Good morning. Addison Rae released her debut album, Addison, on Friday…and it’s been on repeat for the whole team all weekend long. We’re partial to “Summer Forever,” but we see “Times Like These” making an early play for song of the summer. 

Hit reply and tell us which track you think took Addison from TikTok star to popstar.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Inside the Creators Caucus

Creators including MatPat, Pokimane, and team members from Jubilee and Mark Rober gathered at the US Capitol last week to launch the first Congressional Creators Caucus. 

The group of lawmakers is led by Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY). YouTube and Patreon have also voiced support for the new caucus.

What does a creator caucus do? It will 1) educate lawmakers on the creative industry so they can better offer creators small business resources and protections and 2) empower creators to shape legislation on hot-button issues like online privacy and AI use. 

“Creators are some of the first people—the first businesses—to have to confront these issues head-first on a daily basis,” MatPat said on Capitol Hill. “It’s our hope through this creator caucus and the conversations it’s going to inspire that we can help educate legislators on these fast-moving, ever-evolving issues so that legislation is timely and relevant.”

And there’s the content angle, too. Increasingly, people are getting their political content from creators instead of legacy media orgs. This caucus can serve as a tool for creators to make inroads in the growing political niche. 

“Everyone now understands that culture-shifting political content has migrated from television and radio to YouTube,” John Regalado, host of Jubilee’s Radical Empathy podcast, told us. “So it was a valuable opportunity to meet lawmakers face to face and let them know that we are here and ready to collaborate.”

Bottom line: The creator economy is estimated to be worth $500 billion by 2027. But many creators are building fast-scaling businesses without insurance, disaster relief, loan access, and other tools common for most small businesses. The caucus, which creators can join now, is designed to help bridge that gap by bringing lawmakers and creatives to common ground.

Creator League Holds Draft for 2025 Season

The Creator League is on. House of Highlights (HoH) recently kicked off the fourth year of its streamer-led sports league with a draft of 37 eligible streamers including Hasan Piker, Cinna, and Sketch. Between team captains and players, this year’s Creator League is slotted to reach a combined audience of 240 million.

How it works: RDC World, YourRAGE, Rayquan, and JasonTheWeen each lead one of four teams. 

• Those teams compete in five different events between June and October for a grand prize of $500K. 

• Previous Creator League events have included basketball and dodgeball, and this year’s competition will add slam ball and flag football to the mix.

Behind the scenes: HoH parent company Bleacher Report produces Creator League alongside its typical live sports programming. Bleacher Report and HBO Max are both owned by Warner Bros Discovery, which means Creator League programming will be available to watch both on HBO Max and on the Creator League YouTube channel. 

Zoom out: In years past, Creator League has topped YouTube trending charts, brought in over 80 million views across HoH’s channels, and partnered with companies like Nissan and Pizza Hut. But the biggest draw for Creator League viewers? Highly anticipated collaborations. The majority of comments on this year’s Creator League draft were supporting Team Rayquan—citing its “power of friendship” as a winning strategy.

Streamer U Alum Teases 30-Day Mall Livestream

After graduating from Kai Cenat’s Streamer University, streamer Cheraud “Raud” Brown is taking on his next challenge: a 30-day, 24/7 livestream inside New Jersey’s American Dream mall starting June 13. Brown channeled his inner Ben Stiller in a Night At The Museum-style trailer announcing the subathon.

How he got here: 

• Brown, who’s known best for telling wild stories on stream and making music under the rap pseudonym GE3Z, typically gets around 100K views on his Twitch streams. 

• During Streamer U, he added millions of new viewers. 

And now? Brown partnered with Shopify for his 30-day mall stream. Throughout the partnership, they’ll together give away up to $1 million in Shop Cash. 

Big picture: The widespread success of Cenat’s Streamer University appears to have been a rising tide for all streamers—from Corey2U’s audience 100x-ing in two months to spinoff events like FunnyMike’s Streamer Prom.

👀 Creator Moves

• Electrify Video Partners is looking for a thumbnail designer for new and back catalog videos on YouTube channels Veritasium and Mentour Pilot.

• Entrepreneurship creator Codie Sanchez is hiring a videographer and video editor based in Austin, Texas.

• Sports commentary creator Andrew Fenichel is looking for a remote digital content specialist to edit short- and long-form video and help with business development.

• Smooth Media is hiring a creator partnerships coordinator to manage brand campaigns and act as a liaison between creators and brand partners.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Khaby Lame was briefly detained by ICE after reportedly overstaying his visa. Lame was granted a voluntary departure and left the US June 6.

• TikTok launches an analytics platform for music creators to track song and video performance.

• Travel creator Brooke Johnson is nearly halfway through her 70-day journey skating across America.

• Comedy creator Quen Blackwell releases a trailer for her new Patreon, which will show exclusive content of her show, Feeding Starving Celebrities.

• Entrepreneurship creator Jay Hoovy shares how he pitched Diary of a CEO creator Steven Bartlett to invest in his creator startup, Stan.

• Cleo Abram celebrates reaching 6 million YouTube subscribers.