[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
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BRUNO is on top of our Global Sub Top 50 chart for the third week in a row. By adding 2.4 million new subscribers over a seven-day period, the Ukrainian creator brought his lifetime YouTube tally up to 32.8 million subs.
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That number is a bit behind YouTube’s subscriber leader, MrBeast. North Carolina’s native son now has 481 million subscribers on his primary channel, but only two million of those subs arrived over the past week. As big as MrBeast is, BRUNO might be even bigger at the current moment.
If you want a four-word phrase that sums up 2025, here you go: “AI KPop Demon Hunters“
On a channel called Dream Lags, two of 2025’s biggest entertainment trends are colliding. The Venezuelan channel ranked 33rd in this week’s Global Sub Top 50, and its AI-generated videos featuring KPop Demon Hunters characters led it to that strong performance.
For previous generations, dress-up was the most immersive form of widely available idol worship. Any kid who wanted to be a king like Simba had to put on a lion costume and let their imagination run wild.
Now, generative AI offers an instant form of wish fulfillment for any young fan. If you want to know what it would look like if Rumi performed on a real-life stage, AI can sketch it out for you. And if you want her to perform Latin pop instead of “Golden,” worry not — AI allows for boundless reimaginations of major pop culture icons.
Dream Lags’ success shows that a lot of young viewers are interested in the imagined imagery the channel dreams up. The Venezuelan channel added 360,000 new subscribers during the week that was; if it repeats that performance next week, its subscriber count will surge past four million.
It’s not necessarily true that the old-school KPop Demon Hunters channels are lagging behind. Creators who dress up as Rumi or draw her on a sheet of paper are still cracking the Global Sub Top 50 on their own, even if their work takes a bit more effort than generative AI videos do.
A channel called Rumi Siri, for example, ranked 42nd in this week’s subscriber chart. And for a more creative approach to the KPop Demon Hunters characters, we can turn to cindynee, who got 340,000 new subscribers to earn a 36th-place finish in the Global Sub Top 50. Cindynee’s KPop Demon Hunters drawings are wildly creative, even if they make use of some…forbidden numbers.
Data via Gospel Stats
The juxtaposition between this channel and Dream Lags helps us see why YouTube’s approach to generative AI is so concerning. Both channels capitalized on the global appeal of a certain purple-haired singer, but one channel was able to do it faster and cheaper with more creative and imaginative depth.
Human animators have complained about this exact problem for years. They simply can’t animate fast enough to keep up with culture that moves at the speed of automation. And yet, as a deluge of AI tools hits YouTube, the problem will only get worse. Will YouTube protect its hand-drawn Rumis, or will the AI versions of the character dominate the charts moving forward?
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
- United States: 12
- India and Mexico: 6
- Brazil: 4
- Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia, and Japan: 2
- Australia, Belgium, Germany, Kazakhstan, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam: 1
This week, 44 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
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