Dan Middleton, aka DanTDM, is primarily a gaming YouTuber but a content creator of all sorts whose main channel is nearing 30 million subscribers since its inception in 2012. His varied accomplishments, which you can read about here, make him a gem of OG YouTubers. Dan's released tours, books, a YouTube original series, and as of Saturday, Jan 11, he's the host of his own radio hour on the UK station, Classic FM.
Every Saturday until Easter, 9.10pm GMT, Dan will host Next Level with DanTDM, showcasing the beauty and variety video game music has to offer. Listeners can tune into Classic FM and Global Player, the free app where replays are available for seven days after broadcast.
The First Broadcast
"Well, I've made it. My very first time on Classic FM." Those were the words that graced audience's ears at the start of the first ever episode of Dan's show, his first appearance as a radio presenter. "I'm really excited," he went on to say.
For the first broadcast of Next Level, Dan wisely chose to cover "legendary scores from huge videogames franchises". In between songs, Dan packed in a perfect mixture of trivia about the music, referenced games, and his own personal experiences with them.
He kicked things off with music from The Legend of Zelda and, of course, Minecraft. The greatest dose of nostalgia for long time fans of Dan's, though, came with an orchestral medley from Street Fighter 2, probably an intentional wink. A dubstep remix of music from that game served as the intro for Dan's videos for years.
The show continued with music from Final Fantasy VII and then Halo, where Dan added in an anecdote about playing with his brother, "him beating me almost every time". He balanced that with the fact that the haunting voice at the start of Halo's theme is the composer, Martin O'Donnel.
Tunes from World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Sonic the Hedgehog followed. When time came for music from Pokemon, Dan mentioned his long-standing love of the early games and trading cards, which launched his YouTube career as PokemanDanLV45.
"Even if you're not a gamer, you've heard of Tetris," Dan segued. "But, did you know [the theme's] actually based on a Russian folk song." That and the fact that Tetris was the "first video game to make it to space" are just a taste of the insight Dan provided across the hour, which finished with "one more legend", Super Mario Brothers.
"I've had a great time," Dan concluded. "I hope that I've introduced you to a whole new world of music that you may not have listened to before. Or, maybe you're a gamer like me, and this is your first time with Classic FM." Either way, Dan succeeded.
Tune in this coming Saturday and every following one for the next three months, to experience TDM on FM.