Top 10 YouTube stars earned $127M between June 2016 and 2017, up 80% from $70.5M last year, with Daniel Middleton, aka DanTDM, taking the top spot with $16.5M
You may not see Daniel Middleton walking down a red carpet, but he is a celebrity in a league of his own.
Context & Ripple Effects
Forbes' annual creator rankings have become the de facto scoreboard for the creator economy, and this edition marks a step change: the top ten earned $127M between June 2016 and 2017, up 80% from $70.5M, and nearly two and a half times the $54.5M the top thirteen earned on the 2015 list when PewDiePie led at $12M.
The new leader is Daniel Middleton, whose DanTDM channel tops the ranking at $16.5M — a passing of the torch that foreshadows how quickly the crown changes hands: by 2019 an eight-year-old, Ryan Kaji, would take it at $26M.
First-order effects
- DanTDM displaces PewDiePie as YouTube's highest earner, making family-friendly gaming content — not edgy commentary — the template for top-tier creator revenue.
- The 80% jump in collective top-ten earnings gives brands and talent agencies a quantified case for treating individual YouTubers as media properties rather than ad inventory.
Second-order effects
- Each successive Forbes list raises the market rate for top creators — the gap between DanTDM's $16.5M and Ryan Kaji's $26M two years later shows sponsorship and licensing money compounding faster than ad revenue alone.
- YouTube gains leverage from the visibility: as creators become eight-figure businesses, the platform can court them directly, later claiming $100B+ paid out to creators over four years.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, solo channels professionalize into studios — the endpoint visible in the MrBeast profile with roughly 50 employees and six-figure per-video budgets — turning individual creators into employers and production companies.
- Annual third-party earnings rankings push the creator economy toward measurable, comparable valuations, the precondition for outside investment and acquisition of creator-led businesses.
The trend: Creator earnings are scaling from celebrity income to studio economics, with each Forbes ranking documenting a larger, more institutionalized business atop YouTube's payout system.