TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday and Instagram is feeling the beat. After previously allowing the use of just one song per Reel, the app has expanded its single-post limit to a whopping 20 tracks.

DOWN TO BUSINESS

Here’s why VidSummit 2024 is going to be bigger than ever:

Picture this: The year is 2017, the creator economy is on the edge of greatness, and a YouTuber named MrBeast is sitting mostly unnoticed in the back of an auditorium.

• That scenario describes MrBeast’s first experience at VidSummit. Seven years later, the business-oriented creator conference is still unlike any other in the industry—but now, MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) is a part-owner with 300 million followers.
  
  

• VidSummit’s upward swing has been similarly dramatic. With 3,500 attendees, this year’s Dallas event promises to be bigger than ever before—and the summit’s rising prominence isn’t just about the size of its guest list.

The context: Over the last 10 years, the creator economy has soared to become a $250 billion industry. Most industry pros and events weren’t prepared for that kind of paradigm shift, which saw content creation evolve into an increasingly complex business driven by hard data. VidSummit was a standout exception:

The expansion: That forward-thinking approach has allowed VidSummit to mature alongside the creator economy. Past workshops led by leading creators have guided attendees through changing algorithms and the rise of short-form video.

• Now, VidSummit has opened 14 additional workshop slots (led by up-and-comers like Jenny Hoyos and keynote speaker HopeScope) to walk attendees through AI, workflow automation, and international audience-building.

VidSummit 2024 will take place in Dallas from September 3-5. Tickets start at $895 and are available here.

🔆SPONSORED 🔆

Creators deserve unlimited support. That’s why Viral Nation offers 360° representation across all verticals.

For creators, having the right support system changes everything. Viral Nation gets it: with the world’s largest global talent roster and bespoke in-house resources, their team goes beyond traditional talent agency services, leveraging the industry’s most seasoned experts and connections with global brands to offer 360° creator representation across all verticals.

With award-winning unlimited support, Viral Nation has the industry expertise to take your career to new heights. Here’s how they’ll make it happen:

🤝 Lucrative Brand Partnerships 🤝
Viral Nation agents go above and beyond to secure profitable opportunities for creators—including partnerships and activations with leading brands like Amazon, Nike, and Warner Bros. The result: Viral Nation creators earn 33% more value in every deal secured.

🌟 Content Diversification—Including FAST and OTT Licensing 🌟
Viral’s Nation’s OTT and Licensing experts handle all the heavy lifting of bringing your content to streaming services and FAST channels, so you can grow your earnings and viewership by harnessing content you’ve already created. 

📣 Dedicated PR & Marketing Services​​​ 📣
From red carpet appearances to merch drops and mainstream press coverage, Viral Nation’s PR team​ will make sure your career milestones never go unnoticed.

Check out the website to learn more about Viral Nation’s 360° creator services:

Take your content to new heights →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• PBS just joined Twitch. Is this the start of a new era of public entertainment? (And more importantly, would Elmo approve?)(Tubefilter)
  
  

• Film distribution company Neon has acquired the rights to Shelby Oaks, a horror film written and directed by YouTube movie critic Chris Stuckmann. (Tubefilter)
  ​

• A recent report found that “thousands of YouTube videos” were used to train AI models at tech giants like Apple, Salesforce, and Anthropic.(Ars Technica)
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• New data from Nielsen shows that streaming made up 40.3% of daily TV viewership in June 2024.(Engadget)

DATA • GLOBAL TOP 50 📈

Nothing is more relatable than sibling rivalries. Just ask YouTube’s top channels:

The genre: Family drama knows no borders. That simple fact has been a godsend for chart-topping Indian channels like The Geeta Gurjar and KL BRO Biju Rithvik, which consistently bring in millions of views with skits focused on sibling rivalries and parent/child squabbles.

The channel: The Savage Siblings is the latest channel to dominate that category. Although the two main stars speak Hindi, the themes of their comedic Shorts are universal enough to attract viewers from all corners of the globe. After all, who hasn’t been blown away by the gall of a younger sibling or put in their place by a harried parent?

• Add in a series of Dhar Mann-style videos promoting the value of kindness—another format beloved by Shorts viewers—and it’s easy to see why The Savage Siblings are so successful.

The stats: Over the course of just three years, the Indian channel has grown from an audience of roughly 1,000 subscribers to over 11 million.

• The Savage Siblings’ rising viewership is just as impressive as its subscriber growth. The Shorts hub currently claims a lifetime total of nearly 4.8 billion views—254.3 million of which flooded in between July 8 and July 14. That seven-day sum added up to a week-over-week increase of 15%.
  

• The result: The Savage Siblings climbed to #42 in our Global Top 50 chart.

PLATFORM POLITICS

Why does TikTok’s algorithm favor alt-right content?

The phenomenon: Alt-right content appears to be having a moment on TikTok. According to a recent report from nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface, around 1/4 of young German users who search for a specific political party receive suggestions related to other parties. The most common beneficiary: a far-right German party called Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

• Many of the recorded suggestions sling mud at AfD’s rivals. Some users who searched for Green Party leader Robert Habeck, for example, saw instead the unsubstantiated phrase “Habeck’s wife leaves.”

The reaction: In response to AI Forensics and Interface’s findings, a TikTok rep toldWired that the platform proactively enforces “firm policies against election misinformation and hate speech” while “connecting people to reliable information at our Election Centers, which received over 7.5 million visits before the EU election.”

The big question: Those measures are all well and good—but why does TikTok’s algorithm favor alt-right content in the first place? The answer is more complicated than one German political party’s hold over TikTok users. After all, recent research shows that right-wing viewpoints are more likely to show up in YouTube recs, too.

• In all likelihood, TikTok’s algorithm is simply doing what it was designed for: hooking users with dopamine-infused content. Controversial takes, shocking scandals, and inflammatory language serve to capture the attention of viewers on all sides of the aisle.
  
  

• Receptive users fall down a rabbit hole of similar content, while their leftist counterparts go to battle in the comment sections. The end result is higher engagement—with a side of political misinformation and radicalization.

WATCH THIS 📺

A cartoon of Kai Cenat’s Elden Ring marathon had the streamer dying all over again

The adaptation: Kai Cenat’s 156-hour Elden Ring stream was one for the history books. The Twitch streamer managed to die over 1,070 times in his quest to beat the game—a massive effort that attracted a peak of 220,000 concurrent viewers.

• Now, viewers can relive that brutal marathon in the form of a two-and-a-half-minute cartoon from YouTube animator Flashgitz. Cenat himself spiraled through seemingly every emotion while reacting to Flashgitz’ video, before basically dying (this time from laughter) right at the end.
  

• Check out that on-stream reaction 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