https://www.youtube.com/user/twosetviolin/videos https://www.twosetviolin.com/
TwoSet Violin is the Youtube channel, created on September 9th 2013 by Brett Yang and Eddie Chen, Taiwan-born Australian violinists. Both Brett and Eddy graduated from Queensland Conservatorium (in 2013 and 2014, respectively) and since then have been orchestral musicians as well as soloists for many musical projects across Australia. In private, they are two friends since young age, connected with a passion for music and sense of humour.
According to the description on their official website, their goal is to make
“classical music relevant to the modern generation through fun, humour and simplicity”. First videos posted on their channel were multi-layered violin covers of famous pop songs or film scores. They went onto incorporating vlog-like videos in which they would talk about various aspects of classical music, from concert etiquette and misconceptions about classical music, to struggles of the typical conservatory student, gaining recognition for their charisma, sense of humour and educational content.
With the raise of popularity of so called “reaction videos” genre (the videos depicting real-time reactions by various, often anonymous people; most often to certain pieces of entertainment, usually music or films) (Anderson, 2011), TwoSet joined the trend by posting their own “classical musicians react” videos (subgenre
ReacttotheK; Cheang, 2017),
In 2018, TwoSet Violin Youtube channel received the Silver Play Button for achieving a treshold of 10,000 subscribers (“YOUTUBE SILVER PLAY BUTTON!!??”, 2018).They repeated the accomplishment following year, reaching over one million subscribers in March 2019 (TwoSet Violin, 2019 [tweet]). As of July 2019, their channel was subscribed by over 1,400,000 users. Table 4.4 displays some detailed statistics about the channel, according to Socialblade.com (up until July 12, 2019):
Table 4.4 TwoSet Violin YouTube channel statistics
Subscribers 1,454,165
Video views 242,778,539
Estimated earnings (daily) $157 - $2,514.90 Estimated earnings (yearly) 3 $56.6K - $905,364.00
Source: https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/twosetviolin
Format
The new content is posted four times a week. It consists of short skits (under one minute) or longer videos (10-15min). The format is very simple and usually includes two young men sitting or standing in front of a neutral background or in a hotel room (when they are on tour). They would occasionally invite guests (such as fellow Youtuber and professional musician Ray Chen or a renowned violin soloist Hilary Hahn), or visit a certain locations, especially connected with violin music.
The editing has become more sophisticated with time, emphasising the comedic moments during the interactions with each other, but the overall quality of the
majority of their videos is often considered very rough . The longer videos are 4 hardly ever scripted and base off the natural flow of interaction. Their popular formats include “violin charades”, “TwoSet reacts” (the reviews of violin-related content in popular culture), and “Ling Ling 40 hours”, so-called “classical memes review”.
Popular themes
Brett and Eddy would often use pop culture tropes in order to explain certain issues in classical music world. Their videos with time have become more comedic in nature, while still serving educational purposes, when possible.
TwoSet would sometimes assume certain personas in their comedic skits, which would act like recurring characters (stereotypical “Asian mother” or “Viola King”). In 2017 they created a fictional character “Ling Ling”, their most well-known concept as of yet. It first appeared in the video “Different Type of Musician's Mothers” from May 15th 2017. Ling Ling never appears on screen, but serves as a genderless prodigy violin virtuoso, practicing “fourty hours a day”, a person who will always be better in whathever they undertake, and whom ambitious parents would compare their children to (Urban Dictionary, n.d.). Due to its popularity and relatability, the concept would often appear in TwoSet videos, shows, livestreams, merchandise, and has been also heavily engraved in the fan-specific set of vocabulary; it’s currently one of the most commonly used inside jokes of the fandom.
Another popular quote comes from the BBC interview with Ben Lee, the former holder of “the fastest violinist in the world” title, according to Guinness World Record (“New Guinness Record...”, 2013), which was reacted to by TwoSet in their video “The World's FASTEST (and most INACCURATE) VIOLINIST!”
from September 18th 2018. The sentence “If you can play something slowly, you can play it quickly” got criticised for its ridiculousness and heavily mocked, eventually becoming one of the most recognisable quotations in the fandom. Since then it has been extensively paraphrased and used in various context, even as much as being the apparent “call and response” between fans. What is worth mentioning is that the piece of apparel with printed quote is the most expensive piece of apparel in TwoSet’s t-shirt collection ($42; “TwoSet Apparel”, n.d.)
