After winning the third season of NBC’s a cappella talent competition, The Sing-Off, the singers of Pentatonix moved to Los Angeles to begin their music careers. Winning the competition meant the band had won a recording contract with a major record label, Epic Records. A week after moving to L.A., the label dropped them, telling the band, “An a cappella group will never make it in the music industry.”
Pentatonix didn’t agree. They forged ahead, posting songs to YouTube that garnered views – hundreds of millions of views. They distributed music through a small record label called Madison Gate Records. Their success attracted the attention of RCA Records, which bought Madison Gate’s contract with Pentatonix.
From 2012 to 2014, Pentatonix released three EPs, a compilation album, and two full-length albums of Christmas music. In 2014, their second holiday release, That's Christmas to Me, became the highest-charting holiday album since 1962 and the fourth-best-selling album in the United States. The band, with producer Ben Bram, won Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for "Daft Punk" at the 57th Grammy Awards.
In less than four years, Pentatonix have gone from hearing they “will never make it in the music industry” to being a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling band. One could list a number of reasons for why it happened: talent, skill, astuteness with social media. But as important as any other reason, it happened because they believed in themselves. Congratulations, Pentatonix.
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