When the planets align, it’s a Friday and I have my act together, I interview someone far more knowledgeable than I am about specific marketing and publicity topics. Today we have Ben Chan, who I e-met when he interviewed Hilary via video Skype about the YouTube Symphony. In the spirit of Ben’s extremely successful and time-consuming hobby, he has answered my questions on YouTube.
Ben Chan is a founder of ChamberHymns.com, a website dedicated to online instructional videos for violin, as well as the Music Chairman of WoogiWorld.com, a virtual world for kids that emphasizes Internet Safety and Education. He has won numerous prizes on violin, including a spot in the 2009 YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and has a growing YouTube channel with 1.5 million video hits.
How long have you been a YouTuber? How did you first hear about it? I don’t remember YouTube’s arrival on the scene, who even knows what I was doing…
What did you intend the channel to be, and what has it become?
You have 7,605 subscribers and 137,683 channel views (as of April 8 at 11:21pm)! Not too shabby. What about your channel makes people eager for updates?
What’s the most positive feedback you’ve received? The most negative?
Is YouTube for everyone, or does it take a certain personality? Why YouTube for you: why not a blog, Twitter feed or podcasts? When should an artist absolutely not have a YouTube channel?
Have you seen any successful examples of arts presenter or orchestra YouTube channels? If not, what would constitute a successful presenter/orchestra channel?
Do you foresee a time – or are we there? – where master classes, lessons, auditions orchestra rehearsals can be, for lack of a better word, conducted on YouTube? What do we lose and what do we gain going from in-person to video?
You’ve performing with the YouTube Symphony next week! Do you think the YouTube Symphony initiative reached new audiences for classical music or was focused on connecting existing musicians around the globe?
How has the concert next week been promoted? Were print/banner ads taken out in NYC media, or was all marketing viral through YouTube and the press the project generated? Are they expecting the concert to sell out? Does that even matter?
Will Wednesday’s concert be streamed live on YouTube? Was it ever a possibility to just have the performance at Carnegie (for the acoustics, cache, etc.) without a live audience? With “audience” members filming themselves watching the concert and applauding and then posting those videos on YouTube?
Best female violinist whose last name rhymes with “on” you’ve ever interviewed?
To make sure Ben’s a real person, go see him live on April 15th. Tickets here. I’ll be out of town, so I’m going to need some YouTube Symphony reader reports, namely, how full the house was, what the crowd looked like, and what the general atmosphere was, energy-wise.