Case Study: The Piano Guys

The Piano Guys

For the Piano Guys it started out in a little Southern Utah town called Saint George. Paul Anderson, the store’s owner, was looking for a new, unconventional way to market pianos. The name of their store was the Piano Guys. Paul Embarked upon a self-guided study of social marketing and started a YouTube channel and a Facebook page, envision videos “go viral” doing his marketing for him. Paul was talented he was a risk taker and felt inspired that if he could find the right people to work with he could create the number one music video channel in the world. It first started out when Jon Schmidt walked in to the store who had built a career in solo piano performance and had a concert in the St. George area. Paul explained to Jon

When Steve was 15 years old he met Jon when they had shared the stage at a concert in which they were both performing. Steve started joining Jon at more and more of his concerts. This rapidly grew into a great friendship and a complementary stage chemistry that had audiences in stiches and in tears in two songs or less. Steve was a multi-instrumentalist that had pioneered a new approach to the cello and to song writing. And his ADHD-fueled creative mind contained a queue of song and video ideas waiting to be produced.

Then came Al van der Beek. Al showed up on Steve’s doorstep to help when Steve was moving in just down the street. Al had heard Steve was a musician and he invited his new neighbor to his home where he housed a decked-out studio. Steve and Al began writing tunes together and discovered a supernatural songwriting partnership. Al’s studio and his engineering skills were to become the most important music-writing tool for The Piano Guys, except of course for Al himself, whose innate ability for songwriting had an essential sleek edge to

Together they produce musical and video gems that mash up classical themes with pop songs that have made the group 's YouTube channel one of the most visited on the planet. The group had its beginnings in St. George, Utah, where Anderson owned a piano shop. Schmidt walked in one day and asked if he could practice on one of the pianos for an upcoming concert. Soon Anderson and Schmidt were recording and making videos together, and with the addition of Nelson, posting them to YouTube. Things continued to grow and expand creatively with van der Beek aboard, and the collective 's productions became joyous, thoughtful, and beautiful interactive musical videos that received millions of YouTube hits and brought the Piano Guys worldwide attention. A debut eponymous album appeared in 2012 via Sony Masterworks, followed by Piano Guys 2 in 2013, and a holiday album, Family Christmas, in 2014. Released that same year, Wonders proved to be the duo 's highest-charting album to date, peaking at the number 12 spot on the Billboard