MA 30 The Influencers: Geoffrey John Davies

Founder and CEO
The Violin Channel

About six years ago, Geoffrey John Davies began uploading videos of violin performances onto YouTube. “Around the time that social media started, I very randomly started this thing called The Violin Channel,” he says. “People were interested, and it just kind of took off. About three years later, I thought, ‘Oh, I think there’s a space for this in the classical music industry.’ It all happened quite innocently.” 

Today, The Violin Channel comprises a web site of news and features focused on violins and other strings; an online store for string players; and a robust presence across social media platforms, including the original YouTube channel that now has more than 600 videos. 

“The web site is only a percentage of what I do,” he says. “What I use the web site for is basically hosting my content, and for the longevity. Social media, particularly Facebook, is a whole other service.”

Davies, an Australian who studied violin and viola at the Queensland Conservatory, worked in advertising in the financial services industry for about 12 years, and has lived in New York City since 2011. The Violin Channel has been his fulltime job since launching the web site three years ago. He figures that the majority of the audience members are string players, and his focus on promoting young artists is popular, but one of the most widely viewed stories he posted was on the death of conductor (and violinist) Lorin Maazel in 2014. “I got that story up very early, and I got something like 100,000 hits on my web site. But I don’t think anything like that has been a game changer. The growth has been slow and steady.”

Afa Sadykhly Dworkin