This Week: Meetup alert! If you’re in San Diego or going to Social Media and Marketing World, join me on Feb 18 from 5:30-7 – RSVP here for venue! Also, WTF research – The last week of January is apparently ideal for releasing studies – 6 ones of note highlighted in the “Research” section below.
The Day the Music Died: What a spectacle as Universal Music proclaims itself a champion of creators while stripping its music catalog from TikTok and then accusing DoubleT of strong-arming its musicians. Suddenly millions of videos on TikTok essentially disappeared as their music rights evaporated – leaving creators bereft of views, community and commerce. Who needs who more? Who cares – when creators and musicians pay the price. Franklin Graves, creator law expert, breaks down the issues. Possible fallout:
- Creators will stop using popular songs to juice video views – less money for musicians.
- Non-copyrightable AI-created music will begin to fill the void – less money for musicians, more money for AI.
- Creators will spend less time posting on TikTok – good for Instagram and Shorts.
- Both TikTok and Universal Music claim victory and position themselves as creator-champions – musicians and creators both lose.
- Resilient creators will develop clever workarounds. What? That’s already happened?
Does this remind anyone of when Viacom sued YouTube for six years. That did not end well.
- Related: Music AI is already a $300M industry, growing to $3B. And Google just released MusicFX, an updated AI tool.
- Related: Wired chats with CEO Shou Chew about music festivals, his favorite bands, music labels, China and more.
Political Pageantry Might Lead to Real Change: A made-for-TikTok event unfolded in DC as injured families confronted social media CEOs in a US Senate hearing room. The surprisingly non-partisan hearing laid bare the raw and dangerous side of today’s social platforms. An insider shared with me that well-curated spectacle aside, *something* might finally get done. That “something” could be a true weakening of Section 230, as Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham both highlighted this “old law which basically exempts this industry from liability”. Interestingly, guns and social media are the only US industries protected from product liability. Weakening or eliminating Section 230 changes everything.
- Related: TikTok posted Shou Chew’s opening statement. Also, I’m embarrassed by Senator Tom Cotton. Someone get that guy a map.
- Related: Meta posts about how they help keep young people safe. Bit late for that, eh?
- Related: Elmo asks everyone how they are doing. Apparently not well.
TikTok Launching Live Shopping “Studios”: Want to take your store live? TikTok will build a new stable of live studios in LA – and possibly elsewhere – to make it easy for creators to drop by and start “streamin-n-sellin”! This proposed factory of streaming cubbies caught Mashable’s ire, but I think their take is misguided. Similar to YouTube’s late lamented Spaces, these studios will offer creators a great way to test and embrace without building their own wired storefront. Orca CEO @Max Benator has a strong take here.
- Related: You don’t even have to set up a streaming shop, as TikTok now wants to make every video shoppable. It’s not a social video platform, it’s a mall.
The State of AI Generated Video and What’s to Come: AI generated video today suffers from the singing frog paradox. 🐸 We’re all amazed it can sing and ignore that it sounds awful. VC firm a16z reviewed where we are now and what’s to come, listing top startups, sharing examples and gazing into the crystal ball. They call out poor training data, YouTube included, because “cat clips and influencer apologies are likely overrepresented in the dataset”. The piece also predicts a market for workflow and middleware – or a consolidation – before compelling AI generated video comes of age. Not comprehensive – as AugXLabs and others are ignored. But it’s a decent overview.
The Unbearable Lightness of Selling Out: Vox’s Rebecca Jennings railed about how creators need to also market themselves (duh). And since nearly everyone is a creator these days that means we all are sell-outs (exaggerating slightly). Luckily, author John Scalzi to the rescue with a thoughtful tirade on how marketing yourself has been a constant for artists since, like, forever. Further, he argues that that the privileged starving artist ideal is a bourgeois romantic fallacy. Shreds of truth in both stories, but what would you rather have? The gatekeeper-ridden pre-internet, where only a chosen few could create and eat – or a landscape where anyone can find their fans? I’ll choose the latter all day long. (HT to @brad berens)
———————————————-
SPONSOR: Transforming Your Passion into a Profitable Membership with Uscreen!
Turn your content into a thriving paid membership with Uscreen, the all-in-one platform for video creators. Marnie Alton did just that, expanding her LA studio into a global community and boosting her income to over $40,000 monthly, thanks to Uscreen’s unique blend of video subscription and community features.
Uscreen elevates your content to a profitable membership model, offering a branded site and app that combine video, community, and subscriptions seamlessly. Uscreen partners with you every step of the way, offering free content migration, dedicated success managers, and 24/7 support for you and your users.
