Spotify is turning up the volume on its video efforts.

The streaming service announced today a slate of 12 original series — all of which are music-related. Episodes will be 15 minutes max and available to both free and paid users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Sweden, according to Bloomberg, which was first to report the news. A handful of episodes have already been shot, though it is unknown when the programming is set to premiere.

New shows include: Landmark, which tells the story behind important moments in music history; Rush Hour, courtesy of Russell Simmons’ All Def Digital, in which two hip-hop acts must conceive and perform musical collaborations; and a mockumentary about a dance music competition produced by the actor Tim Robbins. Gunpowder & Sky will also produce Drawn & Recorded — an animated series narrated by Grammy-winning producer T-Bone Burnett that focuses on a particular artist or moment in history.

“Music will always be most important, but our audience likes us and wants more from us,” Spotify’s content partnerships chief (and former Viacom exec) Tom Calderone told Bloomberg. “We have to figure out a second act, and I think it will come out of video. The idea is to make sure users know they can come here for something other than playlists.”

Spotify is also talking to artists about creating video content around album releases, and, down the line, could produce comedy and animated series that exist outside of its musical heritage, according to Bloomberg. The company currently counts 75 million total users and a library of more than 30 million songs.

Roughly a year ago, Spotify said that it would add original video content from partners including Vice, Comedy Central, and ESPN — though Calderone acknowledges that this content is difficult to find on the current version of the app.

Filed under: News, Spotify, Studios by Geoff Weiss
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At its second-ever NewFronts presentation this afternoon, Fullscreen announced a corporate restructuring in which the company will henceforth be known as Fullscreen Media. The new entity will have three branches: the Fullscreen Creator Network, its foundational business helping creators grow viewership and monetization; Fullscreen Entertainment, which includes its live events (of which there will be over 250 in 2016), the new SVOD service, also called ‘fullscreen’ (on which the average user spends 48 minutes per day), and Rooster Teeth (which has one of the 10 most successful SVOD services in the U.S.); and Fullscreen Brandworks, a team dedicated to social media marketing.

The company’s new Brandworks division will be led by Pete Stein, who was formerly the CEO of digital ad agency Razorfish. One of the division’s first partnerships, announced today, is with Mattel. It will enable the toy company “to create deep, repeatable relationships with influncers” around its Hot Wheels franchise, Fullscreen said in a press release. Rather than a one-off sponsorship, Brandworks lets marketers collaborate with influencers that have an “organic affinity” to certain products and integrate their messaging with “fluidity” via multiple campaigns over time.

“We placed a big bet early on that creators would become media channels in their own right,” Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos said in a statement. “Today, we stand as a next generation media company transforming the way people watch and engage with content, serving creators, consumers, and brands that share this vision.”

Brandworks announced several other initiatives today. It will partner with Nielsen to ensure that all campaigns are “demographically guaranteed”, Fullscreen says, and also vend HerScreen and HisScreen ad offers, in which brands can buy against top female and male channels in ways that mirrors television packages. An All Star Collabs product will enable brands to integrate with creators like Eva Gutowski and Devin Supertramp who regularly cinch millions of views per video, and Part of the Family will enable advertisers to target millennial families.

Brands can even see their messaging in virtual reality. Rooster Teeth’s Burnie Burns discussed potential collaborations through the production outfit’s Immersion series, for instance, which transports viewers inside their favorite video games through 360-degree videos. You can even give it a spin  right now at bit.ly/RoosterTeeth360.

Filed under: Fullscreen, Industry, News, Nielsen, YouTube by Geoff Weiss
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National Geographic is a 128-year-old brand, but on social media, it is young at heart. The nature and science publication continues to excel on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, and at its 2016 NewFronts presentation, it announced new endeavors for those frontiers and many others. Among other initiatives, it is planning MoviNG Pictures, its first video series for its popular Instagram feed.

MoviNG Pictures will make use of Nat Geo’s network of talented photographers, who have already helped the publication’s Instagram hub become the social media network’s most-followed non-celebrity account. Beginning in August, the feed’s 49.3 million fans will be able to follow Nat Geo’s photographers as they go out on their respective assignments. The show’s launch will be timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.

Beyond Instagram, Nat Geo has plenty more programming it plans to unveil in the coming months. Its upcoming original series include a 16-episode exploration of Canadian fauna called Wild_Life (pictured above) and a companion piece for its upcoming TV miniseries Mars. It will also continue to share updates on Snapchat’s Discover section, where its content is viewed 780,000 times per day.

