TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and YouTube is coming for Netflix with a new feature that allows creators to sort their videos into episodes and seasons.

Today’s News

FEEL THE HYPE

YouTube is building Hype around community-building, AI, and streaming revenue

The 2024 edition of YouTube’s Made On presentation is a wrap. Here are the most intriguing features to come out of the platform’s renewed focus on community-building, AI, and monetization:

Hype: One of YouTube’s most promising tools, “Hype,” will let users spotlight emerging creators who haven’t yet topped the charts in terms of views or subscribers. Videos that receive the most Hype from the viewers and communities of creators with 500K subscribers or less will show up on a centralized leaderboard. So far, YouTube says it’s tested out the feature in Brazil, Turkey, and Taiwan. Hype will expand to other regions in the “coming months.”

Communities: YouTube is turning channel pages into fan hubs. Those future “Communities” will feature fan art, video discussions, and more (in the same vein as YouTube’s Community Tab, where non-video uploads like images and polls have already hauled in significant viewership).

AI-suggested replies: YouTube plans to spruce up the Comments tab in its YouTube Studio app by introducing AI-suggested replies tailored to each user’s unique style.

Dream Screen: YouTube’s “Dream Screen” feature—which suggests backgrounds for Shorts—is getting an upgrade from Google’s video generation model Veo. The result: AI video generation will soon be directly integrated into Shorts with creators being able to get 6-second video clips based on whatever prompt they can imagine.

Jewels: As a currency for one-time gifts, “Jewels” will be available on vertical live streams in the U.S. and allow YouTube-based broadcasts to function like big-money streams on TikTok and Twitch.

Check out YouTube’s blog for more details about the tools discussed on the Made On stage.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

You’re invited to an exclusive creator webinar: ClipAnything with AI to Grow Your Channel & Revenue in Minutes

Tubefilter readers are invited to join an exclusive webinar. Tune in at 11 AM PST on September 26 to hear directly from creator economy experts Nick Nimmin and Jon Youshaei as they reveal the secret to growing your channel and revenue in minutes.

Their strategy: repurposing footage of any kind into viral Shorts, TikToks, and Reels with a new tool called ClipAnything.

ClipAnything is the first-ever multimodal AI video editing tool that lets you identify and clip any moment from any video with a single prompt. During next Thursday’s free webinar, Jon and Nick will explain how to leverage ClipAnything to…

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• Write prompts that perfectly communicate your objective 💬

Register for the webinar today and, for a limited time, you’ll receive 30 days of free access to ClipAnything.

RSVP for Thursday’s webinar → 

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Substack has introduced a live video format that enables up-to-the-moment coverage of breaking news and current events. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Snapchat’s new “Easy Lens” tool will allow users to generate new filters based on text-based prompts. (TechRadar)
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• An update to LinkedIn’s privacy policy warns users that their account information may be used for AI training unless they choose to complete an opt-out form. (The Verge)
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• A new study from Pew Research Center found that 17% of U.S. adults now regularly turn to TikTok for news, as opposed to just 3% in 2020. (The Hill)

LEGAL JARGON

MrBeast just got hit with class action lawsuit from Beast Games contestants

The lawsuit: Five contestants are suing Amazon and MrBeast‘s limited liability corporation, MRB2024, for alleged mistreatment on the set of their upcoming gameshow, Beast Games. A class action lawsuit filed Sept. 17 in the Los Angeles County Superior Court alleges that contestants were “shamelessly exploited,” subjected to “unsafe” conditions, and denied proper food, sleep, medical care, and hygiene necessities. The suit also claims that the Beast Games crew “created, permitted to exist, and fostered a culture and pattern and practice of sexual harassment including in the form of a hostile work environment.”

The context: Those allegations initially came to light thanks to creators like Rosanna Pansino, who revealed in July that she’d personally spoken to over 200 people involved in the production of Beast Games. Not long after, MrBeast’s team blamed the alleged issues on the July 19 CrowdStrike incident—as well as “extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues”—but said it had “taken steps to ensure that we learn from this experience.”

The argument: That live-and-learn response may or may not be enough to save MrBeast’s company from a legal battle. The suit describes Beast Games contestants as de facto “employees”—which (if the court agrees) would give them strong legal protections. The contestants’ lead counsel, Robert Pafundi, told Variety that competitors were promised compensation for their services, and that that expectation, “along with them being consistently under the control and supervision of the production staff, makes them employees under California law.”

The contestants’ demands are directly tied to that categorization: in addition to requesting punitive damages from MrBeast’s production company, Amazon, and separate production company Off One’s Base LLC, the suit asks for compensation for unpaid wages and overtime.

GAME ON

EA’s creator economy is expanding with NIL investments and a creator program for The Sims

The revival: Electric Arts is reaping the benefits of its decision to revive College Football. The popular franchise (which originally debuted in 1998) was discontinued in 2013 after a court ruled that EA Sports couldn’t profit off the likenesses of amateur athletes. A decade later, in the era of NIL deals, the company revived College Football by compensating college athletes who chose to be portrayed in the game—a decision that reportedly came with a $6 million price tag.

The pay-off: During a recent call with investors, EA revealed that the newfangled version of its original franchise (aka EA Sports College Football 25) had the largest launch of any new console game in 2024, with 6.5 million players in total. Since that debut, it has earned an estimated $400 million in sales.

The creator program: The dawn of NIL rights has turned scores of athletes into influencers, but they aren’t the only creators on EA’s radar. In addition to investing in amateur athletes through College Sports, the developer is launching a creator program for The Sims that will be connected to the broader EA Creator Network.

Long before the advent of Roblox and Fortnite—rivals that each pay out millions per year through their respective creator programs—The Sims was a go-to sandbox platform for creative gamers. Now, its new creator program will open doors for storytellers, builders, and modders by offering early access to content packs and the ability to launch Creator Kits in titles like The Sims 4.

To qualify for those perks, Sims players must have at least 5,000 followers, 40 average concurrent viewers over the past 30 days, or 2,000 average downloads on their custom in-game content.

WATCH THIS 📺

A French YouTuber just sold 350,000 movie tickets in 24 hours

The creator: Inoxtag started his documentary journey with one goal in mind: climbing Mount Everest. The French YouTuber gave himself just 365 days to prepare for the summit—a rigorous process he captured in a two-and-a-half-hour film called Kaizen.

The result: Inoxtag’s decision to pursue an “entire life change in order to achieve this dream”—and to do it on camera—has already taken him far beyond Everest. By partnering with MK2 (a French film group that brings YouTubers to theater screens through a dedicated “YouTube Cinema Club”), the creator sold 350,000 movie tickets in 24 hours and attracted another 24 million views on YouTube in just four days.

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