In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the channel described in the preceding lines is T-Series. The most-watched and most-subscribed YouTube channel in the world held onto the #1 spot in the Global Top 50 during a week when it accrued 747.4 million weekly views. T-Series surpassed 240 billion lifetime views earlier in December, and it could pass the 250 billion mark as soon as February 2024. That makes it the top record label on YouTube — not just in its home country of India, but across the entire globe.

Another Indian channel captured the #2 spot in the Global Top 50. Anaya Kandhal is a child creator who has captured the hearts of viewers across South Asia. The family-friendly videos on Anaya’s channel cater to the large community of non-English-speaking Indians who find entertainment via platforms like YouTube Shorts. That audience led Anaya Kandhal to 464.6 million weekly views during the third full week of December. Though that was a slight downturn week-over-week, Kandhal held onto the runner-up status she earned a week ago.

The highest-ranking U.S.-based channel in the Global Top 50 is Toys and Colors. During the second half of 2023, the educational hub has become a breakout hit among YouTube’s youngest audience. Its success, aided by its partnership with the media company pocket.watch, has made it a regular entrant in our charts. One week before Christmas, Toys and Colors kept its hot streak alive with a third-place finish in our worldwide chart. It approached 50 million subscribers while picking up 405 million weekly views.

The fourth-place channel in the Global Top 50 also held onto the same chart position it reached last week. ZAMZAM ELECTRONICS TRADING has become the most-watched channel in the Middle East by sharing the daily happenings that occur in and around the titular technology store. The Dubai-based duo in charge of ZAMZAM pushed their YouTube subscriber count above 40 million during a week when they reeled in 393.5 million weekly views.

The fourth country represented in this week’s global top five is Russia. That’s the home of Filaretiki, a family-oriented channel that just achieved its highest chart position of 2023. Filaretiki claimed the #5 spot in the Global Top 50 thanks to the 351.1 million views it picked up during the week that was.

Brothers Vlog now has more than seven billion lifetime YouTube views thanks to the 204.1 million weekly views the channel picked up during the third week of September. That sum, which was 38% higher than Brothers Vlog’s previous seven-day total, pushed the Pakistani channel up to 37th place in the Global Top 50.

By commenting on culture from across South Asia, Brothers Vlog has become a hot commodity on YouTube Shorts. The titular sibs may not have come from much, but at this rate, they’ll be the rich parents before long.

 Channel Distribution

Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:

• India: 17 channels in the Top 50.
• United States: 9 channels in the Top 50.
• Pakistan: 5 channels in the Top 50.
• Japan: 4 channels in the Top 50.
• Vietnam: 3 channels in the Top 50.
• Canada, Russia, and South Korea: 2 channels in the Top 50.
• Belgium, El Salvador, France, Hong Kong, Spain, and United Arab Emirates: 1 channel each in the Top 50.

This week, 33 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.

