Classical musicians launch YouTube channels

Soprano Jo Su-mi talks about BTS' V in one of her YouTube videos. Screen capture from Jo Su-mi's YouTube channel

By Park Ji-won

Renowned classical musicians are launching their own YouTube channels amid the pandemic to interact with fans.

Grammy Award-winning Soprano Jo Su-mi launched her YouTube channel in December. Starting with a video of herself singing Christmas carols on Dec. 27, she has uploaded five videos, including three BTS-related ones.

Jo is one of a few classical musicians who are active on social media to talk directly with fans.

Award-winning pianist and artistic director Son Yeol-eum also launched a YouTube channel last September, which has already attracted more than 51,500 subscribers. She shares videos of her performances while uploading vlogs of her ordinary life. One of them already has more than 160,000 views.

Violinist Kim G-yoon, who is based in Seoul, launched her channel in 2018 and has been sharing behind-the-scenes stories of her performances and videos of her practicing.

YouTube channels for classical music have been normally considered a means to upload performance videos, but increasingly more channels try to add some “entertaining” elements as well.

Towmoo, a channel launched for classical musicians in Korea, with more than 480,000 subscribers, has been releasing various classical music-related videos since 2018. One of its main features has been “challenge” videos, which give difficult tasks to musicians to see whether they can accomplish them. The most popular video in the channel asks whether music professors can tell the difference between a renowned pianist and a student. It has already attracted 10.1 million views.