Berklee's YouTube Channel Ranks in Top Three Among U.S. Colleges
A scene from Berklee’s first full-length concert film, The Music of Billie Eilish, which premiered on YouTube last week.
Image by Kelly Davidson
Boston's WHDH 7 News reported on a new study that ranks the top 10 most popular YouTube channels run by institutions of higher education, five of which are based in New England, with Berklee's account ranking in the top three.
While the study bases the ranking on the total number of subscribers, Berklee's YouTube channel leads the pack in overall views, which at the time of this writing are over 350 million.
Watch Zami perform for the latest installment of the Two Track student performance series.
Since its inception in 2007, Berklee's channel has offered a unique space to showcase programs and student performances. But as the video format grew in significance during the pandemic, the channel became a way to foster new performance and technical skills. It also inspired students to find novel ways to continue collaborating, even if from across the world, with the #BerkleeAnywhere series, and more recently, the Two Track series, which gives students an intimate, single-microphone setting for both performance and storytelling.
The channel recently broke new ground with the release of its first concert film, The Music of Billie Eilish. The hour-plus video marries the excitement of the live performances with stunning visual sequences, the end result making a strong case for the range of creative possibilities offered in the hybrid live/remote space.
Watch the concert film The Music of Billie Eilish:
"Berklee was looking for a way to support its students by creating a distribution channel with elevated and consistent production value representing the work they do in performing, arranging, promoting, recording, producing, etc.," said Michael Borgida, director of marketing and Berklee Presents, regarding the initial decision to explore YouTube as an official college platform.
As the channel's founder and director, Borgida added that a key part of Berklee's success on YouTube is due not just to what the students have to offer viewers, but how it provides them with meaningful learning experiences. "The diverse student body, interpretation, and quality have engaged millions of people around the world and have helped students while in school and after."
With over 50 million views, watch the channel's most popular video, A. R. Rahman's "Jiya Jale" performed by the Berklee Indian Ensemble:
