Alumni Profiles

Alum Climbing on YouTube Charts

Scott Monaghan '05 (political science), stage name “Mr. Pitiful,” is one of the top 40 most popular musicians on YouTube. Monaghan began performing with his college band and became a solo artist after a fruitless search for new band mates in Chicago’s South Loop. In less than two years, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter has amassed more than 20,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel. He now ranks in the top 40 most popular musicians on the video-sharing Web site, well ahead of many mainstream pop artists.

“It’s great, but from a perspective of a [record] label it’s not as great as having a fan base where I can go and fill up an arena with thousands of people," says Monaghan, whose day job is an independent Web designer. "I have thousands of fans, but they’re so spread out over the world that anywhere I go there’d only be five or 10 people that would know who I was.” Click here to read more him and listen to a music video.

June 10, 2008