Good morning. IShowSpeed has just five days left in his 35-day livestream tour across the US. He’s now in California and making his way toward Los Angeles. Based on the crowds that have followed him so far, this might be the one event that gets Los Angeles ready for the 2028 Olympics.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to allow a group of investors to run an American version of TikTok separate from the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

Catch up: In January, TikTok disappeared from app stores for 14 hours following the enforcement of a ban on the platform—unless it was sold to a government-approved buyer. President Trump quickly delayed the ban after taking office, and he’s continued to put it off in the months since. 

But now: Trump’s new deal is meant to help TikTok finally comply with the ownership law. 

Where does that leave creators? We got a temperature check.

There’s skepticism: “I very confidently say there’s, like, a 3% chance this is going to happen the way this is laid out, partially because I don’t see China being super willing to hand over the keys to the car they’ve built,” political creator Grace Weinstein told us. 

And concern: “What’s the point of decentralized media when it’s all just owned by a few of Trump’s friends?” Adam Faze, founder of short-form media studio Gymnasium, told us. “Any government in power wanting to have the algorithm under their control is deeply concerning. It remains to be seen what this looks like a year from now, but I can’t say that I’m hopeful.”

Both Weinstein and Faze said it’s more important than ever for creators to publish on multiple platforms.

Going forward: Trump’s deal gives negotiators until mid-January to finalize the deal. And the stakes are high—Pew Research just found that TikTok is one of the fastest-growing news sources in the last five years, with one in five Americans regularly getting their news from the platform.

NYC-based creator Shan Rizwan has grown 2 million followers asking people on the street, “What song are you listening to?” 

Now, he’s hoping that song is his.

Rizwan just dropped his first single, “Waiting,” with a music video featuring creator Erica Ha of The Ha Sisters. Here’s how more than seven years of being a creator prepared Rizwan for the studio →

Finding collaborators. Rizwan partnered with artists Lance Redeker and Cyrus Rajeski to produce the single. “I shot a video with [Lance] two or three years ago as content,” Rizwan said. “He showed up on my TikTok FYP and I just slid into his DMs because I liked his music.” 

Nailing content-market fit. “A lot of what I do is music and the videos have the power to promote artists and songs, so through my content I have a little bit of a head start than an artist just starting out with music,” Rizwan said. “It’s been fun to try new things and see how I can weave it into my formats.”

He teased the single through videos quizzing people on the street this week. Those videos have gotten over 100K views on TikTok and Instagram.

Going forward: Rizwan will continue to make street interview content, but he’ll start building his personal brand and vlogging on YouTube simultaneously. He plans to release multiple songs, with a few weeks in between.

 “I want to let each song breathe and it’s also a feedback thing, where after this first song I’m sure I’ll learn a lot about marketing it that will help me inform my decisions for the other songs,” Rizwan said.

Sponsored by Spotify

It’s been a few weeks since Press Publish NYC, but a bunch of lessons still linger, including how video podcasting is reshaping culture.

Over Coffee With Creators, Jordan Newman, Spotify’s Head of Content Partnerships, highlighted that audiences are watching as much as they are listening.

“In the last year, video podcast watching has more than doubled,” he said. “Today there are more than 430,000 video shows on the platform.”

That conversation extended into Spotify’s Experts session, where partner managers talked with creators about how they can publish, monetize, and optimize their audience on the platform.

Couldn’t be there? Spotify’s new video education hub breaks everything down with guides and tools to help you reach the 350+ million people watching video on Spotify. Start exploring today.

Comedy creator Curry Barker is selling his latest horror film, Obsession, to Focus Features for $15+ million, according to Deadline. For reference, A24 paid seven figures for RackaRacka’s Talk To Me.

Shock value: Barker got his start making comedy sketches on YouTube, and his first horror feature, Milk and Serial (which cost $800 to make), went viral last year.

Zoom out: From RackaRacka to Kane Parsons to Chris Stuckmann, horror genre creators continue to ink major deals with Hollywood. 

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.