When Feng Jianpeng started as a music vlogger in April 2020, he never imagined that he would have 300,000 subscribers. The Connecticut-based percussionist and music educator began vlogging when the pandemic forced the cancellation of performances and classes went online.
His “daodaoFeng on Music” channel on streaming platform Bilibili reached 300,000 subscribers this week, with a total of over 16 million views from over 190 videos. His YouTube channel, “Feng’s Music Channel”, with the same Chinese-language content, has more than 120,000 followers and has received nearly 8 million views.
“This is far beyond my highest expectations,” the 33-year-old musician told Shanghai Daily over the phone shortly after a performance. “I only expected a few thousand views. The idea was to keep myself motivated and make sure my content wasn’t boring.”
Feng’s success highlights a global trend that has emerged in the past three years amid the pandemic: Classical music is becoming increasingly popular on social media platforms and seen primarily by the younger generations.
In fact, TikTok and Warner Classics are collaborating on an album, “TikTok Classics – Memes & Viral Hits,” which isn’t your standard classical music album title. But it does include orchestral arrangements of 18 of the most popular tunes from the social media app.
Feng Jianpeng, also known as “daodaoFeng”, became a music vlogger in 2020. He now has over 300,000 subscribers on Bilibili and over 120,000 on YouTube.
A classical music challenge on TikTok garnered nearly 740 million views last year, while musical vloggers like Feng, whose videos feature classical music elements, quickly gained popularity on social media worldwide.
On his Bilibili channel, Feng describes himself as the first native Chinese to serve as principal percussionist in Broadway productions. He holds a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Hartford’s Hartt School.
His music talk shows, which primarily dissect songs technically to explain why they are musically good or terrible, have been described as “hilarious”, according to a comment that has received the most “thumbs-up” on Bilibili.
A recent video involved Feng collaborating with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. In it, Feng introduces the highlights of the orchestra’s summer music festival and digs into the tradition of broadcasting live concerts – from earlier radio concerts to more recent Viennese New Year’s concerts. For years, the concerts were broadcast on China’s national television, CCTV.
As luck would have it, the orchestra’s 13th Music in the Summer Air (MISA) festival was forced to go online just days before it launched due to pandemic restrictions. It went offline again the day after the festival started last week.
The orchestra has a history of streaming some of its performances live since 2018 and began attracting larger audiences since 2020 thanks to COVID-19 restrictions. Already in March 2020, it was one of the first to try a cloud concert series, which received more than 5 million views on various social media platforms.
“We have been exploring various forms of online content over the past three years,” the orchestra’s director, Zhou Ping, said last week.
“If you look at MISA this year, it’s got a lot more online content, from copyrighted concerts with internationally renowned orchestras to virtual classes and evening podcasts. It’s actually a lot more workload for all of us with more content, both online and offline, for viewers.”
The orchestra started working more closely with vloggers since 2020. The first collaboration was to have a vlogger stand in for Zhou as orchestra leader for a day.
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra began to work more closely with vloggers since 2020, including the project “SSO Observer.”
Other experiments include stop motion animation, online rock classical musical theater and classical rearrangement of pop songs.
In the past three years, Zhou has repeatedly mentioned the orchestra’s intention to go beyond its music program and explore the relationship between music and the younger generations.
When she announced the music season last year, Zhou said that since the pandemic, “our virtual events were mostly watched by younger audiences. We have become more closely connected with the younger generation and were somewhat surprised by their talents and ideas that are different from , and often more creative and transgressive than our own.”
Breaking boundaries is something natural for young vloggers like Feng, who do not hold back from any genre or fear challenges. His most viewed videos are all different from each other.
One shows him technically analyzing the top 10 hottest songs on Chinese social media. Another shows him playing different rhythms simultaneously with his left and right hands. A top video shows Feng, the professional percussionist, playing Taiko Web after just five hours of practice.
“I now know how to get even more views. I can touch a bit on celebrity gossip or things like that, but I have my principles,” he said.
“At the end of the day, I want to popularize music and show you why and how a piece of music is good or bad apart from the lyrics. But I don’t discriminate against any genre of music. I don’t automatically judge a song bad just because it’s hot on social media, or a piece of classical music great just because it’s classical music.”