Nat Geo is also one of the many NewFronts presenters with big plans for virtual reality. It will launch a VR studio that, according to National Geographic Partners CEO Declan Moore, will “ensure that we’ll be everywhere, anytime, and anywhere our consumers want us to be.”

Here, via a press release, is information on all the projects Nat Geo discussed during its presentation:

DIGITAL SHORTS

Animal Close-Up
National Geographic is serving up the cutest, funniest and strangest faces of the animal kingdom. Each episode brings viewers closer to the animals they love, alongside important stories and insights, to provide a better understanding of these adorable creatures.

Before Mars
National Geographic Channel’s first-ever digital short series, Before Mars, sets the scene for the highly anticipated fall event series MARS. The six-part series, set in present day 2016, presents a heart-warming story about change, exploration, discovery and friendship, while entertaining and engaging the audience with a combination of mysterious cliffhangers and hopeful adventures. It also creates a narrative arc to the larger series debuting in November, with twin girls’ struggle to adjust to their new rural home, paralleling mankind’s desire to one day make Mars home.

Get Out: A Guide to Adventure
National Geographic’s first how-to series, Get Out, features adventure experts as they share insider tips and tricks to owning the outdoors like a pro, taking viewers one step closer to living like a Nat Geo explorer.

InTime
Through hyper-lapse technology, InTime takes viewers on a high-speed romp through iconic travel destinations around the world.

Invisible
Ever wonder how a bat lands upside down? We’ll show you the unbelievable acrobatics of a bat, frame by frame. What happens in the split second a human bursts into laughter? Or sneezes? Or cries? We’ll break these down in (often hilarious) slow motion with scientists and psychologists explaining frame by frame.

Limitless
In Limitless, National Geographic goes inside the bodies and minds of individuals who seem almost super-human, surprising viewers with insights into what makes a world-class athlete physically superior to the rest of us.

NGenius
In National Geographic’s original web series targeted at millennials, host Angeli Gabriel answers intriguing questions that plague the human mind in an entertaining, engaging and relatable way. Covering topics from science to history and sprinkled with quick wit and pop culture references, NGenius is Nat Geo’s answer to the trendy YouTube explainer series that have gained extreme popularity in the digital age.

NG Gold
Through National Geographic’s extensive arsenal of filmmakers and scientists, we have access to some of the most special, wild and unbelievable moments around the globe. These include capturing a crocodile’s mouth clamping down on a camera, discovering an elusive shark in an underwater volcano or witnessing a baby blue whale nursing its mother in the wild.

The Real (City)
Everyone knows that the best way to experience a city is to talk to the locals. In The Real (City) National Geographic Travel takes viewers to cities around the world, uncovering the hidden gems known only by the inhabitants who live there, and inspiring each of us to pack our bags.

Wild_Life With Bertie Gregory
In Nat Geo WILD’s first digital series, wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory journeys to the Pacific Northwest in search of the elusive coastal wolves that inhabit one of the last places on the planet where a wild forest meets a wild ocean. While in the field, Bertie navigates harsh terrain filled with unexpected encounters, all in an effort to find and film wolves that seem more like ghosts of the Northwest than actual creatures.

Photo credit: Bertie Gregory

Filed under: Articles, Branded Entertainment, Featured, NewFronts, News by Sam Gutelle
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At an event hosted by Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, for British Oscar winners, the actress Emma Thompson made clear her disdain for a new crop of movie stars who are emerging from the social stratosphere.

Thompson told the Telegraph that the direction in which the film business is headed “really worries” her.

“We’re casting actors who have big followings so the studios can use their followings to sell their movie,” she said at the event, which was also attended by Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Colin Firth, Jeremy Irons, and Sir Michael Caine. “The actors are becoming attached in the sort of business way to their social media profiles, and I think that’s a disaster.”

(Some high-profile examples, for instance, include Awesomeness Films’ forthcoming We Love You starring Lele Pons and Yousef ‘fouseyTUBE’ Erakat, as well as Matthew Santoro’s Be Somebody, which is being distributed by Studio71 and Paramount. )

And while he didn’t criticize influencers outright, Caine added that the motivations behind movie-making today have drifted far from the craft itself. “These days, they just say I’m going to be an actor because I want to be rich and famous,” Caine told the Telegraph. “And then they do a little part on television and everyone knows who they are. They can’t really act.”

Caine also warned of the pitfalls of achieving stardom at a young age. “I’ve watched it ruin people,” he said. “By the time they’re 30, they’re through.”

