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Hi Everyone! One of the most underappreciated rivalries in the creator economy right now has to be YouTube vs. Spotify. In the last year, Spotify has started offering video versions of pods from some of YouTube’s biggest creators. Now YouTube is responding in kind by reportedly hiring an executive to expand their podcasting division. How long until we see an exclusive content deal for podcasts on YouTube?

 - Max Lowenthal

In Today’s Issue 💬

→ Understanding Twitch’s data leak

→ How Karl Jacobs & Sapnap’s new podcast dethroned Joe Rogan

→ The details behind Twitch’s new pay-to-win product feature

Twitch Suffers a Major Data Breach

Twitch is in trouble. Earlier this week, the company confirmed that it had suffered a massive data breach, exposing over 125GB of company data to the public. According to The Verge, the leak covers tons of sensitive company info, including unreleased products and source code, and was caused due to a “server configuration” issue at the company.

Also among the data released was three years’ worth of creator payout totals for streamers on the platform. The info released included gross payouts for some of Twitch’s top creators, including the likes of xQc, Pokimane, and Ludwig. The leak only includes payouts from Twitch-owned sources and not other revenue streams like donations and brand deals.

By The Numbers

• 9% → The percentage of revenue earned by women in Twitch’s Top 1000 creators. That’s a tiny portion of the nearly $450 million the company has distributed to its biggest streamers.

• 81 → The number of creators who have made over $1 million from Twitch over the course of the last two and a half years.

•  $8,454,427.17 →The amount of money earned by xQc, the highest-paid individual streamer on Twitch, from August 2019 to October 2021.

Our Take

Talking about money is a regular occurrence in the world of streamers. But while it’s staggering to put real numbers to just how much top streamers make, this data leak shows just how top-heavy streaming is, with the Top 100 streamers making as much as the next 900 creators combined. Companies like Twitch need to reexamine how they are distributing opportunity and wealth amongst the streamers on their platform, or risk smaller creators going elsewhere.

Karl Jacobs & Sapnap’s New Podcast Hits #1 on Spotify

Joe Rogan, your days are numbered. This week Banter, a new podcast from MrBeast collaborator Karl Jacobs and Minecraft streamer Sapnap, managed to dethrone The Joe Rogan Experience for the number one spot on the Spotify charts. The show features the duo interviewing other well-known creators and its inaugural episode with MrBeast has already garnered over 110,000 views on YouTube. 

To put into perspective, Rogan has gone on the record stating that his show reaches 200 million people per month, with Business Insider reporting that the Joe Rogan Expierence’s first month on Spotify accounted for 5% of all podcast sessions across the platform. While Banter has already ceded the top spot back to Rogan, it still remains in the Top 5.

Our Take

Creators like Karl and Sapnap, who excel at developing parasocial relationships with fans thanks to their experience with streaming, are the ideal candidates to launch content on a platform that's all about interpersonal connection. The reach they’ve acquired so quickly shows just how big YouTube and Twitch are compared to the world of podcasting. We wouldn’t be surprised to see the entire Top 10 dominated by creators in the near future.

Twitch Launches Boosts, A Pay-to-Promote Streaming Feature

Twitch is going pay-to-win. Before the drama of this week’s data breach, the company took to the platform to announce Boosts, a feature that lets users donate to help streamers expand their reach. The feature works by randomly offering the opportunity for fans to pay either $0.99 or $2.97 to help small channels land in more prominent parts of the site. The feature will initially be available to creators with fewer than 250 active viewers, with 100% of the money going back to the creators.

Our Take

Pay for exposure products are a double-edged sword. They let passionate fans take the agency to share their favorite creators with the world, but are full of potential risk and bad behaviors, as the money starts to become more important than the content being promoted.

🔥 In Other News

• Instagram is ditching the IGTV brand 

• Snapchat is launching a campaign to help young Americans run for office 

• Beehiiv, a newsletter platform, raised $2.6 million in venture funding 

• Brud, the team behind Lil Miquela and the Friends With Benefits DAO, was acquired by Dapper Labs 

• Vox spent 24 hours offline with the VIPs of NYC TikTok

✨ Staff Picks

Keep up to date with the trends, content, and creators that our staff are tracking

If you caught last week’s trends edition (it was a good ‘un, right?!), then you’ll have seen Alice name-drop TikTok’s latest obsession: Emily Mariko. ICYMI: The FYP’s favorite creator has gained more than 3 million new followers in the past 12 days, and 60 million likes for her content over the same period. Emily’s secret sauce is what we call an elevation of the mundane, where the visuals and storytelling intersect with such finesse that we, as viewers, find comfort and entertainment in just about anything these creators do. 

Creators like Emily, Emma Chamberlain, or Victoria Paris have let us into their daily routines so much that we are becoming part of their day-to-day. That’s why we’ve got our eye on Ryan Dean Dexton, a sous chef from Vancouver who has been sharing his life on YouTube since May 2020. Of his 22,900 subscribers, over half have only begun following him in the past 30 days. “Day in the life” style content is nothing new, but we think creators like Ryan evidence a new appetite for a combination of routine tasks repurposed into stylized ASMR-esque segments. Think: how you feel when you listen to lofi hip-hop radio, but for vlogging. One to watch.