TOGETHER WITH

It's Monday and thanks to the International Olympic Committee, Fortnite is officially an Olympic esport.

60,000 TICKETS SOLD

The most-watched Twitch broadcast of all time is getting a sequel

La Velada Del Año is coming back for a third round. The latest influencer boxing event is a follow-up to last year’s La Velada Del Año II, which smashed the record for the most concurrent viewers on a single Twitch stream. It peaked at 3.3 million concurrent viewers, breaking the previous record set by Spanish creator David Canovas Martinez (aka TheGrefg). 

Tickets for this year’s big event sold out within an hour.

La Velada organizer and Spanish streaming star Ibai Llanos needed a mere 60 minutes to sell out all 60,000 tickets for the July 1 event. The third edition of La Velada Del Año (which translates to “The Night of the Year”) will feature matchups between top Spanish-speaking creators, including Mexican gamer Rivers, Salvadoran YouTube star Fernanfloo, American streamer Amouranth, and Spanish personality Mayichi. In addition to boxing, La Velada Del Año III will also include musical performances from icons like Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Ozuna.

To see all that star power collide on-screen, be sure to tune into Ibai’s Twitch channel on July 1.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Visit Epidemic Sound’s website → 

Ready to edit your next viral video? Stay on beat with these creator-friendly hacks:

As the #1 destination for social media-ready music, Epidemic Sound is dedicated to helping creators make the most of their content. That’s why their team designed an app that allows creators to  download royalty-free tracks  straight to their phones—and why they’ve linked up with YouTubers Sorelle Amore and Shameless Maya to discover the best editing hacks in the biz.

Here’s how Sorelle and Maya make every cut count:

Tip #1: Choose your music first 🎵 
Sorelle: “​I need to have the music first, to help pace the edit. I choose my music using either ‘mood’ or ‘genre’” to search through Epidemic Sound’s royalty-free catalog. Want to give Sorelle’s process a try? Visit Epidemic Sound’s website to  sign up for a free trial today .

Tip #2: Combine raw footage with produced shots 📹 
Maya: ​“My first tip is to open with footage from my phone; it’s raw, it’s organic, it’s in the moment… It’s not produced. The next step is to go from the non produced, organic shot to something a bit more structured.”

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Edison Chen has raised $4 million of venture capital to support Clapper, a short-form video app that appeals to middle-aged users. (Tubefilter)
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• Amazon has reportedly acquired “audio content discovery engine” Snackable AI in order to beef up its podcasting efforts. (TechCrunch)
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• Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle says Bytedance employees tracked her location through a TikTok account she’d set up for her cat, Buffy. (Gizmodo)
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• President Joe Biden met with CEOs from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and other tech giants last week to discuss security measures related to the development of AI. (Ars Technica)

DATA • ICYMI 📈

A VTuber agency lost VTubers and YouTube Shorts added more ads

#1 - VShojo loses 3 top VTubers, including one who says new contracts didn’t make “financial sense”​
Three prominent creators left VTuber-focused talent company VShojo at the end of April. Silvervale (who has 441K followers on Twitch), Veibae (625K subscribers on YouTube), and Nyanners (one million on Twitch and 1.25 million on YouTube) all elected not to renew their contracts with San Francisco-based agency.

#2 - Top 50 Most Viewed U.S. YouTube Channels • Week Of 04/30/2023​
CoComelon – Nursery Rhymes continued its four-month streak at the top of the U.S. chart while Shorts comedian Alan Chikin Chow followed at #2. Another short-form channel—BigSchool—rode a 27% week-over-week bump to #3 after landing in tenth place a week earlier.​

#3 - More ads are coming to YouTube Shorts​
YouTube unveiled two new Shorts ad types at this years NewFronts: video reach campaigns and YouTube Select. According to the platform, video reach campaigns “use Google AI to serve the best combination of ads, and improve your reach and efficiency on YouTube” while YouTube Select allows advertisers to “surround the most popular content on YouTube–all in a brand-suitable environment.”

#4 - Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide • Week Of 04/30/2023​​
CoComelon - Nursery Rhymes dropped all the way down to third place in the Global Top 50, leaving the #1 spot wide open for KIMPRO. The Korean channel made its second-straight appearance in first place after picking up 600.2 million weekly views. Indian record label T-Series followed at #3 with 557.9 million weekly views.

3 TIPS FOR 13 MILLION

Jesser scored 12 million subscribers in 3 years. Here’s how he did it:

When executive producer Marko Preocanin first joined Jesser’s team in 2020, the sports creator’s main channel had around 1 million subscribers. Two years later, Jesser (aka Jesse Riedel) has added another 12.1 million subscribers to his primary account—and attracted 7 million new subscribers in just 12 months.

Jesser’s landmark success is three-pronged. Here’s how Preocanin breaks it down:

1. Formulate a good package (and then deliver on it)
Every Jesser upload begins with a basic structure, a thumbnail, a title, and a series of “hooks” that will play out during the video. A strong package like that can cause a viewer’s eyes to stutter for a second while scrolling—and that’s all you need to deliver a click-through.

2. Make videos for viewers, not yourself
Creators sometimes have to venture beyond their own interests (and comfort zones) to maintain viewer engagement. Take Jesser, for example: although best known for basketball, the creator’s main account spans multiple sports. His secondary channel (aka Jesser Reacts) sometimes goes beyond athletics altogether.

3. Analyze retention graphs to keep viewers hooked
Preocanin leaves little to chance. He studies YouTube retention graphs to see the points when viewers lose interest and the moments when they’re drawn in, and then uses that data to optimize future content.

Want more insight into Jesser’s YouTube success story? Check out Tubefilter’s full article here.

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

The Streamy Awards is coming back for a summer with the stars. Creator Upload host and Streamys co-founder Joshua Cohen talks free submissions, open nominations, and a partnership with Rolling Stone. 

Okay, enough good news. To even things out, make sure you tune in to hear about one of this week’s other main talking points: nightmare-inducing AI commercials. It’s all right here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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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.