While such criticisms are nothing new, when established Hollywood players have criticized social stars in the past, they are often met with the unparalleled wrath of #TeamInternet. When Jimmy Kimmel denounced the Let’s Play video game genre last year, for instance, the ABC host received an influx of negative comments, which he referred to as an “avalanche of mostly misspelled vitriol.”

Filed under: News by Geoff Weiss
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[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]

Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.

It’s another installment of the weekly Tubefilter Chart of the Top 50 Most Viewed U.S. YouTube Channels and the top spot has a new normal.

Chart Toppers

Ryan ToysReview held onto its first-place position on the chart for the third week in a row. The home video collection of six-year-old Ryan saw a 2% bump in views to top out at almost 153.5 million views on the week. In a still very distant second place is FamilyFunPack. The family-friendly YouTube channel featuring playtime footage of America’s favorite septet amassed just about 119 million views on the week.

The WWE kept its third-place spot. World Wrestling Entertainment’s online video repository on YouTube slammed down nearly 118.3 million views in the week. Justin Bieber yet again occupies the #4 spot. The 22-year-old international pop star’s online music video library dipped 5% in views to bottom out at almost 103 million views during the week.

And rounding out the Top 5 is still EMI Music. The American music publisher’s online video views dipped 19% in the week to end up at nearly 76.7 million.

Top Gainers

The honor of one of our Top Gainers in the U.S. this week goes to Mike Posner.

Mike Posner didn’t have the best week on YouTube out of all the channels on the chart, but he did make it into the Top 50 for the first time ever. The 28-year-old singer, songwriter, rapper, and record producer who has co-written such hits as “Boyfriend” for Justin Bieber and “Sugar” for Maroon 5 had a breakout hit of his own when SeeB remixed his 2015 single “I Took a Pill in Ibiza.” The remix was uploaded way back in February 2016, but still continues to up its already incredible nine-figure view count week after week. The video’s popularity helped Posner’s YouTube channel to a 10% week-over-week increase in views, almost 30.3 million views on the week, and the #49 spot on the U.S. chart.

Channel Distribution

The top 50 most viewed U.S. YouTube channels this week amassed a total of 2,506,948,911 views. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:

• VEVO: 17 channels in the U.S. Top 50, with Justin Bieber the highest-ranked channel of the network at #4.
• Maker Studios: 5 channels in the Top 50, with Markiplier at #24.
• BuzzFeed, Movieclips: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Videos at #7, Machinima’s FUNnel Vision at #41 and Movieclips’ Movieclips Trailers at #27.

As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all of our news at Tubefilter by subscribing to our newsletter, following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, and watching our videos on YouTube.

OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 800,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.

Filed under: Articles, News, Statistics, YouTube, Youtube Chart by Joshua Cohen
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[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]

Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.

It’s another installment of the weekly Tubefilter Chart of the Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide and you’re going to have to start getting used to the channel that’s in the #1 spot.

Chart Toppers

Ryan ToysReview is in first place on the chart for the third week in a row. The family-friendly channel full of home videos showcasing its titular six-year-old character playing with toys was up 2% in views to close out the week with nearly 153.5 million of them. Webs & Tiaras – Toy Monster Compilations is next up in a somewhat-but-not-really-that-distant second place. The incredibly popular channel composed of videos for preadolescents featuring adults in superhero costumes in everyday and extraordinary situations amassed more than 127.7 million views in the week.

In a very close third place is T-Series. The online video library of the self-described top Indian music label took home almost 126.2 million views on the week. Next up in fourth place is FamilyFunPack. The collection of home videos featuring America’s favorite family of seven scored just about 119 million views during the week.

And rounding out the Top 5 is WWE. World Wrestling Entertainment’s YouTube destination stayed relatively constant in its weekly view count, up 1% to top out the week at nearly 118.3 million views.

Top Gainers

The honor of one of our Top Gainers this week goes to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

The YouTube destination for NBC’s flagship late night talk show always does well on YouTube, but this week was better than most thanks to a Victoria’s Secret angel and an impromptu walkoff. Gisele Bündchen talked to Jimmy Fallon on the interview couch about how she’s taking a sabbatical and some time off from the modeling runway before she used the Tonight Show for one last educational walk where she taught Fallon how to work it. The clip became a seven-figure hit online and helped The Tonight Show‘s channel to a 88% week-over-week increase in views, more than 49.5 million views on the week, and the #36 spot on the worldwide chart.

