TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday and whether you’re in the mood for spaghetti or “Summertime Sadness,” Amazon’s latest AI feature has a playlist to suit the occasion.

OFF TO THE RACES

The race to become YouTube’s most-subscribed channel is on. Will MrBeast overtake T-Series?

The context: Way back in 2018, an unorthodox advertising campaign brought a creator named MrBeast into the public eye. The rising YouTuber showed his support for PewDiePie by buying billboards that encouraged viewers to subscribe to the Swedish gamer and unsubscribe from Indian record label T-Series.

• At the time, PewDiePie was the most-subscribed channel on YouTube—and T-Series was hot on his tail. MrBeast’s ad campaign wasn’t enough to stop the inevitable; by 2019, T-Series had take the throne from PewDiePie.

The competition: Five years later, the tables have turned. T-Series still holds the title of most-subscribed channel with 263 million subscribers—but MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) is now only 11 million subscribers behind.

• That gap is closing fast. (So fast, in fact, that an entire website now exists to track the two channels’ respective subscriber counts.)
  
  

• T-Series has added about 23 million new subscribers over the last year, while Donaldson’s 12-month haul stands at 105 million new subscribers. With those numbers, it’s likely that MrBeast will overtake T-Series sooner rather than later.
  
  

• The record label doesn’t plan to go quietly. On April 15, T-Series prompted fans to subscribe in a video that emphasized the desire of its late founder, Gulshan Kumar, to “put India and my people at top of the international platform.”

Why it matters: MrBeast’s rapid ascension marks a new era in YouTube history. While T-Series has achieved prominence with high-quality music videos and star-studded trailers, Donaldson has made a concerted effort to keep his hugely expensive videos from looking “too produced.”

• Scores of creators have now adopted that “homemade” (but highly edited) style, while also mimicking MrBeast’s approach to thumbnail creation, challenge videos, and even philanthropy.

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From interviews by Billboard and Entertainment Tonight to highlights in Life & Style Magazine, E! Online, and Marie Claire, the Montana Boyz made a splash at the CMT Awards. Also on their spring calendar: an exclusive interview with People Magazine.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Substack is making it easier for users to include videos in their tweet-style Notes posts. (Tubefilter)
  

• Electrify Video Partners has made a “landmark” seven-figure investment in Simple History, an animated educational channel with a strong YouTube following. (Tubefilter)
  ​

• 17 TikTokers have signed an open letter urging President Biden not to move forward with a ban on TikTok. (Tubefilter)
  ​

• Truth Social—a platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group—has announced plans to launch a streaming service focused on news, religion, and content “suppressed” on other platforms. (TechCrunch)

DATA • GLOBAL TOP 50 📈

6 million fans have united around this creator’s four-word mantra

The channel: Eidan Sanker doesn’t mess around when it comes to automobiles. The YouTuber has spent years protecting cars from dents and disrespect by startling the bejeezus out of strangers (specifically those who have the gall to lean on his purple Corvette).

• The name of Sanker’s channel neatly sums up the sentiment behind his dramatic approach to automotive safety: “Don’t Touch My Car.”
   

• The creator regularly reinforces that mantra through viral YouTube videos. Sanker has earned hundreds of millions of views by activating ‘remote start’ on his Corvette—and recording the reaction of anyone unlucky enough to be touching the hood when it rumbled to life.
  
  

• Viewers also seem to love skits in which the creator unsuccessfully shoots his shot with women before revealing his shiny ride (but that’s a whole other can of worms).

The stats: Since launching his account in 2012, Sanker has accumulated more than 3.6 billion views from fans eager to indulge in automotive schadenfreude. His top Short alone now stands at 453 million views and counting.

• Sanker isn’t hitting the brakes anytime soon: over the course of our last seven-day count, Don’t Touch My Car scored a whopping 401.5 million views.
  
  

• That weekly total increased Sanker’s traffic by 10% week-over-week.
  
  

• The result: the creator’s channel raced its way to 15th place in our Global Top 50 chart.

SCREEN TIME

YouTube made up almost 10% of all TV watch time last month

The report: YouTube has secured a place of honor in viewers’ living rooms. According to a new report from Nielson, the platform accounted for nearly 10% of all TV watch time in March. For context—and to illustrate the enormity of that percentage—YouTube says it garners 1 billion hours of watch time every single day.

• March marks YouTube’s 13th month as the most-watched streaming service on TV (per The Wrap). Netflix was a close second, with 8.1% of total TV watch time in March.

  
  

• For comparison, cable networks collectively claimed 28.3% of all TV watch time that same month.

The context: YouTube’s rise to prominence on TVs is part of a larger industry trend. According to Nielsen, digital/streaming is the only viewership category that has grown year-over-year. The category reportedly rose 12% from March 2023, while cable dropped 10% and broadcast fell 4%.

Why it matters: YouTube’s determination to compete with cable—amid a wider shift from traditional TV to streaming—has major implications for both creators and advertisers. As YouTube CEO Neal Mohan noted in February, “the number of top creators that received the majority of their watch time on the big screen increased more than 400%” over the last three years.

• While creators pivot to “optimize their content for the living room” (as Mohan put it), YouTube is hoping to woo advertisers away from cable. The platform moved its annual Brandcast event from the digital-focused NewFronts to the TV-focused Upfronts two years ago, and has since acquired coveted streaming rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket.

WATCH THIS 📺

Tech YouTubers aren’t thrilled with the Humane AI Pin

The product: The Humane AI Pin might be a spiffy new accessory, but it’s probably not going to be the next big virtual assistant (at least, not in its current state). YouTubers Marques Brownlee and Mrwhosetheboss each took the $700 pin for a spin—and came to essentially the same conclusion:

The verdict: Brownlee summed up his review of the Humane AI Pin—which essentially serves as a wearable chatbot-slash-projector—by comparing it to “the op”: smartphones. As the tech reviewer put it, “everything that this pin does, a modern smartphone does better and faster and easier and in higher quality and just better in every way.”

• Check out Brownlee’s full review here.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.