[9][10] In 2009 Anderson saw a music video that Schmidt had uploaded to YouTube, "Love Story Meets Viva la Vida" – a musical blend of the Taylor Swift country pop tune and Coldplay's pop song "Viva la Vida", which Schmidt performed with Nelson on cello.

[13][14] "Michael Meets Mozart" (2011) gained a respectable showing after Schmidt invited the people on his fan mailing list "to watch it and share it".

[9] By September 2012, The Piano Guys had uploaded more than 30 music videos which had garnered 134 million views, and had 757,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel.

[19][20] They are especially well known for their mashups of classical and contemporary songs, such as blending Mozart and Adele, Liszt and Coldplay, Tchaikovsky and Shawn Mendes, Bach and Michael Jackson, or Vivaldi's "Winter" and Disney's "Let It Go".

These include locations in the Utah desert, at the edge of a 1,000-foot cliff, atop a speeding train, in an ice cave, and at Iguazu Falls, among others.

[9] Anderson's goal was "to put pianos and cellos in places nobody would ever expect to see them", thereby generating marketing buzz for his store.

[10][27] As of February 2024[update], The Piano Guys have uploaded 227 videos onto their channel and amassed over 2.3 billion views, and 7 million subscribers.

[28][29] Their cover of Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years" is their most-watched video, having logged more than 223 million views as of February 2024[update].

"[36][37][38] On December 12, 2017, they hosted a live stream on their YouTube channel, called '#LightTheWorld Christmas Concert with The Piano Guys and Friends', accompanied by singers including Peter Hollens and David Archuleta.

[13] Nelson worked in venture capital and real estate,[40] Anderson owned a piano store, and van der Beek operated a recording studio in his home.

Michelle, his wife, wrote a book about the experience in 2017, titled Carried: How One Mother’s Trust in God Helped Her through the Unthinkable.