A Growth Engine for the UK

In just 12 months, the popularity of 14-year-old British singer Toby Randall’s YouTube profile has gone through the roof, leaving him more surprised than anyone. “Although I’d always loved to sing, I didn’t really think about becoming a singer until all this happened,” he says. “It’s been pretty surreal. When the first person came up and asked to take a picture with me, I was shocked.” Toby uploaded his first video, a cover of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ in 2014, woke up the next day and discovered he had 10,000 subscribers. He’s now up to well over 350,000 subscribers and 10 million views. When Toby’s cover of Nicki Minaj’s ‘Pills N Potion’ came to her attention, she shared it with her social following of over 30 million. Tony remembers screaming when he heard the news. “If I hadn’t made my videos, I’d never have got that response,” he says. Although this celebrity endorsement is thrilling for Toby, he loves interacting with his fans. “It’s like a community,” he says. “Everybody gives me willpower to make the next video and the next. My fans are what keep me uploading. Hopefully, in the next two years I’ll get to a million subscribers, which would be amazing and bigger than anything I could have expected. Thank you YouTube!”