YouTube for the arts

YouTube for the arts – live chat

Psy performs Gangnam Style — Psy performs his hit single Gangnam Style, for which the music video became YouTube’s most watched video of all time. Photograph: Afp/AFP/Getty Images

Double rainbows, dramatic chipmunks, Star Wars kids, keyboard cats, bed intruders, sneezing pandas, Rickrolls and, of course, that time Charlie bit a poor, helpless child’s finger.

If you recognise any of those seemingly bizarre references then you’ll know YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing website and responsible for hosting, like those above, some of the most loved, memorable and infamous videos in popular culture. According to the site, more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube every month, consuming 6bn hours of video content, almost an hour for every person on Earth. On top of that, an eye-watering 100 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute.

All very impressive, but what does that mean for the arts?

For starters, it’s a mightily strong medium for engaging young audiences, often something cultural organisations are aiming to address in adopting new social platforms and experimenting with new mediums. According to a recent survey by Tesco Mobile of 1,000 British people aged 16-25, one in three said they were avid viewers and fans of YouTube vlogs, tuning in at least twice a week, with almost half of these admitting to watching their favourite YouTube stars over 10 times a week.

To give you an idea of how super those stars can become, videos of Swedish gamer Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg were watched 449m times in August alone, eclipsing Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Shakira and Enrique Iglesias.

So what can the sector learn from channels like PewDiePie? What is there to gain from the fact that videos of people unboxing toys can garner almost 100m views? Where are the YouTube superstars of arts and culture?

These are the questions we want to answer in our next live chat, which takes place on Wednesday 8 October from 1-2:30pm. We will be joined by an expert panel of YouTube users, digital pros and arts organisations getting it right. We want to discuss the dos, don’ts and what potential there is in other sites such as Vimeo, or the new kid on the block, live streaming video platform Twitch.

This live chat takes places in the comments section below.

Take part by logging in (or signing up) as a commenter and submit your question or query below. You can post something now for the panel to pick up on the day or join us live.