Represent

Hey Y’all. I come bearing bittersweet news - today is my last day writing for The Publish Press. Over the last six months, we’ve been able to grow this newsletter into a great resource for the creator economy thanks to the contributions from this community, and I’m so excited to see where Colin, Samir, and Hannah will take it next! I’ll still be around over on Twitter, so feel free to drop me a follow, and let’s stay in touch. Talk soon 👋

 - Max Lowenthal

→ Why Pokimane started her own talent agency

→ The details behind Amazon’s new live audio product

→ How WWE is building something new with NFTs

On Tuesday, popular Twitch streamer Pokimane announced her latest creative endeavor as co-founder and chief creative officer of RTS, a talent management and consulting company that is being spun out of Hollywood agency Endeavor.

In an interview with Variety, Pokimane explained that her intention with RTS was to help build a company that would solve hot-button issues encountered by gaming creators, including trouble with “unfair compensation and cringy deals.”

The biggest incentive for RTS is the agency’s take rate—or lack thereof. According to Pokimane, the company does not take a cut of transactional deals, highlighting that instead, it signs deals that are “a mutually beneficial structure that makes [creators] tied to [the agency] for the long-term.” 

Pokimane plans to continue her representation with United Talent Agency while partnering with the rest of RTS’s executive team, which includes veterans from mainstay gaming platforms like Twitch and Blizzard. Together they’ll expand the agency’s growing roster of clients, which includes the likes of Facebook and Epic Games’ Fortnite World Cup.

Companies like RTS are well-positioned to understand creator needs and strike deals that major talent agencies may not push for. If Hollywood doesn't take the right steps to expand its services to creators, creators might just replace them completely.

Who doesn’t have a live audio product these days? Earlier this week, it was reported that Amazon is officially developing its own spin on the popular format. Internally dubbed “Project Mic”, the product is focused on letting anyone make and distribute live radio shows. The platform will let show hosts pull music from Amazon’s catalog to play throughout their program, with fans tuning in and interacting with hosts live through Twitch or their Amazon Alexa.

While details around creators are scarce, The Verge did confirm that Amazon is planning to recruit celebrity talent for their new venture, alongside a subset of lesser-known tastemakers to help fill out the platform’s content library. The company also plans to expand its reach beyond music-centric content, focusing on other topics like pop culture, comedy, and sports.

The key differentiator for Amazon's live audio app is interactivity—Alexa and Twitch will instantly make an Amazon show more engaging than a Twitter Space or Clubhouse room. That being said, it remains to be seen how good the content will be, or if anyone will tune in in the first place…

Bye-bye NBA Top Shot, WWE is my new favorite NFT platform. The wrestling entertainment company signed an exclusive, multi-year deal with Fox’s Blockchain Creative Labs earlier this week to launch an NFT marketplace for WWE crypto-collectables. As part of the announcement, WWE noted that it will focus on celebrating the company’s “entire catalog of digital assets” including some of the series’s top wrestlers and events (anyone else into Wrestlemania?). Further details around the platform name and launch date are planned to drop in the coming weeks.

Verticalized NFT Marketplaces are similar to content platforms—they let users focus on the creators and formats they care about the most, without any of the extra noise. As more big names move into NFTs, we wouldn't be surprised to see more companies invest in building their own platforms, rather than opt to work with existing players.