YouTube's highest-earning music star is a violinist

There are big bucks to be had in streaming audio these days, so it's no surprise that the highest-earning YouTube music star made $6 million from the popular video service in the past 12 months. But who is it?

It's violinist Lindsey Stirling, who credits her "very loyal fan base" for helping her to rack up some incredible numbers: over 131 million views for her "dubstep violin" video "Crystallize," over 113 million for her Pentatonix collaboration on the Imagine Dragons cover "Radioactive," and upwards of 65 million views for "Elements," another dubstep vid.

Those numbers make the 29-year-old Californian YouTube's fourth best-compensated "star," according to Forbes. The list's methodology is a little ambiguous, since it seems to include only "DIY" creators and not major-label musicians, but still, $6 million a year is a lot of lettuce for this virtuoso violinist to shred.

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