# You may find this interesting...



## Ian Moore

I published two videos of my piano music, "Les Codomas", to Youtube; one of them has a picture of Jazz musicians in black and white and other one has a picture of my original score. In just 48 hours, the video with the image of the my score has double the number of views than the other one which has been up for over a month. Why is that?


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## Ian Moore

I think you can draw many conclusions... but why is one more appealing than the other. You would have thought the one with the images make the music seem more approachable but it wasn't the case. Does the score make it look more authoritative? You tell me, please.


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## TurnaboutVox

Ian Moore said:


> ...why is one more appealing than the other. You would have thought the one with the images make the music seem more approachable but it wasn't the case.


My first answer is, of course, that I don't know.

But to speculate, I think the score looks intriguing, with those huge leaps and the obviously dissonant chords.

As a jazz enthusiast myself, I'd say that quite a lot of people with whom I've discussed this have quite an irrational hatred of jazz. And my brother and his partner, for instance, who have more rational reasons for doing so, loathe it.

Perhaps the score is actually more neutral to many people?


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## Ian Moore

Interesting...I love both new music and Jazz. Both images would intrigue me in equal amounts.

I would have thought that a complicated score would put people off. It would appear to be an attraction. What about those people who can't read music? Surely they would prefer the photographic image?


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## Torkelburger

Well, before making any conclusions about race or jazz, you may want to control for them first, meaning, change the first picture to a different group of African-Americans and/or a different type of jazz. It may be people are turned off by the very early, Joe King Oliver-time period, "scratchy record" jazz they think of when they see the first photo instead of being turned off by race or jazz in general. Put up a photo of Miles Davis or a famous pop artist like Jay-Z.


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## Ian Moore

I don't think it is race. A 1930s Jazz ensemble of African descent will probably get more views than muisc anyway! I think it is something to do with the style of music and where I am displaying it. I am showing it in the wrong places. But it does throw up a whole can of worms...it would be interesting to conduct a little experiment...


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## Majed Al Shamsi

It could be coincidence.
If you are serious about conducting this little experiment of yours, I'd be interested in seeing the results.
Maybe continue uploading two versions of your music, one with pictures and one with sheet music, and see if this ratio is consistent?


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## Ian Moore

I think a whole range of different background images would be fascinating.


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## Kije

Since the title of the video is just _Les Codomas_ people who are searching for this exact song might think that the video with early jazz background probably contains this type of music, perhaps by a band called _Les Codomas_, and find the one with the score more reliable; people don't want to waste time watching a video they don't want to watch.

Or it is just a coincidence, as Majed Al Shamsi pointed out... I think it's time for some research!


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## Ian Moore

Yes, I get it. Maybe they think it is early twentieth century Jazz. Not a piece of modern piano music. But there is only one way to find out...conduct an experiment. The same video released at the same time with different cover pictures:representing race, age(musical period), style(e.g musical genre) and authenticity(score image). They must receive exactly the same amount of exposure from me and somehow I have to get people to click onto the one they like the best and none of the rest. I think that people who like modern music are more reassured by the score than human figures - that's my prediction.


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## Ian Moore

By the way, have you noticed that someone keeps giving me a one star rating not matter what I do or say? Whoever it is you should be honest and tell me why you dislike my threads. It is not just me. I have noticed that it often happens to the treads that have the writer's music on it.


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## differencetone

Thanks. I will now publish to youtube with a picture of the score. I will even try to make it look like old paper. I was thinking of adding a cough or two to make it sound live. 

Do stars matter? I'll give you stars when they let me. I don't think I'm allowed to yet because I don't see any blank stars up there. Got my avie up finally!


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## Ian Moore

No they don't matter but I wish the person was more courageous and made a comment about my music rather than using stars.


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## SuperTonic

Just speaking from my own experience; if I search for a piece of music on Youtube and I get multiple matches to my query I do use the image that is displayed in the search result to narrow down my choice of which one to listen to. And if I see one that has a score, I almost always choose it, particularly if it is a piece of music I am hearing for the first time. If there is no result that has a score pictured, then I typically go with one that has some kind of artwork in the image, or a still picture of the composer/performer(s), mainly because this typically indicates an upload of a professional recording in my experience. I tend to avoid those results that show a live performance unless it is of a performer I recognize and trust as typically these are lower quality recordings.

If I was searching for a classical piece and the image showed a jazz band I would probably conclude that the video is not really what I am looking for and move on to something else, even if the title matched my search criteria. I imagine the cognitive dissonance of such a search result is likely going to be a turn off to some people (although admittedly it may intrigue others).


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## differencetone

How do people find you on YouTube? What tags do you use?


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