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Every musician is basically a YouTuber now
Bands clunkily pivoting to livestream can look to YouTube stars as guiding lights.
Tesla begins selling a $5,500 track package for the Model 3
Tesla has launched a new track package for Model 3 Performance owners looking to give their vehicles a boost. The Model 3 Track Package comes with 20-inch Zero-G Performance wheels, stickier Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires and high-performance brake pads, and will cost track enthusiasts $5,500, including installation.
YouTube's burnout generation
Jacques Slade is a 43-year-old father of three who lives an hour north of LA. He has worked in real estate, taught at a charter school and written music; he also spent nine years at Washington Mutual bank before its collapse. But it was his YouTube channel, which he started in 2013, that's given him a career. He now has more than a million subscribers and recently showed Jeff Goldblum how to unbox a pair of Nikes, on the actor's new Disney+ show. On a Wednesday in October, Slade stood on a pedestrian bridge in suburban southern California's over-90 degree sun, held a brand-new Puma sneaker in his outstretched palm and tossed it in the air. In his other hand he held his camera, trying to snap the shutter to get the perfect floating shot. A couple times the shoe tumbled to the floor. Slade swore. He reviewed his shots. "Trash!" he said.
YouTube will stop displaying exact follower counts in September
In an attempt to take the pressure off of creators, YouTube is changing the way it displays how many followers an account has. Throughout September, the platform is rolling out abbreviated public subscriber counts. For example, if a creator has 1,234,567 subscribers, viewers will see that the count as 1.23M. YouTube announced the change in May, but it released more details this week. As you might imagine, users are not happy.
YouTube sues user who extorted others through fake takedown requests
A lawsuit filed by YouTube yesterday claims that a user abused its copyright infringement reporting system to extort fellow YouTubers and carry out a swatting attack. YouTube alleges that Christopher Brady, of Omaha, Nebraska, filed dozens of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices, which falsely claimed that materials posted by other users infringed his copyrights. Not only were the takedown notices bogus, they were allegedly part of Brady's plan to extort money from those users.
Patreon’s 3 million supporters are good news for independent creators
Patreon has had one clear goal since it launched in 2013: to help artists, influencers and internet creators make money by letting them offer membership services directly to their fans. And that effort seems to be paying off. Today, Patreon announced there are now over three million people supporting creators on its site, of which there are more than 100,000 to date. What's also notable is that the company was able to accomplish this milestone in a rapid manner, going from two to three million supporters (aka patrons) worldwide in just one year.
Hiding in plain sight: The YouTubers' crowdfunding piracy
I never imagined I would be watching Kitchen Nightmares, starring the world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay, in my downtime on YouTube. I knew of Ramsay and his ruthlessness from shows like Hell's Kitchen, but I had never heard of Kitchen Nightmares until a few weeks ago, when an episode popped up on YouTube's Trending section. Next thing you know, I'm hooked and watching full episodes of it on my phone instead of the usual sneaker videos. But aside from Ramsay's rants at owners of filthy restaurants, something else caught my attention -- these uploads weren't from Fox, which owns the rights to the show in the US. Instead, they were from an unofficial channel called "Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen." And as if that wasn't brazen enough, the owner explicitly asked viewers for donations to fund the uploading of copyrighted content.
YouTube expands its Instagram-style Stories to more creators
YouTube is rolling out its Instagram-style Stories feature to more creators starting today, according to a report from The Verge. The latest expansion of the feature, which YouTube first started testing last year, will allow creators with more than 10,000 subscribers to post the temporary videos.
Mental health and the relentless YouTuber life
Jacques Slade was spending a week at the beach recently, away from the internet and his responsibilities as a full-time YouTube creator, where he's about to reach 1 million subscribers. It was supposed to be a time to relax and enjoy life. But being stress free, even on vacation, doesn't come easily for him. Slade, who makes videos about sneakers and technology, said he couldn't fully enjoy it because he was worried about not having anything to post on YouTube when he returned. "I don't have content for the next four or five days," Slade worried. "What's that gonna do to me? What's that gonna do to my bottom line? When I come back, are people still gonna watch my videos?"
YouTube creators can hype prerecorded videos with 'Premieres'
While YouTube users have been able to schedule prerecorded videos for years, until now there hasn't been a seamless way to build anticipation for those videos. But there's a feature being launched at VidCon 2018 called YouTube Premieres that's going to change that. This tool will let creators hype future on-demand videos with a dedicated public landing page that they can link to before a video is live on their channel. Right now, YouTube creators tend to go on other social sites like Instagram or Twitter to let their followers know about incoming videos, but there wasn't a way for them to direct people to a specific page on YouTube -- not for prerecorded videos, anyway.
YouTube looks to merch and memberships to make creators more money
YouTube is having a busy day at VidCon 2018. Aside from launching Premieres, a feature that lets creators hype prerecorded videos with a public landing page, the company is also announcing new ways for them to make more money. For starters, channels with more than 100,000 subscribers will now have access to Memberships, which will allow viewers to pay a monthly fee of $4.99 to get exclusive access to badges, emoji, livestreams, members-only videos and shoutouts, among other perks. This is exactly what YouTube was already doing with Sponsorships, though that was available only to a select group of YouTubers. If you're a creator but don't meet the 100,000-subscriber threshold, YouTube says it hopes to bring Channel Memberships to more people in the coming months.
