Andy Morris, 27, sits on the piano bench in Wright Quadrangle’s dining hall, a gray Indiana hoodie pulled over his head. His fingers begin to flutter across the keys, teasing out “Golden Hour” by JVKE.
Around him, students turn to find the music’s source. A video captures their shocked expressions that blossom into smiles.
People pull out their phones to record or twist to watch him play. Two employees holding trash bags stop to listen.
The shots change quickly. That’s how Andy keeps viewers engaged. And it works — the video is his most popular on TikTok with nearly 90 million views.
From the way his hands connect with the black and ivory keys as he rocks back and forth with the music, it’s difficult to guess he hated playing as a kid.
Andy’s come a long way from crying at the piano bench.
•••
The Bloomington native touts two shiny YouTube play buttons and nearly 9 million followers across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. He makes a living, and then some, from making and posting piano-based content.
But he didn’t always see this path for himself.
Andy’s brother, Roger Jr., was the one who begged their parents for lessons. His parents, Roger Sr. and Jianing Morris, decided to sign Andy up too when he was 5. Playing piano proved hard for him, Jianing said. He would cry when his teacher pointed out a mistake.
So, she told Andy he could quit and start back up when he was 7, the same age as Roger Jr. when he started piano.
“He ruined my life,” Andy joked about his brother.
Every Saturday, he said, his piano teacher would come to his house and stay for four hours, sometimes longer, to teach him and his brother. Only when they played a piece perfectly would they switch to a different one. His teacher would have dinner with Andy's family, too.
Andy’s brother was very serious about piano, Jianing said. But Andy did the bare minimum. He did state fair piano competitions, National Federation of Music Clubs, the Young Pianists Program at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and performed in recitals every semester.
Andy didn’t care to win piano competitions, he said. That would mean he would advance to the next level and have to play more piano.
“He was happier when he lost,” Roger Sr. said.
Andy had stage fright. The pressure and stress were too much. To this day, he hates playing in front of people.
But by his junior or senior year of high school, he started enjoying piano. After over a decade of “pain and hard work,” he finally nailed the fundamentals, so he could have fun playing his favorite music.
Still, when Andy moved out to study information systems at IU, he stopped taking lessons. He’d play at least once a week on the Teter Quadrangle pianos, but that was all.
“I was just focusing on college, so it’s like, there’s not really reason to make me play piano anymore,” he said.
Andy was free.
•••
Andy was 21, taking classes in Budapest in March 2020 when the IU Education Abroad office told him and his classmates they had five days to get back home. He booked his flight as fast as he could, unsure if he’d even be let back into the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
His senior year was online. He was holed up in his apartment for months with nothing but a piano.
Then, he did something he never thought he would do. He downloaded TikTok.
“At the time, everyone was making fun of it,” Andy said. “But when I downloaded it, I kind of got addicted to it.”
Since there was so much cringe content on TikTok, he said, it didn’t matter what he posted. It was the first time he felt like he could put himself out there without care.
For six months, he said, his videos were “flopping,” or performing poorly online. But even when he got 100 likes on a post, he read every nice comment. He loved engaging with the comment section and making new videos from the audience’s suggestions.
Andy’s first TikTok video was of him playing bits of a few different songs, comparing what different people in his life wanted him to play.
Then, on Feb. 19, 2021, he posted a video titled “Playing bops that my boomer parents have never heard” featuring a Dr. Dre medley.
In it, Andy sits at a piano in a black striped beanie with the house still covered in Christmas decorations and hammers away at the keys as the camera pans to his dad’s furrowed brow.
It got 2.7 million views.
“That moment, I was kind of inspired to make more videos like that,” Andy said. “Where I was playing for people instead of just alone.”
He played in IU’s dining halls and the Indianapolis International Airport, capturing surprised reactions as he played popular songs like “As it Was” by Harry Styles, “The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA and Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” He made collaborations, sold merch, did brand deals.
It all snowballed from there.
•••
Andy graduated from IU in 2021 with a degree in information systems, but he decided to go back to graduate school at IU for the same thing. He wanted a better job, to make more money. Something in technology was what he envisioned for his whole college career.
And it was going smoothly, until close to the end of his first semester of grad school.
He was taking a break from working late on a group project one day at McDonald’s. Andy had just had a whole cup of black coffee. He thinks that’s what made him start having a heart episode and panic attack — he’s still not sure what his heart condition is called.
“It felt like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” Andy said.
He collapsed to the ground. Someone called an ambulance. They put a defibrillator to his chest and shocked him. It was the most painful thing he had ever experienced. He had to get heart surgery afterwards, which took him out of school for two semesters.
That’s when he started having enough time to make content more seriously.
“It was such a blessing in disguise, even though my life sucked for a while after that,” Andy said. “It was definitely the universe telling me to focus on piano instead.”