Top 50

50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels This Week • Worldwide

December 11, 2023 – December 17, 2023

1

T-Series

Views this week: 747,417,372

0%

LW

1

All-Time Views: 241,039,637,420

All-Time Subs: 255,000,000

2

Anaya Kandhal

Views this week: 464,636,403

-1%

LW

2

All-Time Views: 12,929,736,281

All-Time Subs: 18,300,000

3

Toys and Colors

Views this week: 405,085,518

-9%

LW

3

All-Time Views: 55,854,822,422

All-Time Subs: 49,100,000

4

ZAMZAM ELECTRONICS TRADING

Views this week: 393,581,903

-4%

LW

4

All-Time Views: 17,562,788,568

All-Time Subs: 40,100,000

5

Filaretiki

Views this week: 351,195,723

1%

LW

7

All-Time Views: 20,105,169,157

All-Time Subs: 19,900,000

6

KL BRO Biju Rithvik

Views this week: 349,485,968

-12%

LW

6

All-Time Views: 28,439,454,491

All-Time Subs: 36,700,000

7

MrBeast

Views this week: 331,972,360

-18%

LW

5

All-Time Views: 38,771,331,971

All-Time Subs: 219,000,000

8

MaviGadget

Views this week: 307,666,601

20%

LW

32

All-Time Views: 15,074,816,212

All-Time Subs: 18,200,000

9

Neetu Bisht

Views this week: 307,052,987

14%

LW

26

All-Time Views: 13,755,181,321

All-Time Subs: 20,400,000

10

SET India

Views this week: 305,034,985

-5%

LW

10

All-Time Views: 155,252,827,631

All-Time Subs: 166,000,000

11

Sierra & Rhia FAM

Views this week: 300,841,067

23%

LW

37

All-Time Views: 7,744,515,049

All-Time Subs: 7,190,000

12

김프로KIMPRO

Views this week: 291,901,541

-15%

LW

9

All-Time Views: 29,996,720,997

All-Time Subs: 29,300,000

13

Diary of 4

Views this week: 284,520,161

-1%

LW

17

All-Time Views: 6,095,650,945

All-Time Subs: 3,540,000

14

Zee TV

Views this week: 280,471,722

10%

LW

N/A

All-Time Views: 84,073,518,618

All-Time Subs: 75,300,000

15

Sony SAB

Views this week: 276,114,051

-8%

LW

15

All-Time Views: 108,000,808,690

All-Time Subs: 87,800,000

16

Real fools shorts official

Views this week: 268,856,089

-9%

LW

13

All-Time Views: 10,802,555,886

All-Time Subs: 26,600,000

17

ViralHog

Views this week: 268,316,316

-4%

LW

20

All-Time Views: 25,306,497,406

All-Time Subs: 19,900,000

18

Alfredo Larin

Views this week: 265,994,797

-2%

LW

23

All-Time Views: 22,161,317,175

All-Time Subs: 26,800,000

19

Celine Dept

Views this week: 264,063,919

-18%

LW

12

All-Time Views: 10,730,491,690

All-Time Subs: 18,600,000

20

Vlad and Niki

Views this week: 253,711,597

-1%

LW

33

All-Time Views: 82,663,902,486

All-Time Subs: 106,000,000

21

Filmy Suraj Actor

Views this week: 251,023,900

-8%

LW

16

All-Time Views: 5,365,688,961

All-Time Subs: 14,400,000

22

Moosa Tv Info

Views this week: 245,686,829

-27%

LW

11

All-Time Views: 9,709,192,220

All-Time Subs: 11,300,000

23

HAYATAKU はやたく

Views this week: 241,037,559

-12%

LW

22

All-Time Views: 7,120,055,227

All-Time Subs: 7,380,000

24

✿ Kids Diana Show

Views this week: 239,700,270

-7%

LW

31

All-Time Views: 98,178,533,543

All-Time Subs: 117,000,000

25

ISSEI / いっせい

Views this week: 235,057,919

-16%

LW

18

All-Time Views: 19,780,420,493

All-Time Subs: 20,600,000

26

HAR PAL GEO

Views this week: 233,686,459

-8%

LW

34

All-Time Views: 46,499,269,551

All-Time Subs: 48,600,000

27

Dangal TV Channel

Views this week: 232,683,000

-3%

LW

39

All-Time Views: 17,404,516,434

All-Time Subs: 26,400,000

28

ARY Digital HD

Views this week: 223,329,599

-15%

LW

29

All-Time Views: 45,522,260,047

All-Time Subs: 49,400,000

29

Spider VAMBI

Views this week: 223,094,704

-19%

LW

25

All-Time Views: 11,475,466,178

All-Time Subs: 15,800,000

30

HiFunnie

Views this week: 221,296,011

-21%

LW

21

All-Time Views: 8,820,724,821

All-Time Subs: 6,970,000

31

StarPlus

Views this week: 219,364,602

-10%

LW

38

All-Time Views: 34,448,095,174

All-Time Subs: 36,800,000

32

ToRung

Views this week: 215,455,860

-35%

LW

8

All-Time Views: 3,339,818,272

All-Time Subs: 6,790,000

33

Vijay Television

Views this week: 213,654,021

7%

LW

53

All-Time Views: 34,554,882,041

All-Time Subs: 22,300,000

34

Tibo InShape

Views this week: 212,424,563

-20%

LW

27

All-Time Views: 7,566,619,288

All-Time Subs: 13,300,000

35

Vivaan and Tanya

Views this week: 211,639,913

68%

LW

140

All-Time Views: 1,768,553,217

All-Time Subs: 2,360,000

36

The Mannii Show

Views this week: 204,631,845

14%

LW

66

All-Time Views: 7,536,682,051

All-Time Subs: 8,320,000

37

BROTHERS VLOG

Views this week: 204,137,962

38%

LW

95

All-Time Views: 7,176,683,810

All-Time Subs: 14,500,000

38

Mr DegrEE

Views this week: 202,831,732

-28%

LW

19

All-Time Views: 19,203,332,922

All-Time Subs: 22,600,000

39

Linh Nhi Shorts

Views this week: 202,620,043

-10%

LW

42

All-Time Views: 13,498,377,798

All-Time Subs: 14,800,000

40

Cute Krashiv

Views this week: 200,279,322

70%

LW

164

All-Time Views: 3,578,386,986

All-Time Subs: 2,880,000

41

One More Spanish

Views this week: 199,730,900

62%

LW

174

All-Time Views: 2,037,168,878

