Good morning. Last week, The Rizzler dropped his second Christmas track, “Diss-Mas,” with creative agency VIRTUE and toy brand MGA Entertainment. With bars like “I don’t wanna gift card, nah no way…I just want real toys, OK,” the music video has tallied over 2 million views.

Is this the start of a thriving music career? “Seeing how much everyone loves the song makes me want to keep going and make more music,” The Rizzler told us over email.

— Hannah Doyle 

Ludwig’s Offbrand Shutters Events Arm

Offbrand, the production studio and gaming company started by streamer Ludwig Ahgren in 2022, announced on Friday that it has closed its events business and laid off its 16-person team. 

Offbrand’s gaming publisher business will continue to operate normally, and Ahgren will continue to host live events through his media company, Mogul Moves.

The why: Offbrand said it failed to make the events business sustainable. On Saturday, Ahgren provided more details on a livestream →

Cost mismanagement. Ahgren said that he recently learned Offbrand accountants took around $3 million of his YouTube sponsorship earnings to pad Offbrand’s financials.

• “My sponsorship money has not been paid out to me in a couple years,” Ahgren said. 

• “It was basically being used as float to make Offbrand’s numbers look better than they were.”

Lack of business. Offbrand struggled to find creators with large enough production needs to justify the cost of working with the creative agency. The company produced nine events last year, five of which were Ludwig’s.

• “There are very few creators who are interested in spending a quarter to a half-million on doing a big event, when they’d rather do it from home,” Ahgren said on YouTube.

• “They’re doing [lo-fi events] because it’s a reflection of what the audience wants as well,” Ludwig said.

Max4Cracks Plots His Next Move

Max Schneider, aka Max4Cracks, has earned millions of views making Reels and TikToks that embody life in LA’s Silverlake neighborhood—from using crystals to wearing microbangs. 

Last week, Schneider released a Zyn wallet chain to his nearly 320K Instagram followers—and he’s already working on a restock. 

How he got here: Schneider worked for Donut in its early days and helped start the auto-focused YouTube channel’s short-form content in 2020. He went on to make videos for brands and started his own TikTok last year.

• Schneider’s early videos experimented with formats like showcasing outfits to making parodies about life in LA. What stuck was his ability to turn the joke on himself. “I think nobody’s more qualified to make fun of something than their own archetype,” Schneider told us. 

• His TikTok grew 20,000 followers in the first month. Now that following has 10x’d, with 35 million likes on the platform.

What’s next, after this month’s viral Zyn wallet chain? Longform, Schneider told us. “I feel like a lot of creatives get to a point where it’s like ‘ok this is what people like and want to see from me’ and don’t know how to get back to curiosity, excitement and wonder,” Schneider said. “For me, that’s getting better on YouTube.”

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CoryxKenshin Returns to YouTube with Manga Series

After a nearly year-and-a-half hiatus, gaming creator Cory “CoryxKenshin” Williams returned to YouTube on Friday to announce a new project: a manga series called Monsters We Make, dropping today.

Context: Williams has built a following of 20 million playing horror video games and reacting to horror movies. His last upload in June 2023 was a reaction to the trailer for horror film Five Nights at Freddy’s, in which he had a cameo alongside MatPat.

The reception to Williams’s return has been warm—the announcement video shot to No. 1 on YouTube Trending, and one comment with 76K likes reads, “This feels like Christmas morning.”

👀 Creator Moves

• Justice Buys is looking for a short-form video editor with at least two years of experience.

• We’re Not Really Strangers is hiring a content creator to work on its TikTok.

• Moonbug Entertainment is looking for a post producer to work on its Blippi show.

Looking to bring on new team members? You can post opportunities on our (free) job board here.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Lifestyle creator Eli Rallo is launching a literary salon.

• Monetize with a partner, not a platform. Memberful allows you to control access to your content, manage membership perks, and build sustainable, recurring revenue—all without sacrificing creative freedom or control of your brand.*

• 9.5 million new streamers broadcast to Twitch for the first time in 2024, according to the platform.

• Political creator Brett Cooper leaves The Daily Wire.

• Legal Eagle sues the FBI and DOJ to make public their findings in federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald Trump.

• US lawmakers tell Apple and Google to prepare to remove TikTok from app stores next month.

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