Daniel Robert Middleton was born on November 8, 1991, in Aldershot, Hampshire, England, the elder of two siblings; his parents divorced during his childhood. He went on to attend the University of Northampton, where he studied music production, before working at a Tesco supermarket while building his YouTube channel in his spare time. According to Wikipedia’s summary of his early career, he has said his wife persuaded him to leave that job once his YouTube income matched his salary there.

Middleton married Jemma in March 2013, and the couple have two sons, Asher (born January 2020) and Miles (born November 2022); the family keeps their children’s faces off camera and out of public content.

Middleton launched his gaming channel, TheDiamondMinecart, in 2012, focusing on Minecraft gameplay, tutorials and character-driven commentary built around recurring characters such as the clumsy scientist Dr. Trayaurus. In August 2014 he signed with Maker Studios, the Disney-owned multi-channel network, under its Polaris label — a standard arrangement for top creators of that era that bundled ad-revenue management, brand-deal brokering and cross-promotion in exchange for a percentage of earnings. The channel was rebranded TheDiamondMinecart // DanTDM and then simply DanTDM on December 12, 2016.

By August 2016 the channel had passed 7.9 billion views, enough to earn Middleton a Guinness World Record for “most views for a dedicated Minecraft video channel,” a title also covered in a Guinness World Records news feature announcing his entry into that year’s Gamer’s Edition.

By 2017, Middleton’s channel had grown into a global touring act as well as a video platform: he staged sold-out live shows across the UK, US and Australia, and his four-night run at the Sydney Opera House became the second-fastest sellout in the venue’s history, according to Wikipedia’s summary of contemporary reporting. That same year he starred in DanTDM Creates a Big Scene, a six-episode live-action/animated series made exclusively for YouTube Premium (then YouTube Red), following him and his animated cast trying to keep a live show on the road.

Beyond his main channel, Middleton has taken on a run of smaller media roles: he voiced the character Cy in the animated series Skylanders Academy (2016-2017), voiced eBoy in the UK dub of Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), made a cameo in the film Free Guy (2021), and appeared as an auction attendee in the 2025 film A Minecraft Movie, in a scene where a character discovers a powerful crystal, according to entertainment outlet The Direct’s coverage of his cameo. He also had a small role in a 2025 episode of Black Mirror. In January 2025 he took on his most significant role away from his own channel yet, joining Classic FM as the presenter of Next Level, a weekly Saturday-night series exploring video game music, as confirmed in Classic FM’s own announcement of the show.

As his original child audience matured alongside him, Middleton scaled back daily uploads in favor of less frequent, higher-production videos, live shows, publishing and, more recently, the Classic FM role — a deliberate shift in career shape rather than a decline, reflected in a channel that still ranks among YouTube’s largest gaming destinations.

The clearest documented figures for Middleton’s earnings come from Forbes’ annual Highest-Paid YouTube Stars rankings, which estimate pre-tax income from advertising, brand deals, merchandise and touring based on data from YouTube, SocialBlade and other industry sources. In 2017, Forbes ranked Middleton the single highest-earning YouTube star in the world, estimating his income at $16.5 million for the twelve months to June 2017 — at the time, the largest single-creator total Forbes had measured since it began tracking YouTube earnings in 2015, driven by billions of views, an international tour and branded content deals.

The following year, Forbes placed him fourth on its 2018 list with estimated earnings of $18.5 million, behind Ryan ToysReview, Jake Paul and Dude Perfect, according to CBS News’ summary of the rankings; that year’s top 10 creators earned a combined $180.5 million, per CNBC’s coverage of the same Forbes data. Those two Forbes-measured years alone put Middleton’s estimated gross income at roughly $35 million before tax, management fees or production costs, figures Forbes itself notes exclude taxes and management commissions. Forbes has not published a comparably detailed breakdown of his earnings in more recent years, so any post-2018 annual figures rely on less rigorous secondary estimates rather than Forbes’ original methodology.

Unlike a traditional employee, Middleton’s income runs through a mix of platform payouts and network arrangements rather than a single employer contract. His 2014 signing with Maker Studios under the Polaris label was the closest thing to a formal management contract publicly documented, tying his ad-revenue share and brand-deal commissions to the network in exchange for support services; the specific financial terms of that agreement were never disclosed.

His 2017 series DanTDM Creates a Big Scene was commissioned under YouTube’s YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) original-content push, a paid arrangement typical of that platform initiative, though YouTube did not disclose what it paid individual creators for those series. His January 2025 role presenting Next Level on Classic FM is a broadcast contract with Global, the media company that owns the station, but again no salary figure for that role has been made public. In each case, the underlying commercial terms are private, and no reliable source puts a specific dollar value on any of these individual agreements.

There is no comprehensively documented public list of Middleton’s individual endorsement contracts with disclosed dollar values. His most substantial documented brand collaboration was with Mojang and Microsoft around Minecraft: Story Mode, in which he appeared as a guest character in a 2016 episode, though no fee for that appearance has been made public. Creator-analytics platforms report recurring gaming-hardware sponsorship activity tied to brands such as NVIDIA GeForce and SteelSeries in more recent years, but these are analytics-platform inferences rather than confirmed contract disclosures, so they are noted here only as a general pattern rather than a verified figure. No reliable source documents a specific dollar value for any single endorsement deal Middleton has signed, and none is invented here to fill that gap.

Middleton’s business activity centers on his own brand rather than outside investments. He operates an official merchandise store selling apparel including t-shirts, hoodies and backpacks, a line Celebrity Net Worth’s profile of him notes has grown alongside his channel. In publishing, his October 2016 graphic novel Trayaurus and the Enchanted Crystal topped The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover graphic books for eleven weeks, and he also released the Official DanTDM 2017 Diary and Activity Book that November. He has staged ticketed live events beyond his main tours, including the 2019 interactive cinema event DanTDM Presents: The Contest. His January 2025 Classic FM presenting role adds a recurring media-hosting income stream distinct from his YouTube content.

No public source documents Middleton holding an equity stake in any outside company, a production studio he owns beyond his own content operation, or any other outside investment, so no such holdings are claimed here.

No primary source — a Land Registry record, verified real-estate transaction report or comparable filing — documents a specific address, purchase price or property owned by Middleton. Forbes’ own profile page for DanTDM lists his residence simply as Wellingborough, United Kingdom, without further detail, and he has said he produces videos from a home studio there. A number of lower-tier celebrity-lifestyle sites claim he owns a house valued at over $1.5 million, but none of them cite a property record, estate agent listing or other verifiable source for that figure, so it is not treated as confirmed here.

No vehicle, aircraft or other major personal asset belonging to Middleton is documented with a reliable, sourced price. This category is reported honestly as no reliable public record located rather than filled with an invented figure.