Fan base
The fan community began forming in the comments section of their videos. The fanbase (called “TwoSetters”) would actively (and often very repetitively) react to certain quotes or concepts introduced by Brett and Eddy, which would later become a ground for fandom’s creativity elsewhere. Their fanbase mostly consists of young people, either music student or people with no previous experience in the field, but drawn in by unspecified reasons. Some of the fans quote TwoSet as influential in picking up violin or getting interested in classical music (“My son heard you playing”, n.d.). Plenty of young musicians identify with TwoSet’s creators and use the community references on a daily basis, within their fellow musician friends (“Found a twosetter on omegle”, n.d.).
activity. The most popular comments would often lead to the creation of certain memes, which would later be omnipresent in each comment section of their channel and fan forums as an inside joke. Brett and Eddy would sometimes interact with fans through liking their comments on Youtube; they would also occasionally directly answer the comment.
b) Fan forum. Soon the special forum on Reddit platform was created (so-called
“subreddit”, decribed as r/lingling40hrs) in order to give the community the opportunity to gather, share and vote for funniest classical music memes, memes directly connected with the channel, fanart or other fanmade content. It has also become a place for discussion about classical music, music studies as well as Brett and Eddy themselves. Community interactions use memes derived from the videos and comments, creating their own internal set of references. Every two weeks Brett and Eddy would post a reaction video to most upvoted content on Reddit and encourage fans to post more.
c) Social media: TwoSet would usually share either snippets of their videos (Twitter) or full versions (Facebook) on social media, allowing for them to be spread around. They would have limited interactions with fans via their social media accounts or private accounts on Instagram. They utilise mostly Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
d) Livestreams: occasionally TwoSet would arrange a few-hour long livestream, such as the one commemorating one million subscribers (“1 Mill Subs”, 2019).
During the livestream fans could use the Superchat option, which allows for
emphasising and sometimes pinning particular message on the top of the chat for a small fee (“Manage Super Chat…”, n.d.).
Monetising activities
TwoSet Violin has two main sources of income: Youtube Partner Program and merchandise.
1) YouTube Partner Program. TwoSet Violin channel is forming a partnership with Youtube.
2) Merchandise. The shop is available through TwoSet main website. The collection includes only apparel (t-shirts, hoodies, jumpers, caps). The most popular memes or quotes would oftenbe used by TwoSet to create a piece of merchandise, such as highly popular “LingLing 40 hours” or “If you can play it slowly, you can play it quickly” (quotation from one of TwoSet’s most succesfull videos up to date, “The World’s Fastest (and Most Innacurate) Violinist”, 2018) . Brett and Eddy would usually be seen wearing their merchandise in their videos or during the tour. The t-shirts would also be available for direct purchase during the world tour show. T-shirts would go for US$39~42, hoodies and jumpers for US$70, and a cap for US$35.
3) Crowdfunding campaigns. On March 26th 2017 Brett and Eddy launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to organise the world tour, during which they would visit different parts of the world, present a musical comedy show and meet their
fans (“First crowdfunded classical world tour”, 2017). They promised to busk on the streets of Sidney, sleeping on the streets and livestreaming their efforts, until they would reach the goal of AU$50,000 (TwoSet Violin, 2017). Totalling the Kickstarter pledges and direct donations, they managed to reach the initial goal in five days (Nguyen, 2017). This amount was supposed to fund visit to ten different cities. The stretching goals of every additional AU$10,000 would add one more city to the tour (“First crowdfunded classical world tour”, 2017). On the Kickstarter itself they were able to reach AU$ 56,722 from 1,256 backers. The 2017 Europe & Asia tour included 11 cities in 10 countries. In late 2018 they were able to organise second leg to the world tour, visiting more european cities, as well as Taiwan, USA and Canada (TwoSet Violin: Live, n.d.).