This is a bit bizarre; why would any musician take down their own recordings, where they continue to earn advertising revenue and gain fans? Even if they were planning to sell the recordings to a record label for some anniversary album, it would be daft to close down their main publicity channel. Very mysterious...
Another famous example of this is the KLF who did they same. They also set fire to 1 million pound sterling of their royalties at the same time, so it was more an art thing than a bad business decision.
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.
A fair chunk of their output (that I saw) was commentary on other stuff (performers/performances/other) which is pretty much commodity content for easy consumption, not really art¹.
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.
----
[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.
The more I think about it and read, the more certain it is they're just switching platforms. Even the phrase "ends chapter", it's not the end of the book, they're just making a change.
This is a huge loss - outside of a handful of echo chambers classical music is kind of dying. Fewer and fewer young people care about it, I am grateful to TwoSet for providing a relatable way for the next generation of listeners to ramp into classical music.
Classical music needs to drop all pretensions. Silly rules about conductors walking on and off stage, no clapping between movements (or sections or whatever), dress codes, etc... I'm a music lover and I go see a classical concert once every few years and it's easily the least fun concert experience (apart from the music). Also, god forbid they have someone come out and talk for 2 minutes and tell the context of the piece, why it might have been different or interesting at the time it was written, what to look for, etc... Some of these composers were literally rock stars of their time, let the audience know about that. It's fun! But no, you should just know all that. The old rich white people that run it would rather cling to the past and watch it continue to slowly die than modernize.
I actually like those a lot. It's one of the few places where people are not shouting, there's no bright lights or loud background music. People don't use cellphones much. I assume a certain (minority) of the population likes those things. There sure are enough loud and flashy things for people to choose from.
One thing that sort of shocks me about music in general is that fewer and fewer people are actively engaging with music. While more and more people start to pick up instruments, a smaller and smaller fraction of the population sticks with them (classical or otherwise), and even things like actively listening to a recording or going to a concert (again, classical or otherwise) are declining as hobbies. Music for many people is something that happens increasingly in the background of other activities as a "mood enhancer" rather than as a focus itself.
What people want out of a concert is also changing.
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?
I’m in a jazz band of committed amateurs and most of the musicians are under 30. And this music is not easy to get good at.
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.
Yeah, I sing in a chorus, and the rough composition is:
* 10% professional or aspiring professional singers (who are young)
* 20% music educators in their 20's and 30's
* 30% people in their 20's and 30's who are very musically-inclined and studied music a lot as children
* 40% older people who sing as more of a hobby
When I mostly played chamber music, the crowd was also very young and enthusiastic. 21st century composers actually seem to have a better audience than 20th century composers did.
Music in general seems to be fragmenting into many subcultures of very interested people, with the exception of pop music and ironically parts of the classical/opera crowd that see it as a status symbol.
Yes . I was showing a friend the prodigy video and the next day I was reviewing their series on the Hardest violin pieces - Easy , Medium, Hard, God Level and then they had Ling Ling. I was watching it for the Bach Chaconne - I knew it was marked as difficult but didnt know where. And suddenly it went private while I was in the midst of watching it.
Wow, this is pretty sudden. I wonder what the real story here is. Both have grown a lot as musicians and violinists over the last 11 years, so I wonder if one or both of them has picked up an agent for a solo career that really didn't want the twoset channel being up. That would be a really stupid decision, but I can see it.
Or they want to move away somewhat from comedy. Note that earlier this year they started another channel, TwoSet Talks, which is things like them interviewing people, telling behind the scenes stories from their tour, commenting on things, and other typical talk show stuff.
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.
I doubt that's it. "We're stepping away from this project to focus on our solo careers" is an extremely established & acceptable play for musicians. To such an extent that it's often stated disingenuously to cover other conflict or scandal. If it were that they would have just said it.
>This will be the last piece of content we post *as TwoSet Violin*. It’s been a wild ride with you all for the last 11 years. We’ve all grown up together and it’s kinda surreal that we’re *ending our chapter here*.
It sure looks like they are just moving to a different platform, one that doesn't want their stuff on YouTube for free.
Being a music teacher is a well-established play that winds up being a reasonable money maker. It's not super lucrative but it is understood and legible.
Several prominent music youtubers have abandoned successful channels for much less lucrative "traditional" music work like touring and session play. The sense I get is that they think of themselves as musicians, belonging to a community of musicians, and that the longer they work on youtube the farther they get from that community. Making your money from youtube is its own hell too.
> Making your money from youtube is its own hell too.
