Factors Facilitating Foreign Amateur Musicians earn Popularity on YouTube Worldwide: A Case Study of Global and Local Identities of Thai Amateur Musicians

Since YouTube has been introduced to the music industry, it has played the important role for amateurs or unknown musicians to establish their own music careers while being independent from record labels. YouTube is recognized as one of freemium streaming music services helping musicians to publicize and increase their popularity in global audiences. However, not every musician would be popularly successful on being YouTubers or widely known enough. It leads to the questions what factors facilitating those musicians around the world became popular in this platform are. One of the most interesting factors is Globalization which means conducting business according to local and global considerations. Therefore, this research will focus on YouTube musicians in a country where a national identity is strong like Thailand which can be penetrated very well in this high competitive international market like YouTube. This research studied factors facilitating foreign musicians earn popularity on YouTube worldwide and how Thai amateur musicians succeed on YouTube. Quantitative data surveyed from a sample of 540 Thai who have experienced music via YouTube. Partial Least Square (SmartPLS) software was conducted to analyze Structural Equation Model (SEM). This study found that Culture Domination and Globalization are the highest two impact factors respectively towards YouTube popularity by foreign musicians.