All-Time Subs: 2,270,000

42

BEN EAGLE

Views this week: 198,595,626

-10%

LW

44

All-Time Views: 5,465,793,839

All-Time Subs: 11,600,000

43

Marta and Rustam

Views this week: 198,016,378

-11%

LW

43

All-Time Views: 23,488,740,232

All-Time Subs: 26,500,000

44

萌萌与舞桐

Views this week: 197,518,059

20%

LW

86

All-Time Views: 1,073,140,750

All-Time Subs: 1,970,000

44

HAR PAL GEO

Views this week: 236,946,166

-1%

LW

31

All-Time Views: 45,751,270,895

All-Time Subs: 48,000,000

46

Dangal TV Channel

Views this week: 234,863,958

6%

LW

39

All-Time Views: 16,680,179,262

All-Time Subs: 25,600,000

47

ISSEI / いっせい

Views this week: 233,193,538

-1%

LW

33

All-Time Views: 19,052,816,164

All-Time Subs: 19,700,000

48

The geeta gurjar

Views this week: 230,688,881

6%

LW

43

All-Time Views: 10,053,803,015

All-Time Subs: 16,300,000

49

Priyal Kukreja

Views this week: 225,065,873

7%

LW

46

All-Time Views: 14,605,770,118

All-Time Subs: 25,500,000

50

CuRe 구래

Views this week: 221,739,705

17%

LW

62

All-Time Views: 12,021,981,931

All-Time Subs: 17,700,000

Social media is abuzz with photos and videos of people confining themselves in their residences.

But a heart warming  video of two children from Nalbari district of lower Assam performing on a popular Assamese love song ‘Ei Hahi Bhaal Laage‘ is being widely shared on social media and is winning hearts.

But the wow-factor in it is the fact that the duo performed the song using a makeshift drum kit.

While the girl sings the song, the boy performs on a makeshift drum kit made up of cardboard boxes, packaging material, banana tree trunks, bamboo and a metal tray.

The broadcast starts with the girl saying, “Namaskar, we are going to do ‘timepass’ by singing”.

She then begins to sing the popular song by singer and former All India Radio artiste Nasreen Halim from Dibrugarh whose lyrics were written by Hemanta Dutta.

The performance by the children broadcast from a Facebook account Rupali Pranamita have  received a positive response of netizens and has been shared by 13,000 plus users and liked by 14,000 users in Facebook  and a lot of people praised them for their creativity and inquisitive mindset.

Another  performance on immortal Assamese numbers ‘Phul Phulise Boxontat‘ and ‘Moina Kun Bidhataai Hajile‘  that has been doing rounds in the social media are by Nandy sisters – Antara and Akita Nandy performing on the occasion of Rongali Bihu in Youtube which has crossed 34,000 views in three days.

The duo presented a ‘Balcony Bihu Concert’ on the first day of Assamese New Year in the YouTube channel ‘ANTARA NANDY’

Playing Ukuleles and drapped in blue and black coloured traditional mekhala-chadors, Antara and Akita Nandy performed on the balcony of a home.

Antara Nandy in her twitter handle @AntaraNandy tweeted, “Bihu is a spirit – We can stay home and yet enjoy Bihu by spreading positivity in our own way – here’s ours! Sending loads of love from Pune to all our Assamese Listeners!”

Complementing for their performance Assam health and finance Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma on his Twitter handle @himantabiswa tweeted,

“After a hectic day, it is refreshing to hear this Soulful Bihu from Antara and Ankita Nandi -Phul Phulise Boxontot | Moina Kun Bidhataai | Nandy Sisters | Bihu Balco…” (sic) while sharing the link of their performance in YouTube.

Indian animation, for the longest time and still to a very large degree, had the perception of being an outsourced industry. “People imagine that we are like warehouses or sweatshops or call centres essentially, where people send work,” says Nikunj Patel, founder of design consultancy Studio Moebius.

But slowly, that is changing. As more independent artists use their voices and create original content, although it hasn’t reached the mainstream yet, people have certainly started to notice that “we don’t just have animators, we also have storytellers”.

Patel — credited with creating India’s first completely hand-animated music video for the Sandunes track “Exit Strategy” — is among these storytellers, part of a burgeoning independent art scene in India that has been shaped tremendously, along with the design industry, by technology and social media.

“One of the big trends I’ve seen, which I think is really great for the scene, is that a lot of young people right now are happy to start off on their own, when they’re quite young or even straight out of college,” says Avinash Kumar, artist, designer, and co-founder of the design consultancy Quicksand. Young artists today freelance or set up their own studios, prioritising independence. “For me, those are signs that the indie scene is developing.” And feeling independent, they are breaking earlier norms about what work should look and be like. “The work that these people do reflects their independent spirit,” he says.

This independent spirit is also aided by social media and the community of like-minded people it affords.

