YouTube Musicians: Share Your Discoveries Here

[Kromm]

Probably Justin Beiber, Charlie Puth, Pentatonix, and Tori Kelly no longer qualify, k'?

 

 

[Rick Kitchen]

Nor Lindsey Stirling, I would guess?

Boyce Avenue?  This video alone has over 91 million hits.

 

[prican58]

Pretty fine. I've seen Hunter Hayes do this as well. The song translates well acoustically. Great song, a JT beauty. Sure are a lot of voices here.  

 

ETA... did not realize this was 2 bands performing.

Edited January 23, 2016 by prican58

[amaranta]

I was looking on YouTube for acoustic covers; I needed a bit of help on some chords and progressions for a few songs.  Anyway, I bookmarked this one which is rare for me.  Just liked it, both her playing and her voice.  Did a Google news search and nothing related to music came up.

 

Steph Micayle:

 

[Kromm]

That lower register for her is very good. Actually the rest isn't bad either, but the low is definitely her strong point.

I know she's dealing with a camera and not an audience, but I hope she engages a bit better with an actual live audience. An interesting voice isn't enough.

She isn't that well miked either. I mean the echo might possibly be on purpose, but clearly she needs to invest in some better equipment.

Wait. Here's an actual live performance at a YouTube event (looks like it was in Singapore). She's... okay... but the audience is such a bunch of total stiffs she had nothing to work with:

 

Boyce Avenue?  This video alone has over 91 million hits.

Well to be fair, a large bunch of those hits may be due to Fifth Harmony--who have done well enough after that X-Factor win to put out several albums and have a song last year that made the radio Top 20 (#12) and get almost 600 million hits on YT.  Lets just say if they'd had this hit a year earlier it might have saved US X-Factor from cancellation.  Ergo, 91 million hits for Boyce + 5th Harmony in the same video.

That said, Boyce Avenue is in this odd position where they don't quite get radio play, but work with tons of people both on and off YouTube. So yeah, they qualify even if the stats on that particular video are a little skewed by the inclusion of a Top 20 selling commercial act as a co-star.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Kromm

[Kromm]

Okay, I'll submit Evynne Hollens, because she does an elegant version of a Sara Bareillis song that's almost 90% as good as Sara... which makes it damn impressive.

And to boot, made a multi-camera video that's basically the same quality a real video for the song probably would be.

[Rick Kitchen]

Everything Kurt Hugo Schneider does.  He's a producer and arranger and musician more than a singer, but he works with lots of YouTube performers.

 

This has over 100 million views, but a lot of that has to do with Christina Grimmie, whom he worked with long before she was on The Voice. Kurt is the guy on piano and drum machine:

 

 

He works a lot with Sam Tsui, with whom he produced the multi-layered Michael Jackson mix that went viral about seven years ago (this was when they were both still in Yale):

 

 

Kurt also did a Coke commercial (with Zendaya, among others, before she became famous):

 

[Kromm]

Hmm. It's hard to make a judgment call with people like Kurt Hugo Schneider and Sam Tsui, because while they've never gotten even near mainstream success they do both get regular off-Youtube (paying) media gigs.  I'd put comedy musicians Rhett & Link in that space too. They're all kind of big time on YouTube, and smalltime on TV, but ARE on TV.

 

Another one I have trouble deciding on (if she's too successful to be considered "undiscovered") is Rozzi Crane. Signed off YouTube to Adam Levine's record label years ago, then Levine got distracted by The Voice and she never really got that breakout that Tori Kelly got this past year (although she's been Maroon 5s opening act for a few years now). She's in that same circle of YT musicians that all live near each other in LA and jam together frequently, so here for example, she is with 1/5th of Pentatonix...

 

 

 

With a voice like that she should be a household name... but she's not.

 

 

Oh... one of those "others" in the coke commercial Rich cites is Kina Grannis, who I also think should be a mainstream success by now and isn't.  Mainstream audiences likely ONLY know her from this video I've embedded below--but only if they have a really good memory of old Superbowl commercials (it was a Doritos sponsored contest in 2008 she won, and this was aired during the Superbowl). She's actually gotten a lot better since this (the video with Schneider and Zendeya is a good example of how far she came just a year or two later after this superbowl thing).

 

 

Doritos and Coca-Cola really did make the rounds with this group though. Kurt's brother Max got this (non-musical) commercial:  

 

Edited January 24, 2016 by Kromm

[Rick Kitchen]

Max isn't Kurt's brother.  Though they have the same last name, they aren't related.  Max has also done movies and a TV series, either on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon.

[Kromm]

I saw several very misleading posts referring to "the Schneider brothers", so I guess I got the wrong end of that stick.

[amaranta]

That lower register for her is very good. Actually the rest isn't bad either, but the low is definitely her strong point.

