2017 has been a great year for YouTube. As announced at the eighth annual VidCon in June this year; the world’s biggest video platform has 1.5 billion people logging in each month, a user base second to Facebook’s. And as a result, it was a great year for the content creators using the platform as well. According to Forbes, the top ten channels on YouTube earned $127 million in 2017, an increase of 80% from the year 2016.
Damn!
The YouTube scene here in Nepal isn’t as huge as it is in various other parts of the word; the reason being the limited audience; but still, it has been growing and it grew a little more in the year 2017. Let’s take a look back at some of the highlights of the year.
Achievements
Do you know this guy?
Not exactly, right?
You might be a little surprised if we tell you that he is one of the very few Nepali YouTubers who is internationally recognized. And that’s because you haven’t exactly seen him in any of the videos. So, who is this guy??
That’s Prabhat Yadav, the founder of Explore Gadgets — a Kathmandu based tech YouTube channel that has over 470k subscribers. In April this year, Forbes Asia featured the 23-year-old YouTuber in its ‘30 Under 30‘ list in Media, Marketing & Advertising category. Huge, right? Totally!
In other news; YouTuber Dhiraj Magar of ThatDudeVlogs, who boasts around 140k subscribers, was roped in to play the lead in ‘Intu Mintu London Ma’ this year. He would be making his big screen debut opposite Samragyee RL Rana in choreographer Renasha Bantawa Rai’s directorial debut.
Photo: Pratish Gurung
The film will be released in 2018.
Quite an achievement, eh?
Records
Moving ahead, quite a number of Nepali channels and independent YouTubers reached the 100k subscribers milestone this year; including Channel Arbitrary, Girish Khatiwada, Sabin Karki -Beest, James Shrestha, among others.
Even bigger milestone was achieved by Music Nepal which became the first Nepal-based YouTube channel to hit 1 million subscribers, followed by Highlights Nepal. (Correct us if we’re wrong.) The first Nepali; actually the first YouTuber of Nepali descent, to reach the milestone was the makeup guru, Promise Tamang, who almost has 5 million subscribers now. Woot woot!!
Talking about records, ‘Kutuma Kutu’ proved to be the G.O.A.T. this year. The song from Asif Shah – Nischal Basnet starrer ‘Dui Rupaiyan’ smashed all the YouTube records to become the fastest Nepali song to garner 10 million views, the fastest Nepali song to hit 20 million views, the only Nepali song with 30 million views and finally, the only Nepali song ever to have crossed the 40 million milestone. It currently has over 41 million views in less than seven months of its release. CRAZY!!
Promising New Channels
Quite a number of new talents entered the scene this year. A lot of new channels were started by not only the new, but some old YouTubers as well. These are some of our favorites:
Binayak Kuikel’s ‘Why So Offended?‘
This guy is ‘awenestly’ awesome. The creator of ‘Awenest Podcast’, Binayak Kuikel talks about the serious stuff that needs to be talked about in such a sarcastic way that he leaves you confused if you got to be worrying about the issues or should you be laughing your ass off.
Fuckin’ hilarious, that’s what the folks behind Ming Sherap channel are. Run by teenagers Ming Hyolmo and Chheten Lama, it’s one of the few Nepali YouTube channels that has genuinely original and highly entertaining contents.
Popular vlogger Sisan Baniya brought together a team of some creative people to start a new channel this year, it’s called Paradygm TV. With quite a lot of good stuff, the channel already has got 60k subscribers in less than four months.
On March 9th, Trap Nepal released its first song called ‘Goldstar Jutta’ and well, the rest is history. In these nine months, the label has collaborated with over two dozen artists to give its listeners some of the dopest trap songs.
Nepali Hip-Hop scene needed a channel that basically cared about the genre — covering the events, talking with the players in the game, and letting the people know more about the thing; and then came ‘Hip-Hop Diaries’, a new channel by Uniq Poet and Symfamous.
Started in January this year, Ramailo Chha is one of the best channels that covers stuff related with Nepali cinema and showbiz.
Gorgeous Videos of Nepal
We’re not really sure about what the concerned authorities are doing about promoting Nepal tourism but we’re pretty sure that it’s various individuals, photographers and videographers who are doing an amazing job with it. They travel across Nepal and let other people know how beautiful it’s out there and why you should get away from where you are to see what a stunningly gorgeous country we have.
Dozens of such amazing videos were posted on YouTube; these are just the handpicked ones.
Abin Bho‘s Aura of the Valley
Darshan Pokhrel‘s Nepal
Sisan Baniya‘s West Nepal Promo
Gaurab Shrestha (GoPromote Nepal)’s Tilicho NEPAL
Impressive Stuff
Quite a number of skits, short films and web-series were released this year — and some of them were actually very good.
‘Bholi Dekhi Chhodi Dinchhu’ starring Nayan Raj Pandey was the finest short film released this year. Directed by Bikash Baraily, the film talks about drug addiction.
Katha Haru did a sketch with Sandip Chhetri and made him Chalu Giri who taught us how a ‘tasty political dish’ called Janta Ko Dimaag Ko Curry is prepared. Sarcasm on point!
A motorbike with a big fuel tank + speed + speed breaker = tragedy! That’s what this hilarious skit by Sabin Karki ‘Beest’ is all about.
Vloggers – A Lot of Them!
Writing a piece about the YouTube scene without saying anything about the vloggers would be incomplete. Different vloggers, different genres (pretty much), different audiences — and that’s why it’s not possible to say who is the best among them ‘cos everyone of them is doing their thing, trying to make interesting videos for their viewers. But then again, we’ll still have to pick some names who did some good job this year. So, here:
The rap artist, radio jockey and television presenter started vlogging last year and 2017 was an amazing year for him. One of the most regular vloggers at the moment, he achieved the 100k subscribers milestone this year. What makes him stand out from the crowd is his energy. Big Shaq would describe him as, “MANS NOT TIRED”. Like seriously, he is never tired. He is always fresh AF and full of energy.
With the new channel that comes up with a new episode every single week, vlogging has got slow. But dude is one heck of a vlogger and no matter how many times you watch his videos, they would still be hella entertaining.
This girl knows where all the happening events are taking place and she takes you there with herself — through her vlogs. Kichhy turned herself into a more confident, and even more entertaining vlogger this year.
James knows how to entertain his viewers — enough said!
One of the finest Nepali moto-vloggers, that’s what SMZ is.
[We know we are missing a lot, and a lot of names here but it’s not possible to write about all of them. May be some other day in a special story about the vloggers only.]
Chor!
We lost a great Hip-Hop artist this year, Yama Buddha. While his real fans and well-wishers were having a hard time believing and processing the fact that he is no more; there were many YouTubers who took it as an opportunity to steal his music and upload the songs from their channel as it was quite obvious that they would garner good views. RIDICULOUS!
A lot of people uploaded his song ‘Narunu Timi’ from ‘Yama Buddha II’ mixtape as ‘Malami’ simply because that title would attract more listeners. Bravo! Somebody just died and all you wanna do is steal his content. Koi medal deu yaar yiniharulai!
Anyway, looking forward to a great year ahead.
