Alex Aiono is a singer, songwriter, and actor from Phoenix, Arizona, best known for turning acoustic covers on YouTube into a music career, then stepping into film and television with a role in Netflix’s Finding ‘Ohana. He was born on February 16, 1996, and has spent more than a decade moving between recording studios, film sets, and his own home setup.
Quick facts: he was born February 16, 1996, in Phoenix, Arizona; he stands 5 feet 10 inches; he built his first audience on YouTube starting in 2011; and he currently works across music, acting, and the same channel that started it all.
This piece walks through where he came from, how his career actually took shape, and what he does for a living today, along with a look at what different outlets estimate his earnings to be.
Growing Up Between Phoenix and a New Zealand Family Legacy
Alex Aiono was born Martin Alexander Aiono in Phoenix, Arizona. His mother is of European American background, and his father is of Samoan and Māori (Ngāti Porou) descent, raised in Tolaga Bay, New Zealand, before moving to the United States.
He grew up with three sisters, Hallie, Sidney Lee Lewis, and Taylor, in a household where music was already part of daily life. He picked up piano, drums, and ukulele early, and taught himself to play by ear years before he posted his first video online.
When he was 14, his family moved to Los Angeles so he could pursue music more seriously. Money was tight enough that they shared a one-bedroom apartment while he busked on the Santa Monica promenade, where he met one of the managers who helped launch his career. He is also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which he has described as part of how he was raised.
He has named John Legend as his biggest musical influence, and he later got the chance to co-write a song with him, a full-circle moment for someone who was still teaching himself piano by ear a few years earlier. That range on multiple instruments became one of the traits that separated his early YouTube output from other cover artists working the same platform.
How a Bedroom Cover Channel Turned Into a Record Deal
Aiono opened his YouTube channel in 2011, while he was still a teenager, and started posting covers and mashups filmed in whatever room had the best light. His early clips leaned on his ability to play several instruments in one take, which set his covers apart from the wave of single-guitar videos already online.His path from online videos into mainstream entertainment is similar to that of other young artists such as Indiana Massara, who also moved between digital media, acting, and music.
The mashup that pushed him toward wider recognition combined Drake’s “One Dance” with Nicky Jam’s “Hasta el Amanecer,” a video that has since pulled in tens of millions of views. That kind of traction gave him a built-in audience before he had released a single original song, and an early opening slot on the Dolan Twins’ 2016 tour brought his name in front of an even bigger crowd of young viewers.
He released his debut single, “Doesn’t Get Better,” in March 2013, followed by his first EP, Young & Foolish, that same year. A string of EPs came next, including Alexis in 2015 and Does It Feel Like Falling in 2017, the same year he signed with Interscope Records. Singles such as “Work the Middle” and “One at a Time,” the latter featuring T-Pain, helped him book his first headlining tours, the After Party Tour and the Feels Like Tour, and land an opening slot for Sabrina Carpenter.
The Music Alex Aiono Is Making Now
Aiono released his first full-length album, The Gospel at 23, in 2020, a project that leaned further into R&B than his earlier singles had. Since then, he has kept releasing music independently rather than chasing another major-label cycle, putting out singles like “Played Out,” “Right Here,” and “Best of Me” between 2021 and 2024.
In 2024 he released the album Old Ways, followed by a run of singles through 2025, including “The More That I Think About It,” “Saving,” “Worked Up,” and “Delicate Dance.” His most recent project, the EP When the Feelings Won’t End, came out in 2025, and he opened 2026 with the singles “Say It Back” and “1 Mississippi, 2.”
His YouTube channel, still active since 2011, has crossed 5.6 million subscribers and more than a billion total views. He continues to post covers there alongside his original releases, which is part of how he has kept a direct line to the audience that found him before he had a label behind him.
The habit of reworking other artists’ songs, which he calls “flipping” a track, never fully went away either. His flipped version of Drake’s “One Dance” is still one of his most-watched uploads, and singles like “Hot2Touch” charted in Belgium, Austria, and Germany during the same stretch he was building out his original catalog.
From YouTube Star to the Screen: His Acting Roles
Aiono’s first acting credit dates back to 2014, with the series Royal Crush, though his acting career picked up real momentum years later. He had a voice credit in The Lego Batman Movie in 2017 and appeared in a sketch on I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson in 2019.
His most recognized screen role came in 2021, when he played Ioane in Netflix’s Finding ‘Ohana, a family adventure film shot largely in Hawaii. He went on to take a recurring role on the Disney+ series Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., a show set in Hawaii that, like Finding ‘Ohana, put him in front of a story tied to the Pacific Islander heritage on his father’s side. He also appeared in the 2023 project See You on Venus.
More recently, he joined the cast of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin on HBO Max, playing Shawn Noble. Between his music catalog and this growing list of screen credits, he has built a career that does not lean on any single platform, which is part of what has kept him working steadily since his teenage years on YouTube.
What His Life Looks Like Off Camera
Aiono keeps most of his personal life out of interviews and social captions. He has not confirmed a current relationship, and the public record of his dating history mostly traces back to a brief, publicly acknowledged relationship with fellow YouTuber Meg DeAngelis around 2016.
He still talks about his three sisters and his parents as a close, tight-knit unit, and has said they taught him and his siblings to end every phone call by saying they loved each other. Standing at 5 feet 10 inches, he lives primarily in Los Angeles, with stretches of time in Hawaii and New York tied to work.
He has stayed out of public controversy for the length of his career, which is part of why most of what gets written about him focuses on his work rather than his personal life.
How Alex Aiono Actually Makes His Money
Aiono’s income comes from a mix of sources: streaming and download royalties from his catalog, YouTube ad revenue from a channel with more than a billion total views, touring income from his past headlining runs, acting fees from his film and TV work, and brand partnerships tied to his social following. His early touring, including co-headlining dates and an opening slot for Sabrina Carpenter in 2017, points to ticket sales as another piece of that picture.
His social following adds another layer on top of that, since sponsored posts at his follower count could reasonably bring in several thousand dollars each, based on typical creator rates.
His actual net worth has never been confirmed through public financial records, since he is a private individual and not a public company. That has not stopped a handful of celebrity biography sites from publishing their own estimates, and those numbers vary by a wide margin. TheCityCeleb put his net worth at around 5 million dollars in 2026. NetWorthSpot, which builds its estimate mainly from projected Instagram sponsorship rates, listed a figure closer to 10.5 million dollars, with a note that it could run higher once income outside Instagram gets factored in. MarriedBiography had listed a more modest 2.5 million dollar estimate back in 2022.
The gap between those numbers says more about how these estimates get built than it does about Aiono himself. Most of them start from public data points, like subscriber counts or typical sponsorship rates, and run them through a formula, rather than pulling from tax filings or bank records that a private musician and actor would have no reason to share.
What He’s Working On Next
Aiono opened 2026 with new singles rather than a full album, a release pattern he has leaned on since Old Ways came out in 2024. Between his continuing YouTube uploads, his role on Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, and a steady stream of singles, he is currently splitting his time between music and acting rather than picking one over the other.
Given how he has worked for more than a decade, moving from covers to an Interscope deal to independent releases, then adding film and television roles along the way, that mix looks less like a phase and more like how he has chosen to build his career on his own terms.