"One Thursday, I came home a bit drunk from an evening out and made a Minecraft parody, just for a laugh," explains Martijn. In the video, animated Minecraft characters dance to recent pop songs. 'The Fox' was the video that heralded his breakthrough: it has now been viewed more than 3.7 million times. His YouTube channel has more than 75,000 followers.
There is a lot that goes into making video parodies of this kind, says Martijn. "I often do the vocals myself and I also mix the music. This means that my room is more than a student room - it now looks more like a small studio. But if I am working on large projects then I do go to a real studio."
Considerable amounts of money are involved in the projects. The best players on the market can earn more than half a million euros per month, according to Martijn. He is not earning quite that much yet, but he no longer needs his part-time job at the supermarket.
"I have various sources of income, such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes, and the latter brings in the most money. At the peak point, which was on Boxing Day last year, 1,500 tracks of mine were purchased."
And there are more impressive statistics. For example, between September and December last year, some of Martijn's videos were viewed approximately 200,000 times a day.
Achieving figures like this is not easy. "I was working between 15 and 20 hours a week on the videos," he explains. "Making videos takes an enormous amount of time - that's just the way it is."
On tour
A trip to New York is planned in a couple of months' time. While he is there, one of the things Martijn will be doing is giving talks about his video parody activities.
He receives mail from fans all over the world almost every day. There are even T-shirts with his Minecraft game character available. It is for good reason that a meet and greet and autograph sessions are on the programme for New York, too.
