WWW.Youtube.Com (2007)

No, this is not the offbeat title of a recording, but rather a destination on the world wide web, which over the last two years has become one of the busiest and most influential sites in all cyberspace. It was mentioned in a letter to the editor from voice pathologist Martin Spencer (JOS 63, no. 5), who was responding in part to an observation made in this column about the many young singers who are ignorant of great singers from previous generations. This is not only ignorance about important artists of the distant past such as Frieda Leider or Beniamino Gigli, but even of relatively recent luminaries such as Leontyne Price. Mr. Spencer points out quite rightly that such ignorance is not only regrettable, but also inexcusable in a world that includes YouTube, where anyone with a computer and internet access can enjoy free and instant access to a staggering array of remarkable performances by great singers of the past and present. With the editor-in-chief's permission, a portion of this issue's column will offer an introduction to YouTube and a summary of the types of performances that one may access there. YouTube was created in 2005 by two former employees of PayPal, the preferred payment system when one makes purchases on eBay. They envisioned a website where people would be able to download their own original home videos and, in effect, make them instantly accessible to anyone surfing the web. What they did not expect was how spectacularly the website almost immediately would become, and how so many of the videos there would not be original creations but rather pirated excerpts from film and television. In other words, one might post an excerpt from home movies taken at Disneyland or an excerpt from a climactic scene in the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy. The range of material found there is staggering. Young people will post videos of everything from school concert highlights to backyard mischief to school fights. Amateur poets will post videos in which they recite their poetry, aspiring comedians will post footage of their routines, and ordinary people will deliver commentaries on everything from world events to their latest fight with their boyfriend or girlfriend. Politicians and their staffs are making increasing usage of YouTube to get out their messages and to undermine the efforts of opponents. Ordinary citizens continue to post excerpts from favorite television programs, although such postings raise the complicated issue of copyright and have led media giants such as Viacom to pursue legal action against YouTube. Whether or not this ends up altering the way YouTube operates remains to be seen. Music abounds on YouTube, although the overwhelming majority of it has nothing to do with Zinka Milanov or the art songs of Franz Liszt. There is of every imaginable variety, from both here and abroad, ranging from bootleg footage of world famous artists to unapologetic offerings from egregiously inept amateurs. In addition to the videos themselves, YouTube now offers a feature in which anyone can post comments on what they've seen. Just as the videos are almost completely unpoliced, so are these viewer comments, and they can sometimes descend into savage attacks laced with filthy language. This is not for the faint of heart. Videos also can be rated on a five-star scale, and the average rating is posted along with the number of times that the video in question has been viewed on the site. One might initially be heartened to see that a Juan Diego Florez clip has been viewed eight thousand times, but that pales beside the most clips which will be viewed more than forty million times. (They don't call it popular music for nothing.) The video plays on a relatively small rectangular space toward the center of the screen, with such options as pausing and rewinding available on almost all computers. The quality of the picture and sound depends both on the size and quality of one's computer, as well as the quality of the video itself when it was submitted to the website. …