While about 15 years ago in India it would have been difficult to locate anyone doing experimental, fringe work, in the last five years or so, social media has allowed for fast growing connection between artists. “That I think is quite healthy and from that, conversations are emerging,” says Kumar. Connecting with other artists and sowing the seeds of an integrated scene is much easier now than it used to be.

Besides building a scene, social media is also allowing for a more nuanced form of communication. “Suddenly, you’re finding a lot of unexpected collaborations and partnerships happening,” says Patel. “International collaborations are definitely going to pick up a lot.” As people do experimental work and then congregate online, “there’s this culture that’s developing where talent isn’t being chained and people are essentially moving around the scene. It’s quite inspiring to see,” he adds.

Important for these indie artists is realising that adapting to new technology — instead of adhering to rigid purist fantasies about methods of creations — is vital. For instance, “it’s important for animators to realise that you can’t always be romantic about your creation process,” says Patel, simply because most consumers neither understand, nor care, about the amount of effort going into creating art. “If you could adopt a new way of creating through maybe using coding or generative animation, and create the same thing in a week that may have otherwise taken you six months to turn into a 2D animation film, why wouldn’t you go for the one week option?”

Methods of creation like code-based art and software like Touch-Designer, while allowing for faster work then, are also making certain skills redundant. “There’s a whole lot of tech which is making what used to be specialist activity stuff that a teenager can now do on their phone,” says Kumar.

However, shifting focus from skill is, simultaneously, making art more accessible.

“People who don’t necessarily draw, or sculpt, or carve, are able to explore the same thought process as an artists’,” explains Patel. Essentially, one doesn’t need to spend 10 years mastering a style to be considered an artist or dedicate a lifetime toward acquiring a skill. Such platforms, in essence, empower a variety of non-traditional artists to create art, allowing people to bring the concepts in their mind to life. A computer engineer can do code-based art, an electronic engineer can present installations, a musician can create transmedia art for their live shows, and so on.

This influx of ‘non-artists’ into the indie art scene is largely responsible for its rapid proliferation. While the community around new media has been building in the metros since the late 90s or early 2000s, the growth has increased at a much faster rate in the past five years. Because of these new mediums, which weren’t available before, “a whole new audience is being exposed and a whole new creator network is being formed which is definitely beyond the cities and much more spread out,” says Kumar. “I think in the coming years we’ll see the impact of that as it builds up.”

This rapidly transforming scene, while democratising art, is also impacting creators’ mental health and creativity. “Because everybody has access to so many tools and all the tools are becoming similar… I feel like the overall aesthetic of people is becoming similar,” says Kumar. In a world where everyone can see everything and it all looks similar, the idea of what is creative is starting to be affected, also causing stress and anxiety among creators.

“Before, say in 2010, you could have a blog and make your artwork and put it up, almost like your own diary, have your friends watch it and be happy,” says Kumar. Today, when an artist puts something up, they will either find other artists whose diary looks exactly like theirs, or find that nobody really watches, consumes, or even cares about their art, because everyone has already seen too many things. “The whole thing creates a lot of creative existential dilemma for creators,” adds Kumar.

As a result of living in this repetitive loop, artists’ interest levels also often plummet. “Most people you speak to, they say ‘this has already been done,’ and we’re just human beings, everything will be done,” says Kumar. The difference now is the knowledge that it’s done. “This used to happen before but we didn’t know that somebody sitting in New York is also thinking like us. We just didn’t know it. And now that we know it, we feel it’s boring and it makes us less inspired,” explains Kumar.

Connection on social media is also often limited to the attractive visual work, not allowing for a deeper, human connection that focuses on processes and failures. To combat all this, creators first need an awareness of the issues such platforms create. It’s important for artists to “deliberately disconnect, to preserve your own feeling and not get carried away by all of these things,” says Kumar. “It’s just about having a balanced diet of media.”

It’s also for this reason that Kumar has been organising the EyeMyth Media Arts Festival since 2011, 2019 being the first year that included a two-day conference with over 50 speakers, all their talks focusing on process, vulnerability, and honesty about what life as an artist actually entails. When one listens to so many people going through similar struggles, but still creating artwork, “the learning is very different and much deeper,” says Kumar.

EyeMyth is among the few instances of a critical engagement with the digital arts community in India, and with it, Kumar is making a case for the importance of physical connection. “The community in India around this kind of work is already quite small and we felt like it would be useful to first understand how big that community is and what it is actually doing and get a better sense of them as people. That was the main reason to do the conference,” explains Kumar.

And in spite of the disruption technology and social media have effected in the design industry and indie art scene, for Kumar, the basics remain unchanged. “In the current world, to help people understand, you have to use this vocabulary — like ‘digital’ and things like that,” he says. “But the truth is, it’s art and it’s storytelling and it’s the same that it’s been for hundreds and thousands of years.”

This article was originally published on Firstpost