Join the ranks of successful creators like Yoga with Adrienne, Marnie Alton, and Amy Landino who trust Uscreen to power their video memberships. Discover how Uscreen can elevate your creator journey today.
——————————————————————–
QUIBIS:
YOUTUBE
- Four new features rolled out , including research tab updates on desktop studio, a new way to highlight top fan clips on your channel page, new analytics features for playlists, and an automated way to embrace members-first content (Vessel anyone?).
- Pokimane leaves Twitch for YouTube and other platforms – after being banned in January. Get yer popcorn out.
TIKTOK
- Now TikTok wants you to “Go 90”. Hasn’t that been done before?
- TikTok closes deal for Indonesian eCommerce company Tokopedia and Bytedance exec now leads the company.
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
- Community platform Mighty Networks debuts a new AI “People Magic” vision to power successful communities – CEO Gina Bianchini’s think piece here is well worth reading.
- Snapchat says it’s not social media. My 24-year-old Snap-native focus group of one begs to differ.
- We’re all creators, implies LinkedIn, as it plans to sunset creator mode and further deprecate hashtags.
- My latest essay on paywalled articles and why I try to avoid them here. Good discussion in the comments.
- Two-bit Circus is building the Yang to Whalar’s Lighthouse Yin with a co-working space for creators in downtown LA for nerds with big followings. The space lets creators build wacky inventions and test concepts on live audiences in the built in performance space.
- New influencer marketing platform launches in MENA.
- Fascinating look at fragmentation, the current media landscape, and how media consumption overall isn’t changing. Part 1 explores how we got here; Part 2 looks at disintermediation today and tomorrow. I can’t wait for part 3 and 4! More evidence for my “mature market” thesis.
- The Sidemen are headed to Netflix!
- If it’s good enough for Mr. Beast it’s good enough for you – Twitter expands amplify monetization.
- The ugly side of beauty – addicting tweens to skin care products.
GENERATIVE AI
- WME partners with Vermillio to provide content-id like services to its clients to identify and either monetize or shut-down deepfakes across the internet – along with developing legit AI usage. Aside, nice to see what @Kathleen Grace has been working on!
- Microsoft released its annual “Future of Work” study, which is all about AI. Ben’s Bites summarized the key findings for all of us.
- Watch out for scam/spam crypto emails from Patreon.
RESEARCH-A-PALOOZA
- Kajabi released their State of the Creator report for 2024, interviewing about 2,000 “currently monetizing” creators. They zeroed in on the half making $100k or more and found that nearly half of those would join a union or guild. Inflation is a big worry (likely unfounded), but platform volatility comes in second. And about half don’t trust the social platforms they are building on.
- Kajabi’s been busy. Influencers Club also dropped a research study into creators and community, with Kajabi, Patreon, Nas.IO and Clubhouse. They found that creators with external communities saw about a third increase in engagement, although TikTokers were lowest at only 21%.
- Meltwater and We Are Social dropped a 561-page report on the state of social 2024. They should have dropped an AI to help you query it. Luckily @Matt Navarra scoured it to pick off top pages and hashtags.
- YouGov releases its 2024 media trend report – but I found it almost impossible to actually access. If you have trouble like I did, email me and I’ll send you the PDF.
- Google, the IAB and Talk Shoppe made noise about a study about advertiser impressions of creators. The teaser claims good news. But I found it impossible to create an IAB account and view the research. The referenced research was released three months ago anyway, so no great loss. Sorry to waste your time.
- Pew’s latest study explores how Americans use social media. TLDR: TikTok up, everyone else flat – but YouTube and Facebook still rule. And don’t miss Pew’s own “fact sheet” summary.
TIPS
- Want to measure audience stickiness? @courtney Hirsch riffs on a LinkedIn conversation we had to focus on a few key metrics, including viewership over the first three days of posting. Sort of like the Neilsen Live+3 and Live+7 metrics from the TV DVR era.
NEWSLETTER SPOTLIGHT: Check out Brooke Hammerling’s insightful and entertaining “Pop Culture Mondays”. I now know things I never knew I wanted to know. And will never unsee Brienne of Tarth’s start turn on a Parisian runway.
SPONSOR THIS NEWSLETTER: Want to reach 22,000 leaders in the creator economy? check out Inside the Creator’s sponsorship packages and/or email me at jim@louderback.com
Let’s do a meetup in your town – anywhere in the US or even around the world.
I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including Discovery and Paramount. Subscribe here on LinkedIn to get this newsletter every Monday.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments!
