Recently, Glamour magazine featured Lindsey Stirling, and the LDS highest-earning female YouTuber shared surprisingly personal details about her rejection, doubts, and difficulties breaking into the entertainment business.
If there were a poster child for the power of social media to make career dreams come true, it would be Lindsey Stirling. Her one-of-a-kind dancing-while-playing-violin performances were too offbeat for the music industry to initially get, but rather than change who she was, she took to YouTube to do her thing.
Today, 7.2 million subscribers, two albums, and a world tour later, the Brigham Young grad whose parents couldn't afford dance lessons is officially YouTube's highest-earning woman, with a memoir, The Only Pirate at the Party, out this month. So how did she do it? I caught up with Stirling in New York City, where she was shooting a new video, to find out.
Cindi Leive: In 2010 you got to the quarterfinals of America's Got Talent, but Piers Morgan said, and I quote, that your music sounded like "rats being strangled." What would you say to him now?
Lindsey Stirling: I feel like I owe a lot to Piers Morgan! He gave me a reason to fight. After I had a good cry and pulled myself up by my bootstraps, that hurt and embarrassment turned into extreme motivation—"I'm gonna prove them wrong!"
For more from Lindsey Stirling, check out her fabulous albums, "Shatter Me" and "Lindsey Stirling--Deluxe Edtion."
