TOGETHER WITH

It's Friday and TikTok is getting hype for the Met Gala on May 6. And for good reason: it’s sponsoring Anna Wintour’s glitz-and-glam event this year, with CEO Shou Zi Chew making a special appearance as Honorary Chair.

TIKTOK 🤝 UMG

UMG is back, baby

The return: After three months on mute, United Music Group’s catalog is coming back to TikTok. The duo have sealed what they call a “multi-dimensional” agreement that’ll bring UMG’s music back to TikTok’s 1+ billion users.

• TikTok’s troubles with UMG began when its previous deal with the “big three” record label expired Jan. 31, 2024. Because TikTok and UMG couldn’t come to swift agreement, the expiration saw tracks from top artists like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Drake, and BTS pulled out of TikTok’s sound library, which meant that (1) creators couldn’t make new content with them, and (2) old videos featuring those songs had the audio track stripped out. (Though some of Taylor Swift’s songs made an early return because she owns the master recordings, not UMG.)
  

• UMG’s reluctance to re-up its agreement was due to three factors it didn’t like about TikTok: the platform’s support for AI songwriting tools that affect artists’ bottom lines, its lowball offer during negotiations, and “content adjacency issues” that pop up when popular songs provide the soundtrack for offensive content.

The new deal: TikTok and UMG’s new “multi-dimensional” agreement addresses all three of those concerns.

• The new deal prioritizes improved moneymaking for UMG’s songwriters and artists while offering promotional opportunities and protections against AI. According to a joint statement from the two companies, TikTok and UMG will use the “Add to Music App” feature, ticketing services, and analytics tools to “benefit artists, both financially and in building their global fanbases using TikTok’s scale and engaged community, while strengthening online safety protections for artists and their fans.”
  

• TikTok and UMG say they’re working “expeditiously” to restore previously muted catalogs on TikTok, so you can expect to see old videos unmuted and new vids with trendy UMG songs popping up soon.

Why it matters: As our writer Sam Gutelle puts it, this news is a “breath of fresh air” for the ceaselessly embattled TikTok, which is not only dealing with the new Biden-signed ban, but is also facing regulatory opposition in Europe and Indonesia.

🔆 INVITATION 🔆

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Twitch streamer and YouTuber Blurb made an “extremely cursed” mod that lets his chat control what Skyrim NPCs say, and has collected the best (and worst) results in a series he’s calling Text-to-Skyrim. Beware that it’s a little NSFW, but if you’re jonesing for a laugh, you can check out the first episode here.
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• In 2022, YouTuber Chris Stuckmann Kickstarted $1.4 million to bring his first full-length film, Shelby Oaks, to life. Now the feature is in post-production and just snagged The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass creator/director Mike Flanagan as a producer. (Deadline)

• Snap has partnered with influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ. At CreatorIQ’s Connect Europe event, Chief Partnerships Officer Tim Sovay said it has seen 140% year-over-year increase in ad campaigns using Snap. (Adweek)

COLUMNS • ON THE RISE 📈

Celestial Sylvia stares down danger

How it started: Celestial Sylvia has always been drawn to true crime. She grew up watching shows like Forensic Files and Snapped, and was naturally drawn to true crime content on YouTube in college. That content led her to start researching cases herself, and eventually she figured her family and friends might be getting a little tired of hearing her chronicle her latest findings. So, she launched her own YouTube channel.

• She spent about a year making long-form content at the start of the pandemic before switching to TikTok. Within three weeks, she had a video take off. “[It] was a video about someone who went missing on a cruise,” she says. “There's a lot of suspicious circumstances surrounding that disappearance, and it doesn't seem like she went overboard. Instead, it seems like there was a crime that was committed, but because it's a cruise and it's traveling to all of these different countries, it's harder to investigate.”
  

• But though Sylvia thinks (based solely on information gathered from police reports and other official investigations, something she’s a stickler about) that the perpetrator in this case was probably a malicious human, something she also focuses on in her content is the power of nature.

How it’s going: Sylvia now has more than 350,000 followers on TikTok, and has dedicated all her non-work time (she’s still got a 9-to-5 in marketing) to researching more cases.

What’s up next: She has big plans to get back into long-form content, possibly with a podcast. And she’d love to do something not many people get the chance to: use her platform to interview victims and families of victims, giving them the space to tell their stories.

FINGER ON THE PULSE

At the NewFronts, TikTok promises more ad products

TikTok isn’t letting little things like a nationwide ban slow it down. It marched into this year’s NewFronts with a presentation that largely centered on Pulse, the ad program it first revealed at the 2022 NewFronts.

The background: Pulse would probably see YouTube Select at the family reunion. Despite being from different platforms, they’re pretty similar: both bundle up top-performing (and, crucially, vetted brand-safe) accounts/channels and sell premium advertising against that content.

• New updates TikTok announced during the NewFronts include Custom Pulse Lineups, where brands can pick their own content lineups to run ads on, and Tentpole Moments, where brands can advertise against big events like the upcoming TikTok-sponsored Met Gala.

• There’s also IP Lineups, which include bundles of shows from the same network, like Saturday Night Live, America’s Got Talent, and the TODAY Show for NBC.

Why it matters: TikTok’s NewFronts presentation was, of course, planned before President Biden signed the ban. But TikTok’s presence at the NewFronts makes it clear that the platform is going to continue business as usual—and hopes advertisers will, too.

WATCH THIS 📺

An in-depth look at how one lawyer is monetizing on YouTube

The interview: Former Los Angeles deputy district attorney Emily D. Baker has over 700,000 subscribers tuning in to her VODs and livestreams. In the latest Creator Insider video from YouTube, she sat down with the platform’s Creator Liaison, Rene Ritchie, to talk about how she’s monetizing.

• Baker says livestreaming is a major component of her channel because it allows her viewers to ask questions about the law and get answers immediately. “Being able to answer questions in real time makes sure that I’m breaking things down in a way that people are understanding,” she says. “That’s a really incredible thing, to be able to have that conversation in real time. And I always say, law is a conversation.”

• She now gets around 10,000 concurrent viewers per livestream, and that audience size has allowed her to make a full-time income through features like Channel Memberships and Super Chats.
  

• Check out her 50-minute convo with Ritchie here.

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