•••
That same year, Andy filmed a video with another creator for Halloween where they dressed up as Michael Myers and started playing the “Halloween” theme song. The other creator creeped up behind him and started dancing, and the video blew up.
“That’s when I got a message from ‘America’s Got Talent’ producers to basically do that whole thing on stage,” Andy said.
He never had to audition. There was one big problem, though — all the songs he played in the video were copyrighted, and AGT could only get the rights to one song. So, he couldn’t do a medley like in the original skit.
After five months, AGT was able to snag the rights to “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. That’s what Andy would play instead.
In April 2023, AGT flew Andy out to Los Angeles. He told his professors why he’d miss class.
They gave him an excused absence.
The producers wanted him to go up on stage without a word. He said they told him not to take his mask off.
“Everything is actually real, the judges have no idea what’s going to happen and the audience has no idea,” Andy said. “Except for the acts are all, like, very planned out.”
He said he was nervous, standing there waiting for the judges to tell him to start.
“Simon (Cowell) just kept asking me questions, like over and over again,” Andy said. “And I can’t say anything, I just like, shook my head.”
But it helped, having a mask on. He whipped a tarp off the piano on stage, sat down and began to play. And he messed up the notes.
The episode was shortened, he said, so his mistakes were cut out. But it’s clear they didn’t faze him from the way he confidently strikes each key and flourishes his arms during each pause.
In the video, the camera cuts to the audience’s shocked expressions. Then, the other performer, a dancer from LA, pops up behind the judges’ table.
“Spooked the shit out of them,” Andy said.
He came up on the stage, also dressed as Myers. Andy switches from playing Bach’s Toccata and Fuge in D minor and jumps to “A Thousand Miles.” Terry Crews’ surprised face appears as the other performer starts dancing across the stage and the audience cheers.
In the end, the duo only got a “yes” from Sofía Vergara. Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum and Cowell all gave him “no’s.”
Andy didn’t expect to advance to the next round — he was doing it for exposure and content. The video he posted on YouTube about it got 11 million views.
“That was a fun time,” he said. “I’m so glad we didn’t make it.”
•••
In 2023, Andy started looking for jobs. His first offer was a tech consulting role in Ohio. It would have been 60-hour weeks with a salary of around $74,000: or, in other words, really, really unappealing.
He had a few other interviews. After that, he stopped looking completely.
“I kind of had a moment where I was like, ‘I really don’t want to do this,’” Andy said.
He knew it was the right thing to do but said his decision was tough for his parents. His dad was “chill,” but his mom wanted him to get a job. She saw content creation and piano as his hobby, and she never wanted her boys to pursue piano as a career.
But by that point, he was already making money from brand deals.
Brands started to reach out to Andy, asking him to play their music. Lots of video games asked him to play their theme music — a “Genshin Impact” deal earned him $50,000; “Clash of Clans” gave him $18,000 and “Raid: Shadow Legends” paid $12,000. He was also making money from YouTube AdSense. In 2023, he said, he earned $155,000 from social media.
He started making money per stream from Spotify, around $5,000 a month. He released piano covers of popular songs, looking up sheet music to make his own arrangements. Occasionally, he’d have a violinist or a singer hop on the track.
“They, were, like, recorded on my iPhone speaker,” Andy said. “But people still listen to them.”
In 2025, he had over 22.4 million streams on the platform. His most listened-to song is a piano cover of “Cornfield Chase” from “Interstellar” with 21 million streams.
His parents came around to the idea of him being a content creator when he showed them how much money he was making. Jianing started to realize he could support himself when he bought his first car. Roger Sr. saw the amount of work he put into editing and planning the videos.
“See, mom, I can afford health insurance,” Andy said.
Jianing now checks his account almost every day. Andy doesn’t tell his parents when he posts, but Jianing finds out so she can send the videos to the family group chat. She likes to read the overwhelmingly positive comments.
“His music, for some reason, just touches you,” Jianing said.
Jianing recalled Andy turning to piano as a kid when he was angry or sad or emotional in any way. Andy said it doesn’t necessarily make him feel better, but it lets himself simply exist in that emotional state, like when crying or meditating. When he went through a breakup in 2023, he played a lot of sad music — but he hasn’t had to escape through piano since then.
Despite the success of his social media, Andy acknowledges anything could happen.
“This can all just go away at any point,” Andy said. “Especially with AI, the TikTok ban, or just like, if I fall off really hard or people get tired of the concept. It would be over.”
Brand deals are like the weather, Andy said. Recently, it’s been a lot slower. He’s cognizant of that and trying to gain more traction on Spotify.
He’s thinking about moving to LA to make content. For now, he’s just rolling with it.
And he’s grateful his parents didn’t let him quit playing piano.
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