Becoming a Youtube Musician: How People Learn, Create, and Connect Online

As the most-visited social media site on the internet, the video-sharing platform YouTube has become a highly influential space for musicmaking and learning. Becoming a YouTube Musician: How People Learn, Create, and Connect Online explores how YouTube creators and viewers are using digital video to create and consume music, develop online communities, and engage in formal, informal, and experimental music learning.

Drawing on 26 case studies, the author challenges music educators to incorporate the learning, creative, and social practices of online musicians into their classrooms by helping students learn to participate in an online music system like YouTube. While this book serves as an in-depth analysis of a specific platform, the concepts within are more universal. Becoming a YouTube Musician encourages readers to consider how technology, media, and the internet can be used to innovate teaching by incorporating popular practices that exist on social media. The author shows educators how to apply lessons from the practices of YouTube musicians in their classrooms, facilitating student creativity and engagement in new ways.

Christopher Cayari is Associate Professor of Music Education, Curriculum and Instruction (courtesy), and Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (affiliate) at Purdue University.