Professional Musicians and YouTube

[bachmaninov]

Okay, so I was watching this show on TV today called i-caught. It shows how some peoples lives have changed by posting videos on youtubes and getting an incredible amount of hits. YouTube is mainly composed of peoples miscues in life caught on tape, so here is my question:

Isn't this a professional musicians worst nightmare? Hypothetically, what if someone like Lang Lang really screwed up a live recorded performance. Wouldn't that destroy his career because it would get posted on YouTube and probably be one of the most viewed videos of the month or something! It really freaks me out thinking about the possibility of making it big in music, then having my dreams shattered instantly in one performance. I mean it's only human to really mess up at some point in time. But on YouTube, viewers don't realize that people make mistakes, and are ridiculed forever.

Knowing stuff like YouTube exists, how would a professional popular classical musician go about performing comftorably in a major performance knowing if anything went wrong, it would be posted on YouTube and ruin them. Talk about some extra pressure.

Thanks

[jlh]

That's one reason professional musicians insist that no one have any recording devices at the live concerts.

Besides the fact that you can be sued if you share videos of a performer without their consent.

[bachmaninov]

That's one reason professional musicians insist that no one have any recording devices at the live concerts.

Besides the fact that you can be sued if you share videos of a performer without their consent.

ahh ya! I forgot about the no recording during concerts. But stuff like that still shows up on youtube! Heck, they even found a way to record Sadams execution.

[ramseytheii]

Okay, so I was watching this show on TV today called i-caught. It shows how some peoples lives have changed by posting videos on youtubes and getting an incredible amount of hits. YouTube is mainly composed of peoples miscues in life caught on tape, so here is my question:

Isn't this a professional musicians worst nightmare? Hypothetically, what if someone like Lang Lang really screwed up a live recorded performance. Wouldn't that destroy his career because it would get posted on YouTube and probably be one of the most viewed videos of the month or something! It really freaks me out thinking about the possibility of making it big in music, then having my dreams shattered instantly in one performance. I mean it's only human to really mess up at some point in time. But on YouTube, viewers don't realize that people make mistakes, and are ridiculed forever.

Knowing stuff like YouTube exists, how would a professional popular classical musician go about performing comftorably in a major performance knowing if anything went wrong, it would be posted on YouTube and ruin them. Talk about some extra pressure.

Thanks

I think you are exaggerating the influence of YouTube, and also underestimating the public's capacity for forgiveness (even that seems too strong a word, after all people mess up, why should they be condemned or forgiven either way?)  I can't see in any situation how a bad recital, or a mistake, would be the ultimate ruin of a person, whether 100 people hear it, or 100,000.

Also I don't think any musician lives off the facade of perfection, I have seen pianists who never play a wrong note in recordings mess up terribly live (Marc-andre Hamelin, Boris Berezovsky, Alfred Brendel).  Live recordings exist of some of the most legendary pianists that are complete mess (many live Richter recordings, Horowitz in Japan) or stray recordings that don't represent the artist at their best (Gould's teenage recordings, early 2nd Viennese school recordings).  Millions of people have heard those, and those people were never ruined.

Walter Ramsey

[rallestar]

I think it'd work opposite - At least people would know my name, and perhaps still appreciate the playing except the mistake. They might find it funny and interesting too.

I certainly would not disregard a performer after seeing him make such a mistake. Afterall, anyone with the slightest idea about music knows that these things happen from time to time.