There are some interesting details on that in this video [1] from YouTuber Samurai Guitarist. The video is on the various ways one might make money as a guitarist (but much of it is not specific to guitar) and how effective they may be.
Covered are local gigging, mid level touring guitarist, top level touring guitarist, busking, cruise ship musician, studio musician, private lesson teacher, university teacher, endorsement deals, and content creator.
This kind of reminds me of DigitalRev TV. Like TwoSet it brought in people who would typically have no interest in the subject matter just because the hosts were entertaining. Rebranding or trying to launch your own content never seems to work out.
They realized the same thing that Davie504 and other musicians did: that music itself is fine, but it will be much more interesting if one spices it with a bit of humor.
I miss the old setup but at the same time I can't wait to see what's next.
That doesn’t automatically mean they’ll just change their name and continue going, it could also mean they’ll part ways but continuing releasing stuff under their individual names, or with other people, or doing something different together.
I used to be their big fan. I bought many 2set T-shirts and put their stickers on my violin case. But recently I found their video quality dropped so I stopped following… Anyways, their videos helped me through the dark times of the pandemic and I really appreciate that. Hope they will produce some better content maybe as individual creators in the future!
This is a bit bizarre; why would any musician take down their own recordings, where they continue to earn advertising revenue and gain fans? Even if they were planning to sell the recordings to a record label for some anniversary album, it would be daft to close down their main publicity channel. Very mysterious...
Another famous example of this is the KLF who did they same. They also set fire to 1 million pound sterling of their royalties at the same time, so it was more an art thing than a bad business decision.
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.
Yes, I'm only hearing of them now, so that robs me of the chance to enjoy a lot of their music.
There's more to art than simply producing commodities to consume.
A fair chunk of their output (that I saw) was commentary on other stuff (performers/performances/other) which is pretty much commodity content for easy consumption, not really art¹.
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.
----
[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.
The more I think about it and read, the more certain it is they're just switching platforms. Even the phrase "ends chapter", it's not the end of the book, they're just making a change.
Likely just a bad business decision. People do these all the time. What is obvious to me and you is not obvious to everyone.
Or a conscious choice not related to business. It goes the other way around too, what is obvious to them is not obvious to you.
This is a huge loss - outside of a handful of echo chambers classical music is kind of dying. Fewer and fewer young people care about it, I am grateful to TwoSet for providing a relatable way for the next generation of listeners to ramp into classical music.
Classical music needs to drop all pretensions. Silly rules about conductors walking on and off stage, no clapping between movements (or sections or whatever), dress codes, etc... I'm a music lover and I go see a classical concert once every few years and it's easily the least fun concert experience (apart from the music). Also, god forbid they have someone come out and talk for 2 minutes and tell the context of the piece, why it might have been different or interesting at the time it was written, what to look for, etc... Some of these composers were literally rock stars of their time, let the audience know about that. It's fun! But no, you should just know all that. The old rich white people that run it would rather cling to the past and watch it continue to slowly die than modernize.
I actually like those a lot. It's one of the few places where people are not shouting, there's no bright lights or loud background music. People don't use cellphones much. I assume a certain (minority) of the population likes those things. There sure are enough loud and flashy things for people to choose from.
One thing that sort of shocks me about music in general is that fewer and fewer people are actively engaging with music. While more and more people start to pick up instruments, a smaller and smaller fraction of the population sticks with them (classical or otherwise), and even things like actively listening to a recording or going to a concert (again, classical or otherwise) are declining as hobbies. Music for many people is something that happens increasingly in the background of other activities as a "mood enhancer" rather than as a focus itself.
What people want out of a concert is also changing.
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?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHJ4pL7U0Po
I’m in a jazz band of committed amateurs and most of the musicians are under 30. And this music is not easy to get good at.
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.
Yeah, I sing in a chorus, and the rough composition is:
* 10% professional or aspiring professional singers (who are young)
* 20% music educators in their 20's and 30's
* 30% people in their 20's and 30's who are very musically-inclined and studied music a lot as children
* 40% older people who sing as more of a hobby
When I mostly played chamber music, the crowd was also very young and enthusiastic. 21st century composers actually seem to have a better audience than 20th century composers did.
Music in general seems to be fragmenting into many subcultures of very interested people, with the exception of pop music and ironically parts of the classical/opera crowd that see it as a status symbol.
Here's one you could add to your list: https://www.youtube.com/@AnnaLapwoodOrgan
> The duo has pulled the majority of its video content from YouTube, leaving only 29 videos on the platform.
