Seth Weir
@sethweir-piano YouTube
Five months of piano Shorts at 3K views. He changed the camera, posted three a day, and the 14th try hit 4.7M.
A UK pianist who never shows his face. His first 19 Shorts got a typical 3,364 views. In late May he switched to a handheld point-of-view shot that opens on a metronome and began posting several a day. On June 2 a cover of Back to Black took the channel from 127 subscribers to 20,800 in a month.
- Report
- v1
- Data as of
- 2026-11-08
- Sample
- 204 videos
At a glance
- What it is
- Faceless piano covers filmed from his own eyes, opening on a metronome.
- Who watches
- English-speaking; the game and 2000s songs point to young adults (our guess).
- How it earns
- Shorts ad revenue only, shared with the song owners. Links to Snapchat.
- How it broke out
- New camera angle, then two to seven a day until one cover hit 4.67M.
Subscribers Fact
259K
127 on June 1
Median views after the turn Derived
37.6K
11.2× the 3,364 before, 179 Shorts
The turning Short Derived
4.67M
1,389× the old median
Est. ad revenue to date Estimate
$2K–11K
at $0.02–0.10 per 1,000 views
Summary
The play
Film the piano from your own eyes, open every Short on the same small ritual (wind the metronome, lift the lid), play one well-known nostalgic song, and post two or three a day so the algorithm keeps testing you.
Can you copy it? Our read
Very copyable if you can already play: no face, one camera, no editing beyond a caption. The breakthrough took a new shot plus a jump to two or three a day; expect weeks at your old numbers before a song lands.
- What it takes
- Play popular songs cleanly on a real piano, with no mistakes in a 60–100 second take.
- Startup cost
- A piano, a metronome and a phone you can hold or mount at eye level. The real cost is two or three clean recordings a day.
- Time to a verdict
- Use the stop-loss: 30 Shorts in one setup at two or three a day; if none passes ten times your old median, change the shot or the opening.
- Window
- Piano covers are crowded and every song belongs to someone else. The format can be copied in a day, so the edge is song choice and output.
Key findings
The shot changed first; the numbers did not, yet
From May 29 he filmed handheld from his own eyes and opened on a metronome. The first 13 in that setup stayed at a 3,107 median. The 14th, his third take of Back to Black in five days, reached 4.67M. See play 2.1 (subscribers)
He caught it with volume
He posted 128 Shorts in the eight weeks after the hit. Subscribers went from 127 to 20.8K in June, 99% of them in that month, and the median per Short rose to 37.6K, 11.2 times the old one. See play 2.2 (subscribers)
It kept climbing after the first hit
The median went from 27K (June–July) to 45K (August–September) to 121K (from late September), when Do you think it matches? reached 51.3M. He gained 166K subscribers in September and October. See play 2.4 (subscribers)
What this channel is
- Platform
- YouTube Shorts
- Format
- Piano covers, point of view
- On camera
- Hands only
- Team
- Not stated; looks like one person
- First Short
- Dec 27, 2025
- Length
- About 60–100 seconds
Every number is tagged
- Fact straight from public data
- Derived calculated from facts
- Estimate from published pay ranges
- Self-reported what the creator says
- Our read our judgement
01How it happened
How the subscriber count grew
- YouTube 259K
YouTube subscribers at the start of each month, measured. The June 2 Short landed when the channel had 127.
- under 1×
- 1–3×
- 3–10×
- 10× and up
Each bar is one video in the order posted. Gaps are breaks in posting.
| Phase | Dates | Shorts | Format | Median views |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dec 27, 2025 – Mar 1, 2026 | 6 | Camera above the keys, a caption over the top (“The moment vs the memory”) | 3,872 |
| Mar 1 – May 29 | 0 | 89 days off | ||
| 2 | May 29 – Jun 2 | 13 | New setup: handheld point-of-view, opens on winding a metronome, up to 5 a day | 3,107 |
| 3 | Jun 2 – Jul 28 | 128 | Same setup, 2–4 a day, “I’d much appreciate a follow” in the titles | 27,353 |
| Jul 28 – Aug 11 | 0 | 14 days off | ||
| 4 | Aug 11 – Sep 25 | 28 | Fewer posts; running captions (“The rabbit is back”) | 45,187 |
| 5 | Sep 26 – Nov 2 | 27 | Opens with Do you think it matches?, 51.3M | 120,753 |
Hottest and coldest
Top 5 by views
- Do you think it matches? ⚜️ #piano #lovestory #pianotok #pianocover2026-09-2651.3M
- Follow for more, thanks! 👊 #allroadsleadtorome #pianocover #piano #music2026-08-1212.2M
- Follow if you enjoyed 🫡🤘#lovestory #piano #pianocover #music #metronome2026-06-245.77M
- I’d much appreciate if you followed, thanks! 🫡 #piano #pianocover #backtoblack #amywhinehouse #music2026-06-024.67M
- Follow if you enjoyed, thanks! 👊🫡 #lovestory #pianocover #piano #music #metronome2026-08-124.45M
Bottom 5 by views
- 2014 Minecraft music hits different 😌 I’d much appreciate a follow, hope you enjoyed this one!2026-06-022.41K
- Best singing duet gets a shout-out on my story 🙌 make sure to @ me so I can see2026-05-302.48K
- Hope you enjoyed this one, let me know what other songs you would like to hear2026-06-012.74K
- If you didn’t know the thing at the start of the video is called a metronome2026-05-302.86K
- #piano #pianocover #music2026-06-012.87K
The five hottest are all from the new setup, all 61–103 seconds and all well-known songs: Love Story (51.3M), All Roads Lead to Rome (12.2M), Love Story again (5.77M), Back to Black (4.67M) and Love Story once more (4.45M). The five coldest are all from May 30 – June 2, the days around the turn, in the same setup, including a shout-out request and a hashtags-only title; one went up on June 2, the same day as the 4.67M Short. Our read
Reading the numbers
Derived
99%
of subscribers at day 30 came in those 30 days
127 on June 1, 20.8K on July 1.
Derived
100 of 179
later Shorts passed ten times the old median
The old median was 3,364; none of the 19 earlier Shorts passed 20K.
Derived
92 → 120
days from the turn to 100K subscribers
75.2K on September 1, 145K on October 1.
In the creator’s words Self-reported
I'd much appreciate if you follow my Snapchat as well, thanks!
More cases to read
Cases that share a play with this one come first.
GreenBroRantsYouTubeThree formats went nowhere. The fourth added a million subscribers in three weeks.Plays: Breakout after a format switch, One template at volume, Big reach, no second incomeFollowers1.23MBreakout1M followers 17 days after a format switch
YD-JaxYouTubeA wordless food test hit 19 million views on its third upload. Five weeks later the channel had what it needed.Plays: One template at volume, Big reach, no second income, Re-run a proven formatFollowers1.01MBreakout19M views on the third video
Sister CodeYouTubeTwo sisters, a table and a bowl of squishy toys: 10.9M views on the second upload, 306M in 14 weeksPlays: One template at volume, Big reach, no second income, Ride a trendFollowers193KBreakout10.9M views on the second upload