with an important education in music history.
Thank you, YouTube, for contributing to the accessibility of the arts.
How befitting that YouTube would construct a cyber orchestra. I am truly impressed with the ability technology now has to bring together so many talented musicians from around the world, who possess various degrees of formal training. One musician has even used YouTube to train with the masters. Everything appears to be at our fingertips with the assistance of technology. All genres of music now have the ability to reach listeners all over the world. Bravo!
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