Not only that, the classical music competition's most popular video online 鈥� Yunchan Lim's performance of Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto with Marin Aslop and the Fort Worth Symphony 鈥� reached 7 million viewers alone. That had it trending in YouTube's top 24 videos.
Worldwide.
The Cliburn released its figures last week. The classical website,, put those numbers in comparison with the premieres of popular streaming entertainments: "Game of Thrones" 鈥� 2.22 million views. "The Walking Dead" 鈥� 5.35 million views.
The Cliburn has cultivated an international audience 鈥� especially in Asia 鈥� since 2001 when it presented the first classical music competition broadcast live. Since then, it's developed a significant online presence with sophisticated performance videos: webcasts, interviews, social media.
Even so, the 16th edition of the Cliburn, June 2-18 earlier this year, reached a record-breaking audience in 177 countries. The audience was 50 times the size for 2013's contest. Cliburn's subscription numbers quintupled to 100,000.
Got a tip? Email Jerome Weeks at jweeks@kera.org. You can follow him on Twitter @dazeandweex.
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