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The creator economy magazineAnalyses of the European creator economy from primary sources. Pick a topic and read.
Wendy's released an emo album and hired the genre's stars for it
Wendy's has put its own six-track emo album on Spotify, recorded by real musicians without generative AI. A brand as a music producer is nothing new, though: Austria's Red Bull released its own music for years.
Netflix is building its kids' library on YouTube creators
The sixth edition of Emily Horgan's independent report shows that the growth of Netflix's kids' library is now driven by creators who grew up on YouTube. Established franchises hold the top, but the movement is elsewhere.
YouTube changed what counts as a view. UK TV recalculated the figures
Since 24 August, a view counts as soon as a video starts, and public view counts jumped while watch time did not move. Thinkbox says UK commercial TV reaches 25 million people a day, while YouTube reaches 27 million a month on TV screens.
LinkedIn can do most of the manual work on a company page by itself
RSS import of blog articles, scheduling posts directly in LinkedIn, monthly invitation credits, competitor benchmarks in analytics and paid distribution of an employee’s post. Five tools that a company page has and most admins do not know about.
MrBeast joins Shark Tank S18 today, alongside the Beast Industries CEO
Beast Industries has 450 million subscribers, a $200 million investment from Bitmine and a professional CEO from the SoftBank Vision Fund. Jimmy Donaldson sits on a television panel for the first time today, this time as an investor, not a contestant.
IAB brings creator, podcast and gaming markets together for the first time
The advertising industry has stopped treating creators, podcasts and games as three separate markets. This year IAB put them into a single week for the first time. US creator ad spend is set to reach $44 billion this year, yet the industry itself admits it lacks measurement.
YouTube is building Shorts like television and entering the microdrama market
YouTube has launched Shorts Series, assembling vertical clips into seasons and episodes. Microdramas on the platform have 6.5 billion views in the first half of the year, and on TV screens they are growing by more than 90%.
Meta launched Muse, and marketers are turning it into a Reels research tool
On 8 September Meta launched its AI agent Muse, and within days it was the most downloaded app in the US. Marketers have put it to work on the dullest part of the job, researching other people’s Reels.
Case studies can help you land more collaborations
Some creators publicly break down finished jobs in order to sell the next ones. For a brand that vets creators before reaching out, such a breakdown can serve as a basis for its decision.
Czech online media publish a lot, but lag behind on Instagram
The new Social Pulse benchmark measures Czech brands on Instagram by efficiency relative to audience size. Online media are among the leaders in publishing cadence across all sectors, yet finished second to last out of twenty-one. Format and engagement make the difference.
The creator of a community for Hollywood assistants co-founded the startup loyd
Warner Bailey, creator of the Assistants vs. Agents community, and his two co-founders have launched loyd, software for everyday work in the entertainment industry. It is meant to simplify operations for companies and take part of the workload off assistants.
Isobel Lorna sold £250,000 worth of Agende planners in an hour
British creator Isobel Lorna launched the brand Agende on 2 September, and it took £250,000 in the first hour of pre-orders. She had only 500 units in stock and around 100,000 people on the waiting list. The demand came from an audience that had never seen the product beforehand.