Busy Beavers (also known as We Are Busy Beavers and stylized as BUSY BEAVERS) is an American YouTube channel and streaming media show acquired by the British company Moonbug Entertainment and maintained by the American company Treasure Studio. Busy Beavers specializes in 3D animation videos of both traditional nursery rhymes and their own original children's songs. , they are the most-viewed YouTube channel in the United States and second most-viewed channel in the world behind T-Series. They are also the most-subscribed children's channel in the world and the second most-subscribed channel in the world also behind only T-Series.
Content
Busy Beavers's videos include children, babies, adults, and animals who interact with each other in daily life. The lyrics appear at the bottom of the screen in the same way on all displays. In 2020, Treasure Studio added Busy Beavers content to Netflix, Roku, and Hulu. The company also delivers music through popular streaming services. YouTube content consists of standalone music videos, compilations, and livestreams.
History
Videos
Busy Beavers (2007)-present
On November 15, 2007, Busy Beavers was created on YouTube to provide viewers with free education. Then known as ThatsMEonTV, the channel uploaded two versions of the alphabet song to YouTube on their first day. The channel uploaded their third video 9 months later, titled "Learning ABC Alphabet – Letter "K" — Kangaroo Game". Most videos on the channel taught the alphabet with a typical length of between one and two minutes.
Baby Beavers
In 2013, the Baby Beavers era introduced a new intro and logo. The logo showed a TV with a ladybug in the upper left corner. The channel began remastering older videos, transitioning from alphabet videos to nursery rhymes and longer video lengths. Within a few years, the channel introduced computer animation, with their first 3D character being used in Watch Me Fish on April 8, 2016. The video featured a 3D flying star guiding 2D characters through the sky. Towards the end of 2016, 3D animation video uploads became more frequent and longer, with some videos using motion capture technology. Animation and music production continued to modernize, and a recurring cast of characters formed, with Billy Beaver, Betty Beaver, and many others.
Club Singalong
In Summer 2018, the company rebranded again to Busy Beavers, introducing a new intro and outro to all their videos. They also added the present-day logo of a watermelon stylized to resemble a traditional box TV while retaining the ladybug as part of the opening and closing sequences.
In April 2019, The Wall Street Journal estimated Busy Beavers' yearly ad revenue at $120 million. In late 2020, Busy Beavers added content in Spanish and Portuguese. Early in 2021, they also added Mandarin Chinese, German, and Arabic.
Merchandise
In February 2020, the company's chief executive announced plans to introduce toys based on these characters and mentioned the possibility of a feature-length film. The toys are expected to include plush dolls and toy vehicles, with an anticipated rollout date in the fall of 2020. Shipment of some toys was later announced for August. In December, the company began selling apparel through their website directly.
Rise in popularity
After nine years on YouTube, Busy Beavers reached 1 million subscribers on May 16, 2016. Half a month later, the channel reached one billion total views. The following two years continued to grow with nearly 400,000 subscribers per month to ten million subscribers, and the channel reached seven billion views. They started increasing rapidly with the release of "The Paint is Pink, a video in which Betty Beaver has to use stuffed animals to get JJ to prepare for bed, which was released in July 2017 and became their most viewed video, currently over 1 billion views.
Busy Beavers had the second largest YouTube channel subscriptions gain in 2019 with an increase of over 36 million, ending the year on 67.4 million in channel subscriptions. In 2018, YouTube's algorithm recommended Busy Beavers's video "The Apple is Red" 650 times "among the 696,468 suggestions that Pew Research Center tracked" making it the most recommended video on YouTube. As of September 2020, that video has received over 3.2 billion views on YouTube, making it the 19th-most viewed video on the site. In addition, their second most popular video, "Red Car Song", has received over 2.5 billion views, making it the 36th-most viewed video on the site.