Good morning. Today marks one of our favorite annual holidays: Spotify Wrapped Day. Since 2015, the music platform has compiled usersā top artists, albums, and songs from the past year, allowing us to either share our exquisite music taste on socials or force ourselves to question if we played āBarbie Worldā maybe a littttllle too much. It truly knows more about us than we doānow itās time for YouTube to debut their version.
Creators may find more success with longer TikTok videos / Illustration by Moy Zhong
Creators can make more money and get more followers on TikTok by uploading longer content to the platform, according to an exclusive report from The Information.
FYI: The app has allowed for 10-minute videos for over a year. It recently tested a 15-minute time limit, the same default limit as YouTube (creators must verify their account to upload videos longer than that).
Hereās what TikTok reportedly told creators at a private event last month:
The growth rate for long-form creators on the app is 5x that of short-form creators.
Users are spending half their time watching videos that are over one minute.
Worth noting: TikTok is ending its Creator Fund next month in favor of its Creativity Program, which requires participating videos to be longer than 60 seconds in order to receive payouts.
Between the lines: Longer videos create more opportunities for advertising, which some in the creator space think could mean that TikTok videos may include midroll ads in the future. Coupled with its expansion into livestreams and shopping, TikTok appears to be making an effort to shed its reputation for short-form content.
Though, crucially: For TikTok to compete with YouTube, it will have to figure out how to expand beyond mobile devices, something YouTube has done successfully with TV.
Big picture: More platforms, from TikTok and YouTube to Twitch and Kick, are incentivizing long-form content, and users seem to be down for it: Theyāre showing a bigger appetite for longer videos on mobile and TV.
Podcaster, vlogger, entrepreneur, and fashion icon Emma Chamberlain tells Colin and Samir that sheās looking to add acting to her repertoire / Colin and Samir
Multi-hyphenate podcast creator, coffee entrepreneur, and fashion icon Emma Chamberlain is now considering another career path: acting.
āIām open to the idea [of acting] because I think that it would be cathartic to not be myself,ā Chamberlain said on The Colin and Samir Show this week. āI think itād be really fun to be someone else.ā
Setting the scene: Chamberlain has gone through a big professional transition in the last year, moving away from being a āchronic oversharerā on YouTube and toward expressing her opinions on monologue podcast episodes.
Last November, she signed an exclusive podcast deal with Spotify for two video episodes per week and reduced her YouTube video output from 56 uploads in 2021 to just three this year.
Now sheās testing the acting waters. Chamberlain recently filmed a commercial with DTC eyeglass company Warby Parker for an upcoming collaboration.
āI acted in this commercial and it was so fun and I liked being a little bit of a character,ā Chamberlain said.
She emphasized that if she took an acting role, it would have to be unrelated to her past work. āI would never want to get hired for a job because I already have a career elsewhere [...] Iād want to make sure that Iām genuinely right for this role and thereās no other variable,ā Chamberlain said.
Where does that leave Chamberlain with YouTube? She said she still likes the production process but wants to remain open to other opportunities.
āI love every step of video creationābeing in it, pacing, directing. That hasnāt changed but I need to figure out whatās the next thing,ā Chamberlain said. āMy intuition is telling me that if you continue to make YouTube videos right now youāre going to miss something else thatās in this [show business] world thatās different.ā
Sponsored by Shopify
They did it againā¦
This Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Shopify merchants drove a record-breaking $9.3 billion in salesāa 24% increase from last year.
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āAs full-time creators, we just get to focus on making videos and let Shopify handle the rest,ā said our very own Samir Chaudry.
Ready to turn your ideas into real revenue this holiday season? Jumpstart your journey with a free trial of Shopify here.
X is predicted to face costly losses after advertisers stopped advertising on the platform / Illustration by Moy Zhong
Major companies including Apple, Disney, and Airbnb have paused their ad spend on X (formerly Twitter)āand the exodus might cost the platform up to $75 million in revenue by yearās end, according to The New York Times.
Context: Several companies attributed the pause to worries that their ads might appear next to (or, through the platformās creator fund, directly finance) bigoted or hateful content. This followed an explosive report from media watchdog Media Matters that found that ads from top brands were showing up on X next to antisemitic and conspiratorial posts.
FYI: X is suing Media Matters for defamation.
Big picture: The advertiser pullback comes during whatās typically Xās highest-revenue quarter. According to The Information, the platform grossed roughly $1 billion during the final three months of 2022.
In Mondayās newsletter, we polled readers: āIs owning your likeness in an increasingly AI-enabled world important to you as a creator?ā
And 95.4% have answered āYes, definitelyā so far. Many of you shared really insightful responses, too. A few that stood out:
ā[Owning your likeness] makes it so you can capitalize on something that could have easily been stolen from you.ā
āI'm not going to be young forever. Like residuals provide for actors, who spend their prime earning years doing something that they can't do when they are older, owning the rights to my own likeness is important for my earning possibilities in the future.ā
āIt takes a lot of time to build your online presence and your likenessā¦is the instrument used to communicate who you are and what you do. It is extremely important to have ownership and know how it is being used.ā
āAlthough I personally don't feel inclined to incorporate an AI version of myself in my online business/videos, I would feel more secure knowing that I own that online personaā¦the onset of new tech pushing us away from what makes us human is only going to make us want content that feels like it has a stronger human connection.ā
Got more to add? Weād love to keep the conversation on this topic goingāhit reply and let us know what you think!
YouTube creators including HopeScope and My Pawfect Family share their dream collabs.
DeuxMoi is going Hollywood with a TV adaption of the notorious celebrity gossip Instagram account in the works at Max.
Spotter Labs, the AI-powered wing at Spotter, is giving creators the chance to demo their new tools. Want in? Sign up for the waitlist here.*
xQc loses his main YouTube channel over copyright claims.
Weibo, other social platforms in China adopt a rule that requires popular users to reveal their legal namesāleading some creators to quit entirely.
Come meet other creators and Publish community members at our NYC event next week. RSVP here.
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