Lindsey Stirling

YouTube Sensation’s Channel Surpasses 137 Million Views, US Tour Selling Out – National Media Appearances Include “CBS This Morning,” “Extra,” “Entertainment Tonight,” “The Insider,” “FOX News!” -

Nov. 12, 2012 - 2:21 - 411 Music: After being rejected over and over, musician Lindsey Stirling took to YouTube, which made her a star - Fox News

TORO caught up with viral violinist Lindsey Stirling before her recent sold-out concert at Toronto's Virgin Mobile MOD Club - Toro Magazine

Known for her eclectic style and mad string skills, golden girl Lindsey Stirling shines a light on her career while touring in support of her self-titled debut album, a #1 hit worldwide on the iTunes electronic chart. - BUZZCHOMP

Lindsey Stirling has hardly been home long enough to unpack her bags, and she's already exhausted.

The Utah-based violinist filmed a music video the night before we spoke and "will be at it again all throughout tonight." She filmed another one the day before that, "and that was the day before I got home from tour."

"I've been filming nonstop," the diminutive Stirling proclaimed. "These were songs songs that I wrote while on tour, too."
She said she wrote one song on the back of the bus during her spare time. With another, she's been trying to coordinate a video shoot.

"I had to get a separate director and producer for that one," she said. "Had to coordinate with a makeup artist and costume designer.

"I've been doing all of this from a bus—emails and drawing pictures. And them I'm going to be editing it as soon as that's all done.

"It's funny. People have been saying that I must be so relaxed to be off tour. I'm like, 'Are you kidding me? I can't wait to get back on that tour bus. I just want to curl up on that bus again."

Now 26, Lindsey Stirling is perhaps YouTube’s most accomplished musician. She's been a temporary network TV darling on America's Got Talent, used her denotation as the "hip-hop violinist" to help bridge the gap between classical and pop music, and attracted nearly one million subscribers to her channel, LindseyStomp. - THE DAILY DOT

8/29/2012 @ 11:12AM

Lindsey Stirling plays violin while dancing in outlandish costumes on YouTube. And it’s great. The internet has given creative types new ways to take charge of their art and work.

When Lindsey Stirling performed on America’s Got Talent, Piers Morgan told her she sounded like “drowned rats being strangled.”

I’ve listened to well over a dozen of Stirling’s songs and not one of them sounds rodent-like, let along like the rather redundant sound of drowned rats being strangled.

Turns out, network television and traditional music studios were a bad fit for Stirling, whose unique musical performances never really took off until she took them to the internet.

“Before I learned of the world of YouTube, I tried the traditional, non-social media route,” Lindsey tells me. “I feel like I tried everything. I submitted videos and applications to talent agencies and TV shows, I drove to Vegas and visited agents, I was on America’s Got Talent, I played for free at venues in attempts to be “found” and yet all the experts in the entertainment industry told me that what I did was not marketable and that I had to join a group or do more traditional music.”

Stumbling on YouTube as a venue for her work was an accident, Lindsey says. She knew nothing about the online streaming video site until May, 2011 when cinematographer / director Devin Graham contacted her after seeing a video of one of Stirling’s America’s Got Talent performances.

Graham suggested a trade. He’d film a music video for Stirling free of charge. The only thing she had to do was allow him to put it on his YouTube channel.

“We filmed the video and through it up on his YouTube channel which had an audience of 25,000 subscribers,” Stirling says. “The result was amazing. I sold more songs on iTunes that month than I had the previous five months combined.”

Unlike the short spike of attention she received after America’s Got Talent, the new YouTube audience stuck around and began to grow.

Better still, Lindsey has found that a musical career built around social media and the internet, rather than through major record labels, has given her a tremendous amount of creative freedom.

“The beautiful thing about social media is that no one has to give you the green light signal in order for you to do what you want to do,” she tells me. ”No ‘industry professional’ has to approve that what you are doing will be successful.”

The music and music videos Lindsey makes are hardly traditional themselves.

What first drew me to Lindsey’s work was her cover of the Skyrim theme song.

Skyrim, the fifth of Bethesda’s epic open-world role-playing-games, already has a lovely score, but Stirling’s version is much more dramatic. And the video is epic. - FORBES magazine