http://www.twitch.tv/kylelandrypiano/profile
https://www.youtube.com/user/kylelandry
There was a thread here late during the night about it, but apparently it hit it big on twitch.
Kotaku posted a piece about it
Really fantastic this is a thing, hope other youtube musicians try this streaming thing.
https://www.youtube.com/user/kylelandry
There was a thread here late during the night about it, but apparently it hit it big on twitch.
Kotaku posted a piece about it
For most of this week, I was pretty sick. There was an upside, though: it gave me the opportunity to stumble across one of Kyle Landry's piano marathons on Twitch. That night, he became one of the most viewed anythings on Twitch, nearly beating Counter-Strike, Hearthstone, and Dying Light.
At first, it was just idle curiosity. I was about to flop into bed and roll around in agony some more, but then I saw people tweeting about some guy playing piano on Twitch. Lots of people. So I clicked. Sure enough, it was just Landry in his room, fingers prancing across piano keys like a ballet at lightspeed, in a way that was almost as entrancing to watch as it was to hear.
Then familiar melodies started to creep in. A slow, soothing rendition of the Legend of Zelda theme. A classy take on the Pokemon battle theme. Halo. Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy. Obscure anime themes. They all sounded magnificent, and my slow trudge to bed was interrupted by utter transfixation.
He kept at it for hours. Plenty of people have played video game music (and other memorable tunes; I'm pretty sure people shed real tears when he trotted out a song from Toy Story) on piano, but it was something else to see it streaming. It was like watching a private concert from the front row of someone's bedroom, seated alongside thousands of chattering fans who were equally entranced.
"Games and music have always been two of my main passions," he said via email. "I started playing the piano at the age eight, and video games at the age of five. Once I saw video game pianist Martin Leung play a Super Mario medley blindfolded around 2004, I realized playing the music from video games on the piano was totally possible. After that, I started practicing video game music on the piano vigorously, most notably, the Final Fantasy Piano Collections, and various Nintendo series."
Last time Landry tried to combine games and music in this exact way, it fizzled out, but this time the stars aligned. Viewership numbers skyrocketed. Five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand. Before long, the live view count was hovering around 20,000 people, giving every stream combined for games like Hearthstone, Counter-Strike, and Dying Light a run for their money.
Landry explained to me what happened: "The director of content marketing at Twitch joined in on my stream, and it was not to much longer until he put me straight on the front page. Suddenly I was getting messages by my moderators, explaining the situation, and a massive increase of viewers commenced. After two hours or so, we went from two hundred viewers to twenty thousand viewers! They accepted me into the partnership program that same night."
Really fantastic this is a thing, hope other youtube musicians try this streaming thing.