Sounds like there's more to the story.
Yes . I was showing a friend the prodigy video and the next day I was reviewing their series on the Hardest violin pieces - Easy , Medium, Hard, God Level and then they had Ling Ling. I was watching it for the Bach Chaconne - I knew it was marked as difficult but didnt know where. And suddenly it went private while I was in the midst of watching it.
PS. I had just watched James Ehnes Chaconne on youtube . It was beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjYQlmpS69k
Did you find out where the Chaconne ranked before it went private?
For others like me that didn’t understand what Ling Ling is.
https://twosetviolin.fandom.com/wiki/Ling_Ling
> The duo has pulled the majority of its video content from YouTube, leaving only 29 videos on the platform.
And this, my friends, is why we download local copies.
Wow, this is pretty sudden. I wonder what the real story here is. Both have grown a lot as musicians and violinists over the last 11 years, so I wonder if one or both of them has picked up an agent for a solo career that really didn't want the twoset channel being up. That would be a really stupid decision, but I can see it.
Or they want to move away somewhat from comedy. Note that earlier this year they started another channel, TwoSet Talks, which is things like them interviewing people, telling behind the scenes stories from their tour, commenting on things, and other typical talk show stuff.
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.
I doubt that's it. "We're stepping away from this project to focus on our solo careers" is an extremely established & acceptable play for musicians. To such an extent that it's often stated disingenuously to cover other conflict or scandal. If it were that they would have just said it.
When there’s a sudden, dramatic, never-going-back/burning-the-ships move, it’s a sign that it’s a personal, not business, decision.
>This will be the last piece of content we post *as TwoSet Violin*. It’s been a wild ride with you all for the last 11 years. We’ve all grown up together and it’s kinda surreal that we’re *ending our chapter here*.
It sure looks like they are just moving to a different platform, one that doesn't want their stuff on YouTube for free.
Apparently this was a bad opinion, oops.
Being a music teacher is a well-established play that winds up being a reasonable money maker. It's not super lucrative but it is understood and legible.
Several prominent music youtubers have abandoned successful channels for much less lucrative "traditional" music work like touring and session play. The sense I get is that they think of themselves as musicians, belonging to a community of musicians, and that the longer they work on youtube the farther they get from that community. Making your money from youtube is its own hell too.
> Making your money from youtube is its own hell too.
There are some interesting details on that in this video [1] from YouTuber Samurai Guitarist. The video is on the various ways one might make money as a guitarist (but much of it is not specific to guitar) and how effective they may be.
Covered are local gigging, mid level touring guitarist, top level touring guitarist, busking, cruise ship musician, studio musician, private lesson teacher, university teacher, endorsement deals, and content creator.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch7t9KGcOPk
This kind of reminds me of DigitalRev TV. Like TwoSet it brought in people who would typically have no interest in the subject matter just because the hosts were entertaining. Rebranding or trying to launch your own content never seems to work out.
Didn’t expect this to show up on hackernews! Didn’t know there were so many lingling fans here.
They realized the same thing that Davie504 and other musicians did: that music itself is fine, but it will be much more interesting if one spices it with a bit of humor.
I miss the old setup but at the same time I can't wait to see what's next.
I also appreciated commentary from professional violinists about soloist performance and why they’re so technically and musically good
They are closing their eShop :( they were loyal clients of my app EXPORT OrderPro in Shopify for years.
It's an odd way to see a shop leaving my app!
Sad to hear that they removed most of their content as well.
There's a hint in their post [1] though: "This will be the last piece of content we post __as TwoSet Violin__."
Seems like they are rebranding!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzKFALPuF_EPe-AEI0WFFw/com...
That doesn’t automatically mean they’ll just change their name and continue going, it could also mean they’ll part ways but continuing releasing stuff under their individual names, or with other people, or doing something different together.
Go here https://www.youtube.com/@twosetviolin/videos and click on their channel info: seems like they are now twosetacademy
I wonder if they're going to put their content behind a subscription or paywall somehow.
Please let that be true! Good catch.
This is the evil hand of Ling Ling!
Perhaps they have to spend more time practicing!
These are truly sad days.
I used to be their big fan. I bought many 2set T-shirts and put their stickers on my violin case. But recently I found their video quality dropped so I stopped following… Anyways, their videos helped me through the dark times of the pandemic and I really appreciate that. Hope they will produce some better content maybe as individual creators in the future!
Wow, that's sudden. They released a sponsored video for Apple just a few days ago.
This is not good for society