Attack of the Yalies

OneSTDV turned me on to Tiffany Alvord, whose collaboration with Kurt Hugo Schneider produced an amazingly virtuoso Taylor Swift medley.

OneSTDV thinks that while her talent is impressive, Alvord's commercial potential is limited.  I’m inclined to disagree, and for once feel like I’m getting in on the ground floor, or at least qualifying myself as an early adopter.

But here’s a question for my more pop-culture savvy readers:  is my impression correct that these kids really did come out of middle class backgrounds in Nowheresville, PA to achieve YouTube stardom, completely bypassing the studio system?  Not even Taylor Swift did that! 

(For those of you keeping score at home, I could find no evidence that Schneider is Jewish, while Sam Tsui is part Chinese and Alvord is apparently a Mormon.)

An unrelated question:  what are the copyright implications of recording a song that somebody else wrote?  Commercial performers do this all the time, but I assume they have to buy permission.  Does it matter that the song is released non-commercially?