By Paulo Camacho
YouTube has helped a bevy of music artists on their way to stardom — either on the platform, or on the international stage.
YouTube has grown into a media juggernaut. With over 1.8 billion users in over 90 different countries, the website is at the forefront of showcasing a cornucopia of entertainment. From the biggest artists, shows and studios, to the burgeoning vloggers, filming in their living rooms, and everywhere in between, YouTube audiences can get their fix from any single account.
Reciprocally, individuals and groups who want to make it big in the worldwide media machine can build their audiences first on YouTube. Reactors, daily vloggers, news personalities and newsmakers alike can gain a following with the right personality, the right niche, and the right reach. This fact is not lost on the savvy and talented musicians of YouTube. It can start with a single cover of a popular song, or a catchy original that slowly gains a following with each new view, and each subsequent share. But, when it happens, YouTube musicians — with the backing of quality content and a loyal audience — are in the best position yet to make it big in the music industry.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at three music YouTubers, in particular, that have either already made it big, or are poised to make the leap:
Dodie Clark
Main YT Channel: doddleoddle
Originally from Essex County in England, Dorothy Miranda “Dodie” Clark got her start on YouTube back in 2007, when she created her first account (“Dodders5”) with friend Alice Webb, and the online video website was still in its infancy. It eventually led her to create her main channel, “doddleoddle” — one where she posts song covers, original songs, and collaborations, musical and otherwise, with other YouTubers. She has since grown exponentially as a music artist, with a number of EPs released over the past couple years.
While gaining a following with her music, Clark has also cultivated an intimate relationship with her audience through her openness about her own mental issues — specifically, depersonalization, anxiety, and depression. And while this hasn’t come to define her, in the eyes of her followers — she is known to be very much bubbly, kind, and compassionate — it is a part of her life that she has refused to shy away from.
It is certainly come to reflect in her music, if at least in some distinct ways. With tracks like “Sick of Losing Soulmates” and “Secret For The Mad,” her style comes off as, for lack of a better term, fatalistically hopeful. It has beauty in its simplicity, despite the bleak subject matter it delves into. Clark’s most high-profile example can be found in her 2016 track, “Intertwined”:
Gabbie Hanna
Main YT Channel: Gabbie Hanna
A former Psychology and Communications graduate from the University of Pittsburgh, Gabrielle Jeanette Hanna probably had “burgeoning music artist” as the last thing on her mind, when she humbly began her social media empire. And, to her credit, she didn’t even build her loyal audience on YouTube. She started posting comedy skits to the now-defunct short-form video service Vine, back in 2013, and quickly built a following — one that totaled almost 5 million, at its height.
On the strength of her sizable fan base, Hanna moved to Los Angeles and started her main YouTube channel, “The Gabbie Show” (later changed to “Gabbie Hanna”) in 2014. Between doing various social media challenges from Musical.ly to makeup, sharing collabs with other former Viners, and sharing personal stories about her life with her audience, Hanna has garnered over 7 million subscribers between her two YouTube channels.
Much like Dodie Clark, Hanna is very open about many of her own life’s personal struggles. From her struggles with her weight and her image as a media personality, to her constant bouts of anxiety and depression, she has shared just about every intimate detail of her life with her audience. And, much like Clark, Hanna found a creative outlet with her art — particularly, with her poetry and, subsequently, her music. Take her seminal EP, “Out Loud,” which was originally meant as a means of promoting her book of poetry, “Adultolescense,” and turned into a mainstream hit:
Pentatonix
Main YT Channel: PTXOfficial
Despite their large and loyal followings, you would be forgiven for your lack of familiarity with Dodie Clark or Gabbie Hanna as musical artists. That is certainly not the case for this powerhouse a cappella group: Frankly, if you haven’t heard of Pentatonix, you might have been living under a rock for the past six years. They have become the preeminent modern a cappella ensemble in popular music, selling a number of Top Ten Albums and winning multiple Grammy Awards.
However, they, too, had humble beginnings on YouTube. It started with original members Kristin Maldonado, Scott Hoying and Mitch Grassi in 2010, entering a local radio show competition in Arlington, Texas — submitting an a cappella rendition of “Telephone” by Lady Gaga for a chance to meet the cast of “Glee”.
The singing trio went their separate ways in 2010, when each went to college. It was Hoying, however, who brought the band back together, when the opportunity to compete in the third season of NBC’s a cappella competition, “The Sing-Off,” arose in 2011. They recruited two more singers — Avi Kaplan through a mutual friend of Hoying’s, and Kevin Olusola via YouTube — for the audition, and didn’t actually meet until the day before auditions began.
From there, the newly-formed “Pentatonix” — named by Hoying from the five-note Pentatonic Scale — would go on to win “The Sing-Off,” and propel their careers as the first mainstream a cappella group to succeed in the last 20 years.
While their styles can vary between energetic, unique takes on the popular music of the 2000s, to beautiful renditions of Christmas Carols and pop ballads, they always relied on no other instrumentation but their five voices. Here is one of their most recent examples — Pentaonix’s first original track, “Can’t Sleep Love”: