YouTube plans to bring culture to the masses and undiscovered talents to the most notorious concert halls, as the world leading video-sharing website is going to hold an online competition; the winners will be taken to New York for three days, where they’ll play at Carnegie Hall.

The judges, coming from San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and other renowned Orchestras will narrow down contestants and after that the users will have to choose the semi-finalists. The winners will be announced on YouTube’s website on March 2, 2009.

Each contender will have to upload two videos. The first one will contain a showcase of their own musical talent, whereas in the second one, contestants will have to perform "Internet Symphony No. 1," a composition by Tan Dun, the composer of the award-winning film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

“YouTube is the biggest stage on Earth, and I want to see what the world's undiscovered musical geniuses will create on it,” the composer said. Videos can be submitted through January 28, 2009.

This contest is not YouTube’s first initiative, one of the most important being the "Democracy Challenge" filmmaking competition, but it is surely one of the biggest. Keeping in mind that any user can either enter the contest or rank the other participants, we can say that it is the most interactive of its kind, too. "This thing is huge," Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said.