Kurt Hugo Schneider American Singer From Baltimore

Early life

Kurt Hugo Schneider was born in Baltimore on 7 September 1988. He grew up in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, living a street away from Sam Tsui, whom he met in middle school. The two later attended Wissahickon High School together, and Schneider graduated as class valedictorian.

He went on to Yale University, where he began producing videos while working at the Digital Media Center for the Arts. He graduated magna cum laude in 2010 with a degree in mathematics and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. On his father's side he is of German and Austrian descent.

Career

Schneider is a video editor, producer, musician, singer and songwriter whose main medium is YouTube music videos, which he publishes on a channel under his own name. He is sometimes referred to by his initials, KHS. He plays piano, and his work sits mainly in pop music.

In the fall semester of 2008, while at Yale, he and Jake Bruene created the musical web series "College Musical". Schneider composed the songs and cast the project from Yale's music community, which included Sam Tsui and Allison Williams. The first episode appeared on YouTube in January 2009. In the summer of 2010 the group shot an independent film based on the series, "College Musical: The Movie", which was released online on 3 September 2014.

His best-known early work was done with Sam Tsui. Schneider produced videos of Tsui singing covers and medleys, and in several of them, such as a Michael Jackson medley, video editing creates the effect of a one-man a cappella choir in which Tsui sings every part. The Michael Jackson video has been viewed more than 34 million times. Time magazine described the medley videos as a mix of "Glee" and "Attack of the Clones". The videos led to appearances on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", and in February 2011 a video in which Tsui sang and played piano to Britney Spears's "Hold It Against Me", with Schneider on percussion, was featured on her official website. From September 2010 the pair also released original songs, and Tsui's debut original album, "Make It Up", followed in May 2013.

Schneider has made videos with many other artists. A duet of "Just a Dream" by Tsui and Christina Grimmie is the most-viewed video on his channel, with more than two hundred million views. Other collaborations include a Miley Cyrus medley sung by Grimmie, a Taylor Swift medley with Tiffany Alvord, a Rihanna medley with Matisse, and a StarCraft-themed parody of "Baby" with Husky. He has also worked with Max Schneider, to whom he is not related, directing a Bruno Mars medley and a Christmas medley and co-writing "Standing in China" for Cody Simpson's album "Paradise". As a performer he has recorded covers with Alex Goot, with Chrissy Costanza of Against the Current, and with Halocene.

In 2013 he worked with Coca-Cola on a campaign called "The Sounds of AHH". The music videos featured covers of Calvin Harris's "Feel So Close" and Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks", in which Schneider builds the tracks from Coca-Cola bottles, glasses and cans. Sam Tsui sang on the first and the cellist and beatboxer Kevin Olusola accompanied Schneider on the second. Commercial versions premiered on American Idol on 14 January 2014.

Schneider also plays chess. He played for the Yale chess team, holds a USCF rating of 2235 and the title of master, and gave a blindfolded simultaneous exhibition for the comedy group The Try Guys. At CES 2014 he played against Magnus Carlsen in a tournament in Las Vegas. He has also made sudoku puzzles and solved one with the channel Cracking the Cryptic in March 2025.

Recognition

YouTube has awarded Schneider its Silver, Gold and Diamond Play Buttons. As of April 2025 his channel had about 13.5 million subscribers.