Thread: Research Project on Classical Music Remixes on YouTube

Hi folks,

Do you want to take part in an online research project on Classical Music and the internet?

http://www.unisa.edu.au/management/r...sicalMusic.asp

We are a group of researchers at the School of Management at the University of South Australia. We’re interested in the role of places like Youtube in classical music today, and we want to learn more about popular attitudes to things like the remix and the video mash-up. Another remix of Pachabel? Why? And who is it for?

Note that we are looking specifically at classical music, and trying to understand the business implications for modern classical music of the creation of hybridized versions or 'remixes' of original compositions.

We’d appreciate it if interested members of this forum would go to our questionnaire site and take about ten minutes to answer the questions there. Please indicate where you saw this posted, as we're putting it up in a range of places.

Go to: http://www.unisa.edu.au/management/r...sicalMusic.asp

There’s also a few terms and conditions you should scan through before participating. Of course, all your answers will be confidential when we publish results of the survey on the website in due course.

Thankyou,

Dr Helen Rusak and Dr S.J. McKenzie

No thanks, I'll pass. If you give me three million dollars I might take it.

And participate in the slaughter of more classical music into easily digestible chuncks of garbage? nothx

Bad Request (Invalid URL). 5 minutes of my life wasted, what a pity. Still, most of the answers were something like "killers of classical music (and music in general), may you rot in hell"

Originally Posted by SJMcKenzie

Hi folks,

Do you want to take part in an online research project on Classical Music and the internet?

I had a quick look. I have seldom seen such an abysmally pointless survey. If you're really stuck for responses I'll do it a bit cheaper than MI. How about $2million.

Originally Posted by nickgray

Bad Request (Invalid URL). 5 minutes of my life wasted, what a pity. Still, most of the answers were something like "killers of classical music (and music in general), may you rot in hell"

Thanks Nick and a few others who had a go at completing this.

In fact your answers did get through. There appears to be a problem with the redirect URL after the survey is completed rather than the data getting through.

'Rot in hell' style responses ( ) are fine so long as we have some idea of where they are from. A lot of stuff from the YouTube users is very different, obviously.

Also I'm not sure why we are seen as participating in the mangling of classical music in this way, when what we are doing is studying the phenomenon.

Steve.

A study of a school of management that doesn't lead to business ideas about the same subject?

Fair point.

The team running the project are in the field of arts management.

The initial impetus came from wondering how the copyright of composers might reasonably be protected from this sort of thing. But that's a huge question, so we narrowed it down to finding out what sorts of people are doing remixes and why, as well as what other behaviours around copyright and downloading they have.

You are right in thinking there is ultimately a commcerical motivation in projects like this, but it is not the case that we are trying to position ourselves in the burgeoning 'remix market' as there is no such thing. Rather, we are looking at possibilities like an online copyright protection organisation that keeps an eye on forums such as YouTube and protects artists against the exploitation of their work.

The other issue to consider is that for an unknown composer, the - admittedly rather crass - use of their work on places like YouTube might be one of the only ways that they can reach a larger audience, so some composers may not mind the use of their work in this way.

In such a case, it is not so much a matter of protecting the artist as keeping them informed of the online activities. We have only limited examples of this, but are wondering how classical composers and performers not currently on YouTube might utilize the same sorts of viral networking channels as popular music artists without losing the integrity of their composition.

Originally Posted by SJMcKenzie

Fair point.

The team running the project are in the field of arts management.

The initial impetus came from wondering how the copyright of composers might reasonably be protected from this sort of thing. But that's a huge question, so we narrowed it down to finding out what sorts of people are doing remixes and why, as well as what other behaviours around copyright and downloading they have.

You are right in thinking there is ultimately a commcerical motivation in projects like this, but it is not the case that we are trying to position ourselves in the burgeoning 'remix market' as there is no such thing. Rather, we are looking at possibilities like an online copyright protection organisation that keeps an eye on forums such as YouTube and protects artists against the exploitation of their work.

The other issue to consider is that for an unknown composer, the - admittedly rather crass - use of their work on places like YouTube might be one of the only ways that they can reach a larger audience, so some composers may not mind the use of their work in this way.

In such a case, it is not so much a matter of protecting the artist as keeping them informed of the online activities. We have only limited examples of this, but are wondering how classical composers and performers not currently on YouTube might utilize the same sorts of viral networking channels as popular music artists without losing the integrity of their composition.

You are hardly likely to find a relevant audience here for the kind of "re-mixes" you are talking about. Hence the general lack of response so far. I see that you have tried other classical Boards as well, with much the same apathy. I wonder how much reliance can be placed on research with employs such a scatter gun approach with regard to finding the relevant target audience, and how you cope with self-selecting samples of respondents.

Originally Posted by Artemis

You are hardly likely to find a relevant audience here for the kind of "re-mixes" you are talking about. Hence the general lack of response so far. I see that you have tried other classical Boards as well, with much the same apathy. I wonder how much reliance can be placed on research with employs such a scatter gun approach with regard to finding the relevant target audience, and how you cope with self-selecting samples of respondents.

I'm not really looking for an 'audience' for remixes. Obvioulsy, the tone here is generally negative towards remixes but this does not mean that answers from this sort of board are invalid. We wanted a range of responses on this issue. We do have a considerable number of responses from those involved in remix activity, but if we only sought responses from those areas where we know they will be positive, then we are only going to get those sorts of responses. There's not much scope for demographic comparisons in such a process.

Which leads me to question Artemis: What do you see as the alternative to 'self-selecting' participants in a broad online field? A process in which a number of 'ideal' subjects are asked to respond on select boards? I can't see the advantage of that at this stage. The 'location' of the demographic isn't really that well established and people who turn out to be into YouTube, or remixes specifically, are cropping up in various places other than well known YouTube haunts.

Anyway apart from that, I'll leave this thread as it is, because I suspect that those from this board who were going to answer have done so. Thanks to thse folks.