Logan Paul hasn’t learned his lesson
Logan Paul, the YouTube star who came under fire recently after posting a video of a corpse, is at the center of yet another controversy. This time around, Paul is facing backlash for uploading a video in which he's seen shooting two lifeless rats with a Taser gun. As if that wasn't enough, in a now deleted tweet, he joined the Tide Pods internet challenge, suggesting he'd eat one of the detergent capsules for every retweet he got. Perhaps that's just his sense of humor, but Paul should have known that everything he does from now on will be heavily scrutinized.
Logan Paul forced YouTube to admit humans are better than algorithms
YouTube is no stranger to controversy. Many of its top stars have been in hot water recently: From PewDiePie making racists remarks, to a "family" channel with abusive kid pranks, the company's been under fire for not keeping a closer eye on the type of content that makes it onto the site. Most recently, Logan Paul, a popular YouTuber with more than 15 million subscribers, faced backlash after posting a video that showed a corpse he came across in Japan's so-called "Suicide Forest." That clip, which was eventually taken down by Paul himself, forced YouTube to cut almost all ties with him and to figure out ways to prevent another situation like this.
Channel 4 is giving The Chicken Connoisseur his own show
YouTube star Elijah Quashie, better known as the Chicken Connoisseur, has been given his own show on Channel 4. The Peng Life will be a broader take on Quashie's hit channel, which reviews the best and worst chicken shops in London. He'll travel across the capital and pass judgment on everything from food to fashion at "street" and "elite" level pricing. The goal will be to find out which products are the "pengest" and whether the priciest options are really worth the extra cash. Quashie will also sit down with celebrities to talk about the "pengest luxuries" they can't live without.
Amazon opens up its 'influencer' program to YouTube stars
Back in the spring, Amazon launched an "influencer program" that let people with large internet followings set up their own storefront for their favorite products -- and earn commission at the same time. Originally, the program was in beta and carefully vetted, but now Amazon has apparently opened things up a bit more, at least for YouTube stars. According to TechCrunch, YouTubers now have their own self-service sign-up page where they can connect their YouTube account and immediately get verified and set up their storefront.
YouTube stars are blurring the lines between content and ads
Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner are just some of the celebrities under the microscope for using social media to shamelessly plug sponsored products. Advertising without proper disclosures has become a growing problem with influencers that have thousands or millions of followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And it's happening on YouTube as well, where it's often hard to tell whether videos from big-name "content creators" are paid ads or genuine reviews.
YouTube and PewDiePie aren't breaking up anytime soon
It's been a week since YouTube sensation Felix Kjellberg (better known as PewDiePie) had to face the music for the anti-Semitic jokes he made in several of his videos. In the fallout, PewDiePie lost his deal with Disney's Maker Studios, but the bigger blow came from YouTube directly. The company cancelled his original series Scare PewDiePie and also removed his channel from Google Preferred. That platform aggregates YouTube's top creators and makes it easier for brands to sponsor them. While PewDiePie can still run ads on his videos, his earnings will likely be negatively affected. However, despite the storm of outrage that surrounded YouTube's biggest star last week, it seems PewDiePie may get out of this not much worse for the wear. He's published five videos to YouTube in the past week, one of which was an apology for his tasteless jokes. Each of these has pulled in millions of views, just like normal. If his subscriber numbers have gone down, it's been a drop in the bucket. He still has well over 53 million followers, making his channel the most popular on YouTube. To put it in perspective, megastars Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift have just 27 million and 21 million followers, respectively.
Media Molecule's 'Dreams' is for YouTubers and Twitch streamers
When Alex Evans, co-founder of Sony PlayStation first-party studio Media Molecule, announced Dreams onstage at E3 this week, there was a lot of confusion in the audience and on social media. And that's okay, according to Evans. "What we wanted to do was get it out there and get people talking about it. And your staff are right to be scratching their heads. ... If it's on your radar, fantastic. Because it is hard to take it in. The main confusion I've seen reading on the net does seem to be that people are like, 'Is it a movie maker? Is it a game maker? What is it?' The communities will probably define that. But it's absolutely a game. We are making games with it. What you will choose to make with it, what the community will choose to make with it -- that's the cool thing. We don't know."
YouTube gamers are getting their own 'Minecraft'-inspired figures
If you head down to your local toy store today, you'll likely find that the shelves are dominated by video game packs and figurines. Franchises like Minecraft, Disney Infinity and Skylanders mostly dominate proceedings, but their popularity also encourages rivals to cash in on the latest craze. One such toy maker believes that fusing YouTube and Minecraft could be the answer, so it's created a new range of "Tube Heroes" toys that immortalize some of the video service's most popular gamers as Minecraft-like figures and plushies.
Survey finds a quarter of top YouTubers taking cut from publishers
A recent survey conducted by Gamasutra found that a quarter of YouTubers (aka Let's Players) with over 5,000 subscribers participated in payola, receiving compensation for coverage. The established game press has gotten itself into a tizzy about the ethics of such actions. As someone who worked through the transition from print to blogs, I remember the day Gamasutra switched from referring to us as "consumer blog" to "news site," so I know better than most the fluidity of perception. Our rules (here's Joystiq's ethics policy) are pretty clear, and that's thanks to years of relentless scrutiny and near-daily accusations of being paid off.
