TOGETHER WITH

It’s Monday and OnlyFans stars are hitting the open seas for a fishing-themed reality show set in sunny Mallorca.

CAN’T STOP THE BEAT

TikTok’s new AI music tool writes its own lyrics. But can it hold a tune?

TikTok’s musical aspirations have taken a futuristic turn. The platform is currently in the process of testing “AI Song,” a new tool that writes lyrics and pairs them with pre-existing music.

Introducing AI Song: TikTok told TechCrunch that AI Song’s lyrical compositions are powered by a large language model called Bloom. The corresponding music, on the other hand, is drawn from what a spokesperson described to The Verge as a “pre-saved catalog created within the business.”

The limitations: So far, AI Song is available to a limited number of users and only encompasses three genres: pop, hip-hop, and EDM. According to Jonah Manzano (a creator with early access to the tool), users can offer their own suggestions or choose from a list of prompts to kickstart the composition process. Either way, the end result is unlikely to be a musical masterpiece (or even remotely on-key):

The context: AI Song might not generate any Top 40 hits, but that doesn’t mean TikTok isn’t serious about breaking into the music industry—or the field of AI.

• The Bytedance-owned platform drew crowds in December by hosting a concert that placed hand-selected Elevate musicians onstage alongside Billboard stars like Charlie Puth and Cardi B.
  
  

• That’s only the beginning. While TikTok prepares to release a standalone TikTok Music service in the U.S., its parent company has launched its very own in-house AI development platform. In other words: AI Song might be a little off-key, but TikTok itself is making serious inroads into both AI and the music industry.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Golf YouTubers Good Good linked up with PGA pro Min Woo Lee for a round of play at the 2024 American Express pro-am event. (Tubefilter)
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• Twitch has warned streamers not to abuse Drops campaigns (which offer viewers in-game rewards for watching specific creators) by streaming unrelated or pre-recorded content. (Tubefilter)
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• Data from Sensor Tower indicates a drop in TikTok’s user growth, with the average quarterly increase in monthly active users falling from 12% to 3% between 2022 and 2023. (TechCrunch)
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• YouTube Gaming head Leo Olebe was reportedly let go alongside 99 other YouTube workers in a wave of job cuts announced last week. (VentureBeat)

COLUMNS • MILLIONAIRES 📈

For these brothers, a gold play button was always “the holy grail”

How it started: Marco and Pier D’Alessandro have always had their sights set on YouTube. The brothers first began recording videos at six and eight years old—but it wasn’t until 2022 that they actually began posting online.

• At that point, Marco says the goal of their channel, SaucyTV, “was to just bring our memories to life.” The brothers wanted to share their family’s unique sense of humor with the world, so (in Pier’s words) they decided to “test all of our limits, do the craziest, like ballsiest things” and see what happened.
  
  

• The result: in less than two years, SaucyTV has rounded up 1 million subscribers and over 1 billion views with funny pranks and family vlogs.

How it’s going: Between Pier’s college classes and Marco’s teaching career, the D’Alessandro’s have a lot on their plate—but as Marco says, SaucyTV is still “just the best excuse to hang out with my family.”

• The channel now features new Shorts every other day, many of which feature Pier and Marco’s equally hilarious parents. (The brothers describe their father as “a legend” who taught them how to be funny; their mom contributed her “good virtues.”)

What’s up next: Pier and Marco have big plans in store for the future. Pier plans to go into content full-time after graduating from college, and both brothers are looking forward to creating a catalog of long-form videos:

Find out more about SaucyTV—and the hundreds of rising stars and YouTube millionaires we’ve interviewed over the years—right here on Tubefilter.com.

THE GRIND

Here’s how Jynxzi scored the most active subscribers on Twitch:

Nicholas Stewart is nothing if not persistent. Over the last year, the creator—who goes by Jynxzi on Twitch—has become one of platform’s biggest names. But back in 2019, he was still relatively unknown.

Rough beginnings: Stewart began streaming consistently in 2019, but even loyal fans are unlikely to remember those early play sessions. According to Dextero (which cited data from Sully Gnome), the Rainbow Six Siege player averaged 1 viewer per stream for the entire year.

• Jynxzi’s second year on Twitch was equally laborious. For the next twelve months, he struggled to attract even 50 concurrent viewers—but he kept going. Between 2020 and 2022, Jynxzi routinely streamed more than 100 hours per month.
  
  

• By early 2023, the streamer rarely spent less than 150 hours live each month and often topped 200. But even so, his peak monthly Twitch viewership hovered around 5,000 concurrents.

The outcome: After nearly four years of relentless grinding, Stewart shot to the top of Twitch’s charts late last year. The result: as of 2024, the streamer has now picked up multiple sponsorship deals, signed with management firm Right Click Culture, and surpassed Kai Cenat‘s record by attracting more than 100,000 active Twitch subscribers.

The strategy: Stewart’s story is reminiscent of a few other top creators, including onetime YouTube subscriber leader PewDiePie. But while grinding is a prevalent (and often problematic) strategy in the creator community, many Twitch streamers have struggled to find success without posting clips on platforms like TikTok, Reels, and YouTube.

• As dozens of Creators on the Rise have noted, Twitch’s frustrating discoverability tools often make cross-platform promotion a necessity for long-term growth—especially when burnout strikes after months or years of near-constant streaming.

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

YouTube mixes it up: YouTube’s first creator management restructuring in 10 years shakes up the platform’s leadership—and ends in layoffs affecting 100 workers.

The Sopranos hits TikTok: A TV classic comes to TikTok in bite-size pieces to celebrate a milestone anniversary. Grab some gabagool and prepare to be entertained.

How to tune in: Catch the latest episode of Creator Upload 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.