How do you calculate the value of product placement in hip hop songs? Joe Sabia's CDZA ("Collective Cadenza") project on YouTube attempted to do just that, with a virtual 56 million dollar hip-hop shopping spree.

Their "Methodology for price determination" breakdown follows:

Read the rest

Normally I wouldn't blog something so personal and humble-braggy, but goddamit, the CDZA musicians are just too darned cute. Guys, thanks for making so many incredible music videos for us to blog this year. May 2013 bring even more ideas into your talented little brains. Best YouTube comment on this video: "please upload the lyrics."

Video Link (thanks, Joe Sabia)

For this week's CDZA musical experiment video, Joe Sabia and the Collective Cadenza musicians teamed up with children to explore one way to "teach the classics to students today"—have them sing their favorite contemporary pop music lyrics to the tune of classical compositions. In this video, young Alyssa Lower and Aiden Medina perform:

Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik meets LMFAO's Party Rock
Offenbach's "Can Can" meets Gaga's Bad Romance
Beethoven's Fur Elise meets Adel's Rolling in the Deep
Grieg's Peer Gynt Overture meets Carly Rae Jepson's Call Me Maybe
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony meets Katy Perry's "Wide Awake"
Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy meets One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful
Haydn's Surprise Symphony meets Justin Bieber's Baby
John William's Jurassic Park Theme meets Psy's Gangnam Style

Spoiler alert: it's pretty adorable.

[Video Link] The latest musical video experiment from Joe Sabia and friends at CDZA: "Donations as votes. A fun and democratic way for street musicians to receive money."

Charles Yang on Violin. Michael Thurber on Bass. Eddie Barbash on Alto Saxophone.

Money was sent to Wingspan Arts, a non-profit that aims to expose diverse and young groups of people to the arts.