Distribution and Popularity Patterns of Chinese Music on YouTube: A Case Study of Local Music’s Representation on a Global Internet Platform

Abstract

The Internet allows local music to be available to a global audience, blurring distinctions between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, and between ‘etic’ and ‘emic’. This study examines the interactive relationships between globalised ‘local music’ and a ‘global audience’, using Chinese music as found on YouTube as an example. Distribution and popularity patterns of Chinese music videos are studied, as well as their public perception, on the basis of user comments. The study is an attempt to push forward the boundaries of ethnomusicological research in the twenty-first-century Internet age. It constitutes a methodological proposal for the study of Internet music from a musicological perspective.

Keywords:

• Internet
• YouTube
• global audiences
• Chinese musicology

Notes

¹ Sometimes also paraphrased, for example, as ‘modernization’ (Stokes, 2004, p. 47), ‘colonial modernity’ (Jones, 2001, p. 9), being ‘organized by consumer choice’ (Stokes, 2004, p. 49; referring to Slobin), or ‘market civilization’ (e.g. Mignolo, 2012, p. 40) in the context of post-colonial studies).

² Among others, see Nettl (1985), Born and Hesmondhalgh (2000), Saldanha (2002) (Indian music), Berger and Carroll (2003) and Ho (2003) (music from Hong Kong); for cultural alterity and difference, see, for example Hall and du Gay (1996) and Loomba (1998).

³ For East-Asian cultural influences on Europe in general, (see Jacob, 1931); for examples of Chinese musical influences on Europe, (see Zeng, 2003, pp. 309–325). Studies of American influences on Chinese Jazz in (Jones, 2001; Yu, 2017; Yu & Whyton, 2017) are also considered the other way around.

⁴ Studies of the diffusion of the ‘local’ into the ‘global’ can be found in Stahl (1989) on Chinese exoticism in European music, and Chen (2004) on Chinese culture in ‘Western’ music of the twentieth century.

⁵ https://www.youtube.com.

⁶ See Cheng, Cameron, and Jiangchuan (2007, 2008) and Figueiredo, Benevenuto, and Almeida (2011).

⁷ See Gill, Arlitt, Li, and Mahanti (2007) for an example of a campus network as well as on a global scale, or Burgess and Green (2009) for popular videos in general.

⁸ On YouTube this binary rating is represented by ‘thumb up’ or ‘thumb down’, but in the following text it is referred to as ‘like’ and ‘dislike’.

⁹ One of the objectives of the study was to examine what was considered to be ‘Chinese music’ on the global YouTube platform, so we accepted this as an effective definition of ‘Chinese music’. A proper definition would have to consider other issues such as whether it is music from the geographical locality of modern-day China, music originating from Han Chinese people, or music of the global Chinese diaspora.

¹⁰ In accordance with Gill et al. who also decided to consider the top 100 videos of each examined category in a study of global YouTube characteristics over time. Their decision was partly based on the Pareto principle: ‘[…] 20% (or 10%) of the files on a web server or streaming media server accounted for 80% (or 90%) of the requests’ Gill et al. (2007, p. 5).

¹¹ See, for example, Hall and du Gay (1996) and Loomba (1998) for cultural alterity and difference in general.

¹² Although the term ‘ambient’ can only be found in content descriptions, the term has been chosen as the name of this genre, together with the frequently used term ‘zen’, as it serves as a reasonable reference to an already existing global musical phenomenon: ambient is a genre in which modern production techniques are used to emphasise sounds and atmosphere, based on seemingly traditional melodies and rhythms. The YouTube users and the content owners seem to refer to this genre when they describe this music with terms such as ‘traditional’, ‘meditation’ and ‘zen’ in their comments or video descriptions.

¹³ The difficulty of assigning genres is illustrated by the fact that two of the results in the subgenre ‘Cover, “Western” Adaptations’ are also live performances with traditional instruments (Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’, featuring a single guzheng (Chinese zither) and Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’, performed by the Chinese National Orchestra which predominantly consists for this purpose of erhu (Chinese fiddles), but has been separately classified, due to itsw popular musical content.

¹⁴ This category contains both slideshows or static images.

¹⁵ The provocative nature is in part due to the use of animal sounds throughout the whole song, either imitated by the human voice or synthesised, and the surreal nature of the video clip.