 

That was one of the things I liked best about her voice.  I also liked that she didn't get to 'twee' in her higher register and that she didn't overdo the runs.  I hate, hate both of those things.  Voices that are just as much air as sound drive me crazy.

 

She isn't that well miked either. I mean the echo might possibly be on purpose, but clearly she needs to invest in some better equipment.

 

Oddly, I also liked that aspect.  Just a teenager in her room, using earbuds to hear and the mic on her laptop/phone/whatever, singing away.  I guess I liked seeing someone with potential.

 

I'll have to check out that other video you posted later tonight; I'm taking a break from doing Blizzard of 2016 stuff. and need to get back to it  (Like carving out some more yard space for the dog.  She is soooo freaked out.)

 

 

 

 

[27bored]

With a voice like that she should be a household name... but she's not.

 

She can definitely sing, and so can the dude she was singing with. I think with her and with Pentatonix they're good vocalists but maybe a shade too...anonymous? Generic? I don't know. I don't want to sound like I'm hating, but I think what separates the people who make it from those who don't (aside from hard work, luck, and talent) is the ability to bring some flair to bland material and even material we've heard many times. They combined "Bust Your Windows" and "Why Don't You Love Me" (by Jazmine Sullivan and Beyonce, respectively). To non-singers and casual music fans, that would've sounded amazing. But those songs don't really have anything to do with each other, and they didn't bring much to them. She has a nice tone and doesn't seem to succumb to Amateur Hour riffs and runs all over the place for no reason, but she sings "Why Don't You Love Me", a song that's really about how bad (meaning good) Beyonce is, as a dirge. Any song with lyrics like "I got class, I got style, and I got ass" shouldn't be sang with anything approaching modesty, I'm just saying.

 

The other thing is, I feel bad for singers like her who get signed to management/development/singles deals but then nothing ever comes of it. I get the feeling there are so many artists who are essentially on ice because the people they're signed to don't have the wherewithal to help cultivate their talent and help them create. I think I'd rather struggle than be signed to someone and hope one day they throw me a bone.

Edited January 27, 2016 by 27bored

[Cranberry]

I like Dana Williams' voice:

 

 

She's friends with Leighton Meester and they duet sometimes:

 

 

 

 

She does originals as well.

 

(And I suppose she doesn't truly count as undiscovered, as she did an Apple commercial and appeared on Rising Star, but I would expect her videos to get a lot more hits than they do!)

[navelgazer]

After Tina S., 15-yo from Paris, France, posted this YT of her covering Petrucci's part of "The Best of Times" ,...

...Dream Theater invited her to go backstage and get a picture with John.  

 

They play her vid during the intermission at their concerts.  

Edited January 8, 2017 by navelgazer

[DarkRaichu]

What is the definition of "undiscovered" ?

I love PostModernJukebox even back when Scott played that electric piano in small crowded room (6 years ago??).  Now they do concerts all over the world

 

[FormerMod-a1]

I'll add Chase Holfelder with his whole "Major to Minor" thing.  Of course, some are better than others.  I really love his version of All I Want For Christmas (below).  It is so dark and obsessive and just so different than the original (which I also love).  Other favorites are The Star Spangled Banner and Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

 

 

[Kromm]

On 1/13/2017 at 4:50 PM, DarkRaichu said:

What is the definition of "undiscovered" ?

I love PostModernJukebox even back when Scott played that electric piano in small crowded room (6 years ago??).  Now they do concerts all over the world

 

 

Postmodern Jukebox is in that same weird spot as Boyce Avenue, where they play all of the time with people with more public recognition. Well... at least American Idol Top 12 people, in PMJ's case, because they have at least 4 or 5 of those on their regular rotation of guest singers.

There's also probably a category for YouTube musicians who have had one super-duper viral video and then only medium success otherwise. Walk Off The Earth had this video (a somewhat unique cover version of Somebody That I Used to Know), with 175m views while their average video gets like... 3% of that.

[Cranberry]

This girl is on a Canadian tween show I'd never heard of (Lost & Found Music Studios), but these are personal covers she records (mostly) at her home, and they vary in sound quality. I like her Lumineers covers, which is how I found her; her voice is pretty strong and has a bit of a country sound to it at times.

 

[Kromm]

Andie Case: It's actually fairly impressive when someone can make something by Justin Beiber sound this good. She's got that really rare combo of a voice that's melodic and pretty, but which also has some power behind it. And her tone is a dead ringer for Cheryl Crow.

And no debates here about if she sweetened the audio like a lot of YouTube songsters do. This is definitely raw audio.

 

 

Besides the really pretty voice. she's also fairly easy on the eyes too.

Here's a few more:

 

 

I prefer her as a brunette.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Kromm