Sam Tsui — American Musician born on May 02, 1989,

Samuel "Sam" Story Tsui is an American singer and songwriter. He rose to fame as an internet celebrity and is known for covering songs by popular artists like Adele, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, as well as some original songs, medleys, and mashups, along with his frequent collaborations with Kurt Hugo Schneider. As of August 31, 2015, Tsui had reached 2.1 million subscribers... (wikipedia)

If you have music that sounds like what you cover, people won't be able to differentiate who you are.
Up until I started on YouTube, my first love was musical theater.
My writing voice is a little quirkier, more singer-songwriter-y than the Top 40 stuff I cover.
I was going to go to college and graduate and move to New York and do the Broadway thing. That's where a lot of my influences vocally and writing come from. Then I did some covers, and towards the end of college, I saw it was a path I could take. I wrote more pop music.
There are certainly things labels can still provide that indie artists can't. They can pave the way to radio and pay big bucks for promotion.