Business of Creators 💬

Stay ahead of the curve in the creator economy...

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Industry news & events

🌎Instagram is making some serious upgrades to its creator marketplace: opening up to eight new countries, inviting Chinese export brands to connect with creators outside China and introducing machine learning-based recommendations on the creator marketplace to help brands discover the most suitable creators for their campaigns.

🥇TikTok is holding its third #TikTokShortFilm competition in collaboration with the Cannes Film Festival, giving creators a chance to share their short films and get noticed by a global audience of over 1 billion people.

🇰🇷YouTube is set to host its third annual "YouTube Device Partner Summit" in Seoul, South Korea on April 23rd and 24th, focusing on unveiling the latest advancements to enhance viewer engagement across different platforms.

📸SXSW (South by Southwest) hits Austin, TX on 8-12 March. Renowned as one of the most influential events with a jam-packed A list line up that brings together creators across all worlds. 

🙋The Ad Age Gen Z Summit hits March 6 in New York, described as a one-day conference where you can learn to connect with and understand Gen Z audiences - through workshops and insights from industry leaders and young influencers.

Fair & Easy Funding For YouTube Creators

Discover a better funding solution for your YouTube channel with Breeze! With $100 million available to YouTube creators with simple, straightforward terms. No fancy contracts, no giving away your firstborn – just good old cash, ranging from $50,000 to a whopping $25 million. Whether you're upgrading your gear, expanding your team, or financing a new project, Breeze has your back. Just hit up their online calculator for a quick estimate. 

Breeze’s simple terms mean creators keep full creative control and are not required to license back catalog videos or commit to restrictive royalties. Creators like Smosh, DavidsBeenHere, and The Questionable Garage have used Breeze funds for equipment, travel, and channel acquisition. Best part? Breeze takes a fixed fee, so as your channel soars, your cash flow follows suit. 

Want to unlock your full potential? Calculate your offer today → 

The TikTok trends you need to jump on

Need a boost in engagement via your TikTok channel? Wanna make something stupid? Well then you know what to do… but hurry! By the end of this week, millennials will have overused the trend on Instagram reels. 

👉“Pookie is looking absolutely fire today” 

TikTok has been on fire roasting couple Jett and Campbell Puckett (who is referred to as ‘Pookie’ by her husband) for their oddly executed outfit and date night videos. Creators have been mimicking the style of the content and the delivery of the iconic line ‘Pookie is looking absolutely fire today’.

👉“We’re ____, of course we ____” 

This trend is pretty straightforward. Creators are walking alongside each other and describing various things associated with their profession, ethnicity, relationship status or other aspects of their identity. For example, players on the Women’s Tennis Association jumped on the trend stating “we’re tennis players, of course we have crazy tan lines”. 

👉Sad hamster

A melancholy violin melody featuring a distorted looking ‘sad hamster’ with huge, sad black eyes has made the rounds. I have no idea why. But it’s been used in more than 30k videos. TikTokers have been adding that melody to videos featuring the hamster to reflect the sadness or despair they feel in scenarios, think - something along the lines of social anxiety, embarrassing yourself in a large crowd or spending a whole day to edit a video just to get 5 likes on YouTube. 

Platform round-up

Leverage the latest updates and features across digital platforms to help you get ahead of the game…

🔠With WhatsApp becoming a more prominent tool for creators to leverage connections with their audiences, new text formatting options have recently dropped to add deeper context to our messages. 

📺YouTube is changing the way channels look on your home TV, making it easier for creators to connect with more people who watch YouTube on their TVs.

🤑YouTube is changing how it shows your video earnings in the app by adding new sections in the YouTube Studio app that display your top-earning videos in different categories like Shorts, VODs, and Live uploads.

🛒Instagram is experimenting with an AI "Backdrop" sticker for changing image backgrounds, similar to its "Cutout" stickers but allowing easier reframing, and is also testing a "Get Orders" sticker for brands to create in-stream products and drive direct response.

Text-to-video AI innovation, Sora, sparks promise and worry for creators

Text-to-video platform, Sora (developed by OpenAI), broke ground on Twitter a couple weeks ago with a hyper-realistic video of two golden retrievers playing in the snow. Some are calling it the eighth wonder of the world, some are deeming it as terrifying. And as it always comes with new AI innovation nowadays, the discourse between creator communities has further splintered. 

Sora crafts highly detailed and realistic videos based on a text prompt, surpassing its counterparts like Runway 2. With it being able to generate videos of up to one minute in length, some are already hailing it as a leap forward in creative possibilities. Individuals like Dan Gardner, co-founder of Code and Theory, mentioned experiencing "a creative anxiety attack” in delight; however, not everyone is singing the same tune. Video editor Phil Russell is raising concerns about the potential for Sora to flood the market with unoriginal and stock-like content.

Sora's standout quality lies in its photorealistic clarity, a feature that some worry might lead to a reduction in professional opportunities. Freelance writer and director Gavin Knight fears that clients could opt for Sora over hiring him for video production work. The industry seems split between those embracing AI tools like Sora as a catalyst for creativity and those skeptical of compromising artistic expression for the allure of cutting-edge technology. 

Many more videos have come out since, many not to the same standard. There’s still a long way to go given AI does not really understand the relationship or meaning of the visuals it generates. There’s no real assessment on the impact of Sora across the creator economy yet. Whilst it may cause concern for creators that specialize in the likes of videography, many other content creators, who often are a solo marching band of multiple responsibilities to get their collateral out there, are breathing a sigh of relief.