Founded and later launched to the world on February 14, 2005 by friends and former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, YouTube is a global online video sharing, website and social media platform based in San Bruno California, U.S.
Bought by Google in October 2006, almost two years following its launch for $1.65 billion, YouTube is the second most visited website after the giant Google, with more than 2.5 billion monthly viewers who collectively watch 100 billion hours of videos each day.
It is one of the platforms that artistes all over the world use to promote their music and it doesn’t just stop at that. These artistes also earn income from the videos as YouTube monetizes videos via pre-roll, display, and other advertising formats. Advertisers pay based on clicks and impressions.
YouTube gives the content creator 55 percent of this revenue and it retains 45 percent. This happens only if a particular channel has accumulated at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of accumulated watch time over a period of one year.
The platform has over 51 million channels as of 2023 with India being the country with the most active users (467 million) followed by U.S. and Brazil with 246 million and 142 million users respectively.
Plugged curated the list of Uganda’s top 21 artistes with the most subscribers on YouTube (those that have at least 100,000 subscribers upwards) as well as the total views their channels have amassed over the years. Topping this list is Grammy-nominated and BET Award-winning singer, Eddy Kenzo.
It should be noted that some channel owners can buy subscribers.
Also, a higher number of subscribers does not necessarily translate into a higher number of views, for example, Chameleone who comes in fourth position in terms of subs has more views than Spice Diana despite her having more subs.
1. Eddy Kenzo – 2.24 million and 680,959,229 views
2. Sheebah Karungi – 515,000 and 102,133,966 views
3. Spice Diana – 454,000 and 67,873,964 views
4. Jose Chameleone – 439,000 and 104,463,077 views
5. Rema Namakula- 408,000 and 90,295,644 views
6. Pallaso – 328,000 and 64,163,790 views
7. Bobi Wine – 309,000 and 46,615,098 views
8. David Lutalo – 302,000 and 60,451,122 views
9. Radio and Weasel – 282,000 and 86,123,605 views
10. Bebe Cool – 246,000 and 48,178,548 views
11. Daddy Andre – 228,000 and 44,812,579 views
12. Ykee Benda – 227,000 and 39,028,275 views
13. B2C Entertainment – 198,000 and 34,006,604 views
14. Fik Fameica – 197,000 and 20,926,717 views
15. Juliana Kanyomozi – 174,000 and 26,030,145 views
16. Azawi – 162,000 and 23,923,365 views
17. Pastor Wilson Bugembe –144,000 and 21,572,021 views
18. Lydia Jazmine – 132,000 and 22,444,990 views
19. King Saha – 127,000 and 23,537,208 views
20. John Blaq – 117,000 and 12,610,833 views
21. Vinka – 104,000 and 12,456,844 views
