Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
YouTube’s most popular channel is Funtoys Collector.

YouTube's top 100 channels have more than doubled their views in a year

This article is more than 9 years old

With 517.3m monthly views, unboxing channel Funtoys Collector is now bigger than second-placed PewDiePie – and Taylor Swift hasn’t done badly either

YouTube’s top 100 channels have more than doubled their monthly views in the last year, with toy-unboxing channel Funtoys Collector emerging as the biggest star.

The 100 most popular channels generated more than 14.7bn video views in January 2015 according to figures published by industry site Tubefilter based on data from analytics firm OpenSlate, which tracks YouTube.

That’s up 110% from the 7bn views accrued by the top 100 in January 2014. It’s not the same 100 channels, but rather the most popular ones in each month – showing strong growth for YouTube’s biggest creators.

For much of 2014, the biggest star of them all was gamer PewDiePie, but he’s now been relegated into second place in the rankings by Funtoys Collector, the toy-unboxing channel formerly known as DC Toys Collector – and before that, Disney Collector.

The channel racked up 517.3m views on YouTube in January 2015 alone, well ahead of PewDiePie’s 417.9m. However, both are well up on their view counts from a year ago: 175.6m and 266.5m respective views in January 2014.

The latest month’s top 10 is a mixture of music, games and children’s channels, including Taylor Swift (361.3m views in January); Russian cartoon channel GetMovies (359.5m); nursery rhymes collection Little Baby Bum (302.1m); Russian animated series Masha and the Bear (287.8m); games channel Popular MMOs (266.9m); more toy-unboxing with Blu Toys (255.3m); child-friendly Minecraft gamer Stampy (252.9m); and BuzzFeed Video (239.4m).

With six of YouTube’s current top 10 channels aimed at children, the rationale for the company’s launch of a standalone YouTube Kids app that filters out inappropriate videos and advertising is clear: those six channels alone notched up nearly 2bn views in January.

According to Tubefilter, 55 of the top 100 channels that month were produced in the US, ahead of the UK’s 10 and Russia’s eight. Music video service Vevo was the most well-represented multi-channel network with 21 of the top 100 channels, followed by Maker Studios’ 15.

YouTube’s top 100 channels may have grown their views by 110% in the last year, but the service tends to use other metrics to judge its success. YouTube says that the amount of time its 1bn visitors spend watching videos is up 50% year-on-year, as are its payments to partner channels. The Google-owned video service does not publish detailed figures for its own traffic or growth.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed