What's the biggest YouTube channel still run by just one person?
Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I wondered about this recently. I took three seemingly-solo Youtubers as examples at different scales.
Penguinz0 has 16 mil subscribers, and as far as I know his uploads are just him talking into the camera, giving his opinion about recent things in games and pop culture (I could be very wrong about that, I don't know why he's popular). Looks like he uploads at least a few times a week, so that could be manageable.
Videogamedunkey has 7.5 mil subscribers, and he used to do weekly uploads until very recently, I think. Given that his humor and editing style is a big part of his content, I'd be surprised if he's got anyone else working on his vids.
Northernlion has just over 1 mil subscribers and uploads multiple videos daily, and (in)famously refuses to do any editing. He just basically streams on Twitch all day and uploads clips from that.
I would imagine the day-to-day running of the business, i.e. answering emails and phone calls, would be where having help is most advantageous as you grow, but it also probably depends a lot on what kind of content you make. How big can you get before it's too much for a solo operation?
I used to help with some new media production and the way I see it, at the moment the deck is stacked against solo acts on the more established platforms. Its even creeping into micro-content like TikTok and Instagram.
At a certain size, career video creatives need to transition into a talent/production structure or fall into the algorithm spiral. Internet media is still a wild west, but it's gone from a Manifest Destiny free for all to the age of money men and company interests gaming the system (and people but that's its own canned worm factory). The math is simple, more manpower equals more output. Yes, a single person can leverage all the amazing tools and technology to maintain their independence and control an entire enterprise, but full teams are leveraging those same tools and will always outcompete.
This has extended to the bigger twitch streamers (many of whom were the last solo YouTubers) who can put out hours of content on their own. But they have managers to handle brand/ad deals and admin, editors to make clips (that is a big part of bring in new viewers) and moderation teams across every platform to maintain their communities. Even "slop content" like reaction videos and clickbait have editing teams to manage the stock images, subtitles, effects and sounds; because it's very hard to keep up with production trends while maintaining multiple daily uploads.
However, different creators draw the line at different places. Like I know someone that has 6 people on payroll with contractors on call and they consider themselves a solo creator because the main project files never leave their hard drive. Some people produce with thier partners, siblings or friends which isn't a formal company, but is still a group effort. VTubers need to have a good handles on the technical aspects of thier avatar, but rely on riggers and artists to keep thier brand fresh.
I like the romantic idea of a solo artist going at it alone and making ground breaking works in the face of mass produced junk. But at the end of the day, it's a business for the platforms and creators. The algorithms are geared for that. For every Bill Wurtz and SovietWomble who dictate every frame, there's a hundred MrBeasts or Asmondgold playing the system or flooding the feed. Most of the solo creators that are still around are purely there for the art or use the platform to promote their careers or larger business.
With that being said, there are a lot good small-team creators that have interesting workflows.
The big one is Ryan Trayhan. I dont think he has an editing team, just judging by his solo shooting style and long production timeline. But he sort of represents an anti-MrBeast with a personable voice that still aligns with big trends. I just really love his meta story of capturing video of himself capturing video. He also doesn't shy away from less popular details like the fact that his married, the isolation of solo production and that he can be genuinely cringy. He's also attempting a crazy balance by showcasing luxury but without the fetishistic obsession of money.
There's also the maker channels that often seem to be 2-4 people teams. William Osman is trying to foster a community around it with OpenSauce. A lot of the creators involved work on insane timelines to make stupid things that will not compete in the algorithm. But it is fun. NileRed being a modern Alchemist that is awestruck by basic cooking (Nileblue). Styropyro making a macrowave. Electroboom being insane. Fun bunch all round.
Miniminuteman is on a quest to be the hot Architologist for a generation and the man in cooking in his latest Vampire video.
If i rememver, I'll check my list when I get home and add here.
I don’t see why it needs to be portrayed as a bad thing. It’s only logical to specialize. If you’re good at being funny on camera, why should you be the one finding contracts and sponsorships and whatnot? Do you have to do your own taxes, too?
I don’t think it has anything to do with “algorithms”.
Didn't intend to come across as negative. But looking at all of YouTube since inception, i do see that I talk about the platform with a great deal of malencology. The commercialization of the platform was inevitable once there was a profit motive, and some amazing work has come from that. The things i particularly appreciate are Markipliers increasingly ambitious projects, the explosion in high quality indie animation/horror and the way the platform can supercharge smaller projects.
But all the structures, money and growth could not make up for Googles comical aversion to accountability and strategy. Seriously, you could write entire books on every one of YouTubes development troubles and how they consistently dropped the ball. Yes, hindsight is 20-20, but every decision feels like a detriment to the ecosystem as a whole.
From the hostile copyright system, to the exploitation and unfairness of the old MCN groups, to ignoring issues like Elsa gate, to removing critical features like annotations and dislikes, to the ass backwards auto moderation bots that have butchered the sites diction (i swaer i will unalive someone in Minecraft for that), to ignoring issues like nazis and manosphere creeps, to the ineffective ad policies, to the joke that is YouTube Red, to the Rewind debacles, to multiple adpocolypses, to the cryptic rules/policies, to banning a massive livestream chat and practically deleting their gmail accounts, to YTKids being a mess, to ignoring issues like harassment in the beauty space....
And apart from google, the issue with how a lot of channels are organized is that it created environments ripe for exploitation and abuse. Theres plenty of high profile figures that have been uncovered over recent years; but these same people who have been operating like that for nearly a decade. I've also had the displeasure of working with and supporting absolute monsters. Many of them eventually burned enough bridges and faded into obscurity, but the current news is shining a light on the people who made it big and were shielded by their status for years.
And to touch on the idea of The Algorithm. I sort of agree that it not really so important from a technical standpoint. My guess is that when you upload, google applies all thier context analysis bots to calculate a neat z-score against arbitrary factors from the platforms most profitable videos. Then they adjust it based on demographic and watch statistics and use the result to calculate the cost per ad impression.
My worry is more on the implications of this algorithm, that is strongly promoted by these platforms because it is essentially your paycheck. I use the examples of Mr Beast a lot, simply because he has so much reach and amasses so much "organic" success. So other creators sees and copes the style and the system promotes Beast-like content and you've basically made a self fulfilling prophecy. Eventually you have entire communities and creative visions erased and redefined to how one person wants to be.
He have a corporation that sells some organic candy or something like that. Honestly, even without watching his videos, Im pretty sure that he not a solo youtuber.
Was talking more on the video production.
If I remember right, Joyride is not like a MrBeast controlled feastables or the family made Sourboys. Its the standard marketing/PR arrangement between Trayhan and an established candy company out of Houston. He probably has some say in the flavour and enough equity to not be considered deceptive about releasing "his own candy".
Did a bit of digging to confirm is video production and I get the sense that its mostly solo while he brings in editors for support. Will let you know if I get a definitive answer.
Well, it’s hard to know. A lot of the YouTube channels are edited by 3rd parties, but often not explicitly credited.
Moistcritikal (penguinz0) at least definitely has employees - if nothing else he owns and payrolls some esports teams.
Yea I'd be surprised if a YouTuber is doing their own editing on bigger channel. Nerdwriter1 still does, but he only puts out one video a month.
Yeah, I think this would be really challenging to pin down once a channel gets to a certain size. Often times a channel can appear to be a single person until they do a video in a different format and suddenly you might get a glimpse of some of the team around them. In the Moistcritikal example, his main videos of just him talking to the camera give the appearance of a solo act, but when you watch the liquid ladder videos or some of the ones of him in that warehouse of his, the scope of the operation is more obvious.
I know for DisguisedToast his channel also initially gave some impression of being more solo, especially if you consider that his Among Us video intros had the shift into animated shorts which implied a sudden change in editor staffing. But he is part of a content creator house (OfflineTV).
Girl With The Dogs seems solo at first glance but she has a whole shop and has referenced her camera(?) guy at least once in a video, even though most shots are GoPro and stationary camera.
Jenny Nicholson seems solo, in her Star Wars video she only had her sister I think with her. But who knows?
My assumption is more so that any creator with a high number of subs who is putting out more than one video a month is probably going to have some kind of editor or assistant. Only exception in my mind would be if their subject matter was video editing or related.
The boundaries are also pretty fuzzy. I would imagine few to zero YouTubers do their own taxes. Does that count? Why would it count less than an agent or manager that the YouTuber delegates paperwork to? YouTuber taxes are also very complicated because of their work, so it’s not unrelated.
I don't know if this is related however I see your point, taxes do not imply the creation and management of their content.
Do you consider the person who manufactured the camera they're using to be involved in the content creation? Or the electrician who put in the power to the studio etc.
I guess technically but it's not quite the same question imo.
Interesting question however, wonder how many things we could do truly alone.
Primitive Technology has just shy of 11M subs, and I'm pretty sure it's literally just him and some GoPros.
Looks like this is the biggest channel by far, if it is really run by one person. The efficiency would be spectacular, especially since he uses only primitive technology!
Maybe there’s a restoration channel out there with a similar number of subscribers. I don’t follow those so I don’t know. Another type of channel that could be both crazy popular and still run by one person may be ASMR.
I think Electroboom might be up there. I think he's stated many times over the last few years that his channel is just him. He doesn't have any camera operators, sound engineers, or editors, he does everything himself. Honestly super impressive.
7.83 million subscribers! That’s impressive.
Yeah its genuinely super impressive because his main videos aren't simple to make. There's a lot of research that goes into them and a lot of planning just to get the main shots he gets. Definitely recommend anyone even mildly interested in electronics to check out his channel because he does a great job of explaining things.
Not a direct answer, but I always really appreciated that Tom Scott would scrupulously credit everyone who'd contributed to a video, and often explicitly say things in the script like "...so I hired a researcher to dig into X" to really highlight other people's input. It showed the different scale that different videos were operating at, from full international production team, to interviewee and hired editor, to literally just him speaking to camera and posting it himself - and even at a decade in and ~1.8 billion views he'd still post a mix of all three.
Imo, the 1-5million subscriber solo acts make up the best of what YouTube has to offer. Small enough to do their own thing, big enough to make it quality. Couple of channels from my subscription list that fit the bill (to the best of my knowledge):
https://www.youtube.com/@Bushradical
https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
https://www.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel
https://www.youtube.com/@Techmoan
https://www.youtube.com/@LGR
https://www.youtube.com/@SerpaDesign
https://www.youtube.com/@lockpickinglawyer
https://www.youtube.com/@GamingHistorian
https://www.youtube.com/@SamONellaAcademy
https://www.youtube.com/@theCodyReeder
https://www.youtube.com/@lindybeige
https://www.youtube.com/@BenEater
I really want to write that Technology Connection use magic in his videos, but I just can't come up with joke. Maybe I need two...
Hey, stop scraping my subscription list!
Wild how I watch almost all of these.
Ha, to be fair a good bit of these were picked up from similar threads here over the years!
A few other greats in this range of subscribers that I think are solo:
https://www.youtube.com/@foodwishes
https://www.youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt
https://www.youtube.com/@AdamNeely
I doubt Kenji's channel is solo in the pure sense anymore. Consider this part of his last video on Egg and Rice Bowls. At the very least he has someone operating the camera.
I was going to bring up LGR. Very consistent and the only help I've seen him have is his brother who occasionally shoots some footage during his convention videos when he isn't able to leave his booth.
Awesome channel and one that is super relaxing. I used to watch his videos every Friday morning and he is one of those creators who I don't want to fast forward his videos as I enjoy his cadence and the music he adds to his videos. After having kids I don't watch him nearly as much but imo his content is evergreen since it focus on more retro things to begin with so I can always pick up any of his past videos when I want and dive right in.
I heard his house got hit badly by the recent hurricane, but thankfully he and his family is safe.
Alot of his big box PC collection is also relatively fine, including his retro pc's like the woodgrain 486 and whatnot
That was sad to see, especially with things like retro tech where it's becoming increasingly rare and he can't easily replace it. I saw he put out a cleaning up video, so I'll probably watch that first when I get around to watching more of his videos
Hard to tell who might have editors on the backend that aren't credited. Davie504 is one that comes to mind who is generally solo in his videos barring the occasional collab
I've think CGPGrey may still be solo; I don't follow him closely anymore, so can't be sure. But he's over 6M subscribers.
CGPGrey definitely has a team, as described here.
Oh very cool, thank you for sharing! That was the best apology video I've ever watched.
I think it's probably also best to consider him a podcaster who makes occasional YouTube videos these days!
I can see why! Though, I was under the impression Mike and Brady are the podcasters and the agreement is that he show up. ;)
I think hello internet was more Brady and Gray splitting the work, while Cortex was initially Grey to set expectations, then Myke as part of the deal was Mike gets a bigger share in exchange for doing the leg work, and nowadays is mostly delegated by Myke to an editor Myke or Relay pays.
This might be part of why Cortex is continuing while Hello Internet is on indefinite hiatus.
Scott Manley? 1.74 million subscribers. His setup is pretty streamlined, it’s just the intro video, him talking in front of a camera at his desk with some videos and images popping up to support the monologue.
But maybe he has one or two helpers with background stuff. That would depend on how much time he has to those tasks, but with that streamlined format, one person could definitely run the show 100% as a part-time job.
He does carry out simulations sometimes (in KSP for example), that probably takes up a lot of time (but it’s also fun).
Yeah, while the intro and outro were made by other people, the core thing definitely seems to be just him, I'm pretty sure he does all the editing (and there's not a ton of editing).
https://youtube.com/@matthiaswandel has 1.72M subscribers and.shoots/edits himself. He sometimes has cuts in his videos where he expands on something while he is editing the video. He sometimes does collaborations, but other than that he is solo as far as I know.