YouTube Utopia? [Kiefer 2019]

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2009 after months of recruiting musicians around the world via YouTube submissions. A panel of music professionals selected a shortlist which was given to the general YouTube population for a vote. The top 96 musicians were selected for a paid trip to New York for three days of rehearsal before the big show. YouTube’s intention with this project was “to create a new utopian musical playing field engineered through the global, participatory, and democratizing reach of Internet technologies” (Tan 335), which is admirable. However, throughout Tan’s article I couldn’t help but ponder: is YouTube really a democratic, level playing field, and is it the best place to create a musical utopia?
YouTube’s mission statement is “to give everyone a voice and show them the world,” and it fulfills its statement to a certain extent, but it’s not as easy to get noticed on YouTube as it seems. With YouTube stars like Emma Chamberlain on the rise, it looks easier than ever to achieve instant fame via the Internet. Chamberlain is only 18 but she’s already hit 8.49 million subscribers and Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential people on the internet because she “pioneered an approach to vlogging that shook up YouTube’s unofficial style guide.” All her fame comes from dropping out of high school to pursue a hobby she enjoyed with her friends. The narrative told by YouTube stars like Chamberlain is uploading good, original content on YouTube could catapult you to stardom. Becoming a household name is as easy as making funny, relatable internet videos.
Of course encouraging creativity is productive, and YouTube is a wonderful creative outlet, but the playing field isn’t as level as YouTube says. It takes much more than filming, editing and hitting “upload” to reach Emma Chamberlain stardom. Tan quotes Nicholas Carr when describing the YouTube economy - “everyone is free to play, but only a few reap the rewards” (Tan 338). YouTube likes to put heavy emphasis on the “everyone is free to play” part, and so do a lot of YouTubers, so it’s easy to forget that the system isn’t exactly built to shoot “everyday people” to stardom. 

This is why using YouTube as the platform for creating a “utopian musical playing field” is slightly problematic. Everyone can upload, but few will reap the benefits. The Internet, as Tan argues, is an inherently unequal playing field, as it takes a high degree of privilege to access the resources needed to use it. Tan even states that most of the musicians in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra were selected not for their actual musical talent, but for what they were wearing or how they presented themselves. YouTube is a platform for the entertainment that comes from watching people trying to “get big,” not for creating a democratic, musical utopia.



Works Cited

Whiteley, S., & Rambarran, S. The Oxford handbook of music and virtuality.

Comments

Carrie Phillips said…
While YouTube certainly falls short of their mission statement to "give everyone a voice and show them the world," I find myself wondering if it is a more democratic space than certain platforms in the physical world. If we consider ideals of American democracy, for example, we find the same promises of equal playing fields. However, historically speaking and in the current election cycle, it is evident that those with the funds to pay their way into the race often out-perform those defined by a life of hard work and hefty political experience. (Which is by no means isolated to politics but rather representative of the larger narrative that is the myth of the "American Dream") All of this to say - relative to exclusionary systems in the physical world, YouTube is a *relatively* more equal playing field. With nothing more than a camera and internet, one may participate in the world of YouTube. While such prerequisites still present barriers, the threshold to participation is arguably lower than other platforms that make the same promises. Going forth, however, I do wonder how the platform might address the sorts of critiques brought up by Dylan to further minimize exclusionary practices.
December 4, 2019 at 6:22 PM
Post a Comment