Good morning. ICYMI, YouTube experienced a rare outage yesterday, with almost 300K US users unable to access the platform.

The outage only lasted a few minutes, but creators everywhere experienced the five stages of grief…followed by “guess I’ll refresh one more time.”

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Night Media—the talent management company representing creators such as Kai Cenat, The Rizzler, and Haley Pham—just raised $70 million in funding to expand into music, sports, and live events.

The details: Private equity firm StepStone Group led the funding round with four other investors including VC firms Founders Fund and K5Global. Beyond expanding into media, Night plans to use the investment to fund acquisitions of creator-forward companies.

Worth noting: Last month creator management firm Fixated received a $50 million investment from holding company Eldridge Industries to expand into mergers and acquisitions and original content.

Zoom out: With 130+ employees, Night has played a role in creator brands like AMP’s Tone, and its CEO Reed Duchscher sits on the board of MrBeast’s Feastables. The company also runs a VC arm and acquired podcast studio The Roost Network in 2024. Sourcing talent from the creator economy will remain the top priority for Night, according to Duchscher.

“The future writers, producers, directors of the world are on YouTube and TikTok right now,” Duchscher told Bloomberg.

Five-hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred…followers? Several creators are making their Broadway debut this month amid a difficult financial season for Broadway theaters.

Set the stage:

Behind the curtain: Rising production costs and falling audience turnout have led to unprofitable Broadway shows in recent years. Weekly operating costs run nearly $1.5 million per week, and original musicals have about a 7% chance of becoming profitable according to The New York Times. 

Amid those difficulties, some creators have shown success on stage. Last week, Broadway extended Leavitt’s run as Chicago grossed $1.4 million, its highest week since the end of 2023. Last year Trisha Paytas sold out her one-night-only Broadway show and appeared in Beetlejuice to a more-than-receptive audience.

As more creators join casts of prestigious productions—and start their own—could their built-in audience be the difference between a flop or financial success?

Sponsored by Adobe

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That’s why Adobe launched the Adobe Creative Collective, a new group with experts from design, photography, filmmaking, illustration, and emerging tech. It includes voices like BrandonB, a VFX creator with over 16 million subscribers on YouTube.

The collective will offer practical insights around building sustainable creative work. They’ll also share how new tools like Firefly, Adobe’s all-in-one creative AI studio, are being used in actual workflows.

Get to know the Adobe Creative Collective. And if you want to get hands-on, start creating with Adobe Firefly to unlock unlimited video and image generations

YouTube led all streaming platforms on TV in January, capturing 12.6% of total streaming viewership, according to Nielsen’s latest monthly report. Netflix followed at 8.8%. 

The rank marks YouTube’s third consecutive year as the most-watched streaming platform on TV. 

To unpack what that means for creators, we talked to Kurt Wilms, senior director of product management for YouTube on TV and Romana Pawar, senior director of product management for YouTube Ads.

How YouTube has stayed No. 1: “From the ads side, we’re evolving the experience in the living room to match what viewers want and expect on the big screen,” Pawar said. For example, fewer, longer ad breaks, and more non-interupptive formats. 

How that affects creators: YouTube is creating more opportunities for creators to optimize for TV, from expanding thumbnail file size limits to organizing videos by seasons and episodes.

Big picture: YouTube’s streaming dominance is having a ripple effect on other platforms, from creator FAST partnerships with Roku and Samsung to Netflix offering creators podcast and streaming deals. 

“What we’re seeing now is the YouTube effect—where other platforms are transforming their talent lineups, content formats, and media strategies to offer something similar to ours,” Wilms said. “It’s indicative of a massive pendulum shift on where YouTube stacks up against traditional platforms.”