The Grand Finale of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 was held on March 20 at Sydney Opera House. It was live-streamed to the world on YouTube during this week-long festival leading up to the finale. For the first time, 101 musicians from 33 countries joined together in new cultural experiences, musical mentorship and performances in one of the world’s most iconic symbols of the arts.
While this three-and-a-half hour Grand Finale was being live-streamed, people in different timezones awoke to re-broadcasts. This event was streamed 33 million times around the world to 189 countries, which included a whopping 2.8 million mobile live-streams, making it one of the biggest streaming events till date, on mobile and desktop. That means the event was streamed to nearly one-and-a-half times the entire population of Australia, where the event took place.
One of the main aims for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra was to make classical music accessible; the total data transferred by the stream was a whopping 422 terabytes, which is the equivalent of 145 million MP3 files of classical music being emailed around the world.
The top 10 countries viewing the performance online were:
1. U.S.
2. Germany
3. Italy
4. France
5. Poland
6. Russia
7. Australia
8. U.K.
9. Brazil
10. Taiwan
In case you missed the Grand Finale, you can watch the full concert and highlights from the last week anytime by clicking here.
