Good morning. Doechii is now the most listened-to artist on YouTube Music with 332 million monthly listeners, 10x the size of her Spotify audience.

Should we start rapping The Publish Press and posting it on YouTube Music? Because if Doechii’s stats are any indication…we’ll see you at next year’s Grammys.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

“I don’t debate people to change the other person’s mind. I debate people to change the watching audience’s mind.” 

That’s the POV of Mehdi Hasan, CEO of progressive news outlet Zeteo, following his recent experience debating 20 far-right conservatives on Jubilee’s Surrounded series. 

Covering topics like immigration and foreign policy, the video has tallied 8.8 million views and over 100K comments on YouTube in a little over a week.

But it’s also caught some heat. Surrounded launched 10 months ago, quickly becoming one of Jubilee’s most successful series with 146 million total views across 20 episodes. With that, though, Jubilee has been criticized for platforming racist, homophobic, or sexist rhetoric.

Hasan’s take: “It is a real risk that by doing these shows you are legitimizing and emboldening [the far right],” he said during a Zeteo Q&A explaining his decision to participate. Hasan counters with three points, though:

Why it matters: 37% of young adults regularly get their news from influencers on social media, according to Pew Research Center. And the majority of those adults believe that news influencers help them better understand current events and civic issues.

UK food creator group Sorted has built a following of over 3 million in the last 15 years, making series like Chefs vs. Normals or videos pinpointing exactly how many cooks it takes to spoil the proverbial broth.

Their business includes up to four weekly videos, a newsletter, a charity foundation, and more. 

A growing revenue driver? Subscription and direct-to-consumer purchases including live events and their recently revamped meal prep app, Sidekick. The two together make up one-third of Sorted’s revenue.

Sorted co-founder Ben Ebbrell told us two key ways the group is expanding these direct sales →

Taking a B2B approach. Sorted partnered with British department store John Lewis to offer Sidekick as a free benefit to all employees. To the public, it’s $60/year or $6/month.

“That kind of world of B2B is beginning to creep up in revenue as sponsorship has become more static,” Ebbrell said. “There comes a point where you don’t want to be selling someone else's products to our audience.”

Mobilizing fans. Sorted has prioritized its superfans through the Sorted Squad, a group of 4K+ fans who share their opinions on brand partnerships, product development, collabs, and more. 

“I think that kind of flip of putting community first has always put us in good stead because then you don’t just have a seed audience who love it, but actually a community of vocal people is a microcosm of the macrocosm of everyone who wants it,” Ebbrell said.

Ex-prank creator Jidon “JiDion” Adams recently shared he has over 20,000 paying subscribers supporting his catch-a-predator style show, EDP Watch.

Context: In the last year, JiDion launched EDP Watch on his second YouTube channel, JiDionPremium, apprehending sex offenders and child abusers. 

“Only one of two subscriptions I have (Side+ being the other),” one commenter said on JiDion’s post. “Super worth it—you get a lot of extra content [...] all for a genuinely fantastic cause.”