ThePianoGuys

ThePianoGuys is an American musical group and YouTube channel consisting of Jon Schmidt, Steven Sharp Nelson, Paul Anderson, Tel Stewart, and Al van der Beek. They gained popularity through YouTube, where they posted piano and cello renditions of popular songs and classical music. As of January 2014, ThePianoGuys' YouTube channel has over 2.4 million subscribers and 338 million views.

Biography
Paul Anderson owned a piano shop in St. George, Utah. He met musician Jon Schmidt as the latter walked in to ask if he could practice there for an upcoming concert. Months later, Paul Anderson and Tel Stewart (then just for fun) started making videos together with Jon Schmidt. It was not too long after that they did their first collaboration with Jon Schmidt, Steven Sharp Nelson, and Al Van Der Beek as the studio and music technician. After the five of them started collaborating the group really started to take off, producing a music video each week and posting it to YouTube.

Jon plays the piano and Steven plays the cello, both acoustic and electric.

YouTube
ThePianoGuys' videos consist of songs that are composed of several audio tracks that are mixed together. Occasionally, they superimpose the videos of the previous audio tracks to give the impression that many identical instrumentalists are playing at once.

Their earliest video, titled Game Day - ThePianoGuys, was uploaded on March 16, 2010. As of January 2014, it has over 1.6 million views.

ThePianoGuys' most successful video, One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful (5 Piano Guys, 1 piano) - ThePianoGuys, was posted on July 18, 2012. As of January 2014, it has over 29 million views.

Outside YouTube
ThePianoGuys was signed with Sony in September 2012.

On October 2, 2012, they released their debut album The Piano Guys.

On May 7, 2013, they release their second album The Piano Guys 2.