Distribution and Popularity Patterns of Chinese Music on YouTube: A Case Study of Local Music’s Representation on a Global Internet Platform.

The Internet allows local music to be available to a global audience, blurring distinctions between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, and between ‘etic’ and ‘emic’. This study examines the interactive relationships between globalised ‘local music’ and a ‘global audience’, using Chinese music as found on YouTube as an example. Distribution and popularity patterns of Chinese music videos are studied, as well as their public perception, on the basis of user comments. The study is an attempt to push forward the boundaries of ethnomusicological research in the twenty-first-century Internet age. It constitutes a methodological proposal for the study of Internet music from a musicological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]