They time limited it to 23 years or the establishment of world peace, whichever came first, so it's available on streaming services now, though sadly not as a result of world peace.
Perhaps this is the reason for taking it down: they want to concentrate on a more commonly accepted-as-art part of the careers and not have the other content distract from that for now? If so then perhaps once they've moved far enough forward in the new direction, that it stands on its own to their satisfaction, the old content will start to be republished for nostalgia points.
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[1] I'm not meaning to denigrate it, despite how that sentence may sound. It entertained many including sometimes me, so the content very much has value, but I don't generally consider commentary to be art.
As to clapping: As late as the late 1800s, it was okay to clap during the loud parts of the song. Baroque music also often has long cadenzas that end in a big trill, which was a signal for the crowd to go wild. I agree about getting less strict about this, and historically things were less strict. At the same time, I recently saw a performance of Tchaikovsky 6 where the audience started clapping between the last two movements (a triumphal march followed by a tragic final movement), and a large part of the energy of the piece was lost from the audience doing this. I think this rule mostly comes from the audience not understanding when not to clap.
Also, lots of classical music is done in environments that aren't concert halls and these are much looser about the etiquette. A concert hall is a nice place to go, and many people go on dates at concert halls, and a lot of the vibe for the audience comes from the fact that people dress up for the occasion.
The modern era seems to have taken the previous distribution of engagement and hollowed out the middle. People now either don’t care much, or they care a LOT. Applies to music, art, cooking, and so many hobbies.
There's a YouTube channel, "Wings of Pegasus" that does a lot of breakdowns of recordings, isolating voices and instruments and analyzing what kind of processing has been done on them.
They had a video a few months ago [1] looking at two performances from the 2024 Glastonbury Festival. One from an '80s artist (Cyndi Lauper) and one from a current artist (Dua Lipa).
Lauper's live performance was the kind you'd expect from an '80s act. What the audience heard was what she was singing live and what the musicians on stage were playing.
During Lipa's performance most of the time what they audience was hearing was Lipa's vocals from the studio recording. She was singing live but most of the time they had her microphone turned way down in the mix. They'd only turn it up and the recording down for a few passages. Same with the musicians. There was a drummer on stage but mostly to accompany the studio recording.
The thing is Lipa's fans are OK with that. They aren't there to hear what she sounds like live. The extras they get at a live show over just listening to the recording are the experience of the crowd and watching the dancing and light show.
Contrast to the '80s and '90s where one of the points of going to a concert was that the bands tried different things with their songs. They didn't just play note for note and beat for beat the studio version. Live versions might have more solos, or a different solo, or different instrumentation, or variations on the lyrics (or even new verses). The live performances were different enough that people would buy live albums even though they had every song from the live album on studio albums they already owned.
It's an interesting change, and I'm not sure why it happened. I speculate that it may be due to the increased sophistication of the processing that can be done in a studio. If every tiny imperfection gets processed away in the studio so that all people are hearing is 100% on pitch with 100% perfect timing maybe the imperfections of a true live performance would sound bad to them?
Also, they are starting something called TwoSetAcademy.com. I don't know if they have given details but if you go there the heading says "WANT TO BE THE NEXT LINGLING?" and the subheading says "Professors Yang and Chen are waiting for you...", and it asks if you play violin/viola, do not but want to learn, or neither.
If you say yes it then starts asking for more on that like your level. If you say you want to it asks what other instruments you play if any. If you say neither it asks if you would be interested in learning other classical music topics.
A lot of music channels end up running some sort of teaching platform. Violinist Ray Chen for example has something called "Tonic". I've not really looked into it but it seems to be some kind of virtual practice room where you and other people using it can encourage each other and give each other feedback.
Brandon Acker, whose channel is mostly serious classical guitar and older string instruments (lute, theorbo, oud) with a few fun side things has Classical Guitar Pro which has video classes and you can post videos of your progress to a private Facebook group for Acker to comment on. He also has Arpeggiato.com which is described as an online music school for "everything that goes pluck", which has a bunch of teachers giving online private lessons. They've got teachers for classical guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, lute, theorbo, early plucked instruments, ukulele, mandolin, bass, oud, flamenco guitar, baroque guitar, and voice. They also have masterclasses and workshops directed by Acker.
It's similar for YouTubers in the non-classical world. For instance Samurai Guitarist has the Samurai Guitar Dojo where he offers his Samurai Guitar Theory courses. Charles Cornell has Better Piano.
Sounds like there's more to the story.
PS. I had just watched James Ehnes Chaconne on youtube . It was beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjYQlmpS69k
And this, my friends, is why we download local copies.
Seems like they are rebranding!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzKFALPuF_EPe-AEI0WFFw/com...
I miss the old setup but at the same time I can't wait to see what's next.
It sure looks like they are just moving to a different platform, one that doesn't want their stuff on YouTube for free.
> Teaching is probably the safer career long-term.
It's an odd way to see a shop leaving my app!
I agree with others that this seems like an attempt to pivot to “music as a higher art”, e.g. the rumored Two Set Academy, like a Tonebase competitor. Which is an absolute shame, because I think they did wonders to challenge that status quo and make classical music fun.
[1] Shameless, but if anyone is curious about an adult hobbyist learning classical guitar, I’m livestreaming almost daily: https://youtube.com/jcpractices
(I never watched a video though, as I had 40 hours of practice to do every day)