TOGETHER WITH

It’s Monday and Amazon is using everything it’s got to promote MrBeast’s $100 million show: the ecommerce giant is delivering groceries to Amazon Fresh customers in Beast Games-branded bags ahead of the competition’s Dec. 19 debut.

Today’s News

CORD-CUTTING 2.0

Everything’s going up on YouTube

The deal: When YouTube TV launched in 2017, it was a $35-a-month alternative to expensive cable packages—and a key part of YouTube’s multi-pronged plan dominate the lean-back, at-home entertainment experience. Now, almost eight years later, YouTube has done just that: It gets over a billion hours of watch time per day on living room TVs, and became the first streaming service to account for more than 10% of all watch activity on television screens in the United States.

The platform is keen to flex its dominance: In a new company blog post, it touted how sports viewership on living room TVs is up 30% (thanks, Sunday Ticket). Podcasts are also seeing a surge, having reached 400 million TV watch hours per month.

But as it talks up all these numbers, YouTube is dropping another figure on TV subscribers—a price hike. Or, should we say, another price hike. YouTube raised the service’s per-month cost from the original $35 to $50 in 2019, and then to $72.99 last year. Now, it’s going from $72.99 to $82.99.

While that $10 hike is smaller than previous price increases, it’s seeing more significant pushback from subscribers. Maybe something about tipping over into that “almost a hundred dollars” zone is making people take a step back and realize YouTube TV has gone up nearly 140% in price since launch.

There’s also subscription fatigue to think about:

The future: YouTube blamed the price hike on the “rising cost of content.” Let’s break that down. Competitor streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video incur high costs to produce expensive originals like Stranger Things and The Rings of Power. YouTube doesn’t bear those associated costs for content because it relies on a revenue-sharing model (a 45% to 55% advertising split with creators who upload to the platform).

However, YouTube TV operates under a different model. The subscription service does have to bear the increasing cost of carriage fees—payments made to networks to carry their channels. These fees have been steadily climbing, making live TV services like YouTube TV more expensive to operate.

At least some 8 million households have cut the cord and signed up for YouTube TV. Will this price hike cause a lot of them to cut the cord again and just go to YouTube?

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Meet the finalists of the 1B Pitches competition

25 creators and startups have been selected as finalists in a groundbreaking new creator competition. This January, two will emerge as winners.

With $13.6 million in funding and an expert panel of judges, the 1B Pitches competition is poised to unearth some of the most innovative projects in the creator economy—and 1 Billion Followers Summit attendees will have a chance to see it all firsthand. 

Here’s a sneak peek at the 25 shortlisted projects:

• 🗞 Arabic Archive Project (Egypt) aims to digitize millions of historical press clippings to expand access to Arabic content on local and international issues
  
  

• 🔒 PenSell (UAE) is a platform revolutionizing content creation through AI-driven talent matching, blockchain-secured intellectual property, and streamlined collaboration tools
  
  

• 🎬 Eugenius (South Korea) aims to produce Korean TV shows, including a documentary, soccer variety show, TV series remake, and K-Pop music academy
  
  

• 🔍 HelloCreator (USA) is an AI-powered SaaS platform providing creators with personalized insights and practical guidance

The winners will be announced at the 1 Billion Followers Summit, which is set to take place in Dubai from January 11-13 and will include 100+ expert-led creator economy panels, networking events, workshops, and more.

Find out more → 

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• YouTube is still hip with the teens: 90% of kids in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 17 use YouTube regularly. The platform has a (perhaps surprising) leg up on TikTok, which only gets 63% of the same age group. (Tubefilter)

• Ludwig’s creative company Offbrand is shutting down its events production arm after just a year, saying “we failed to make the events business sustainable.” (Dexerto) 

• YouTube embeds have gotten worse. What’s up with that? (The Verge)
  

• After hosting the first-ever Creator Classic golf tournament last July, the PGA has putt together an official Creator Council to foster its "next generation” of fans. (New York Post)
  

HAVE YOU HEARD? 👀

FaZe catches flak from a Stranger Things star and LegalEagle sues the feds

The column: Every week, we hunt down some of the hottest headlines in the creator economy. In December’s second roundup, one creator battles against the federal government, while another battles against men on the internet.

The suit: Lawyer/YouTuber LegalEagle is suing the feds for denying his Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to Donald Trump’s corruption trials. FOIA gives the public rights to view certain governmental info, and since his request was denied illegally, LegalEagle is putting his expertise to work in a lawsuit that targets both the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The stiff: Kick has offered multiple streamers tens of millions of dollars to broadcast on its platform. But is it always good for the cash? YourRage says no: After returning to Twitch instead of renewing with Kick, he says the latter failed to compensate him for his last couple months on the platform.

The snipe: Stranger Things actress turned streamer Grace Van Dien has bad blood with FaZe Clan, and while presenting at the recent Streamer Awards, took a snipe at the org. “I am hard-stuck Bronze in every game I play, that’s why I was never accepted into FaZe, right guys?” she said, just before presenting the award for Best Creative Arts Streamer to FaZe Clan member Plaqueboymax.

The “someone call animal control”: Streamer ImDavisss is back from hiatus…and decided to mark the occasion by surprising his fellow AMP members with a new collab star: a massive, 22-year-old brown bear.

RETURN OF THE KENSHIN

After 18 months, CoryxKenshin returns to YouTube

The big reveal: Since June 2023, not a single video has gone up on gaming creator CoryxKenshin’s YouTube channel. Not a single Community post. His Twitter account? Silent. For his nearly 20 million subscribers, it was an unexpected absence. But now he’s back—and about to drop a major project.

In a surprise two-minute upload, CoryxKenshin (aka Cory DeVante Williams) revealed he’s spent all that time away working on a manga series. Called Monsters We Make, it appears to have all the classic hallmarks of the Japanese anime series Williams has enthused about for years: a neon-splashed sci-fi city, a ragtag team of heroes, big monsters, and even a bishounen or two.

Williams didn’t reveal too much about Monsters We Make aside from the visuals, but more info is supposed to drop today at this site: https://monsterswemake.com

As for Williams himself, he didn’t speak much during the video, and didn’t explain his absence. “Hey everyone,” he said, entering frame and peering around his recording studio like he, too, hadn’t seen it for a while. “I hope you’ve been well over this long period of time of us not seeing each other. Praise god, it is good to finally be back.”

The context: Manga and anime have huge fanbases online, and while they’ve always had a foothold with fans in the west, they’ve been gaining more mainstream attention over the past few years—enough that streamers like Netflix have produced big-budget live-action adaptations of popular series like Cowboy Bebop and One Piece.

At the same time, we’ve seen more and more American creators build their fannish enthusiasm for manga and anime into businesses. There’s Valkyrae with her animation studio Hihi Productions, and Tony Weaver Jr. and Brandon Chen with their manga companies Weird Enough Productions and Inspired Productions, respectively.

This is a niche to watch as creators continue turning their passions into their careers.

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

The monetization era: Creator Upload hosts Josh Cohen and Lauren Schnipper returned to the studio this week to dive into Trial Reels, Instagram’s new test run feature letting creators get the scoop on what their audience really thinks when they try new things in videos. Also on the agenda: the ever-looming TikTok ban, Alex Cooper’s new bev brand, and Trisha Paytas’s post-SNL plans.

It’s all right here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.