All in all, the top 50 most viewed YouTube channels accounted for 3,377,170,346 views last week. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:

• Vevo: 9 channels in the Top 50, with Justin Bieber at #7.
• Maker Studios: 4 channels in the Top 50, with TheDiamondMinecart at #10.
• Studio71: 3 channels in the Top 50, with Webs & Tiaras – Toy Monster Compilations at #2.
• BuzzFeed, XMediaDigital: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Video at #14 and XMediaDigital’s mashamedvedtv at #9.

And here’s the distribution of the this week’s Top 50 YouTube channels by country of origin:

• United States: 24 channels in the Top 50.
• Canada, Great Britain: 5 channels each in the Top 50.
• India: 4 channels in the Top 50.
• Russia: 2 channels in the Top 50.
• El Salvador, Ireland, Netherlands, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine: 1 channel each in the Top 50.

As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all of our news at Tubefilter by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, and watching our videos on YouTube.

OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 800,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.

Filed under: Articles, News, Statistics, statistics, YouTube, Youtube Chart by Joshua Cohen
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Vice is making a big push onto TV screens, but it is making sure to keep plenty of resources within its digital business as well. At NewFronts, the media company’s CEO, Shane Smith, announced seven new digital verticals that will launch over the next year.

Smith, in typical fashion, delivered his NewFronts address in a state of heavy inebriation. Therefore, while he hinted at several upcoming plans, he offered few specific numbers or details in support. Of Viceland, the TV channel Vice launched at the beginning of March, Smith broadly claimed “we are bringing millennials back to TV.”

Smith also reminded attendees about several previously-announced Vice initiatives. He said Viceland would come to the UK in the fall, and by the end of the year, the company’s TV presence would span 20 channels internationally, up from the 12 channels Smith teased back in March. Also on the docket: A daily news program for HBO, tentatively titled Vice News Tonight.

With the business part of his presentation out of the way, Smith began the celebration. As seen above, he took the stage with a punk band comprised of members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV on the Radio. Give Vice credit: Led by its CEO, it sticks to its non-traditional credo through and through.

Photo credit: Sara Wass/Vice

Filed under: NewFronts, VICE by Sam Gutelle
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We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.

When stuck in traffic on Los Angeles’ infamous Interstate 405, drivers and their passengers have plenty of spare time to develop elaborate stories. That idea lays the groundwork for Gridlocked, a new web series directed by Scott Brown.

The seven episodes that together make up Gridlocked are all separate vignettes that take place in the same traffic jam. While each installment is woven into the ones that precede and follow it, the stories are able to stand on their own. The main constant, aside from the traffic jam setting, is actor Zach Gold, who plays multiple characters and shows up in each episode.

Brown and Gold previously collaborated on Stockholm, a web series driven by its dark sense of humor. Compared to that show, Gridlocked is considerably lighter, and often turns to broader humor, but its wild script and out-there characters ensure that the end product is a fun one. You can find its episodes on Vimeo and Funny or Die.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT

• Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop. Brief sketches present over-the-top situations in the second season of this comedy.
• Maybe Sunshine. An “aging rock queen” looks to reinvent her career.
• Queer Kid Stuff. This web series, coming on May 10th, will explain LGBTQ topics to kids.

Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Indie Spotlight, News by Sam Gutelle
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Tom Cassell, aka TheSyndicateProject, who has roughly 10 million YouTube subscribers on his gaming channel and is the most-followed streamer on all of Twitch, has released a compilation album alongside influencer-driven music label Heard Well.

Cassell joins fellow creators Connor Franta (who co-founded Heard Well alongside talent manager Andrew Graham and Opus Label owner Jeremy Wineberg), Lohanthony, Amanda Steele, and Jc Caylen in releasing compilation records with the company. Heard Well’s releases regularly debut within the top 10 on the Billboard and iTunes charts, the company says, and Cassell’s release is no exception: it soared to number three on the iTunes worldwide electronic charts just hours after its release.

Titled Sounds Of Syndication, the album comprises 13 cuts from artists like electronic trio Klaypex and Aussie singer-songwriter Lisa Mitchell. The album is also available on Heard Well’s website, where a special edition comes complete with a poster, sticker, and pin. “Music has always played a big role in my life and in the content I create,” Cassell said in a statement. “Fans have been asking me for years what my favorite music is and what music I play in my videos. Sounds of Syndication answers this question and puts many of my favorite tracks all in one place.”

In addition to his work with Heard Well, Cassell co-founded the entertainment studio 3BlackDot and an MCN called Jetpak. He is the co-creator of several video games including Dead Realm and Zombie Killer Squad, which hit one million downloads in the nine days following its launch and currently counts more than 100,000 active daily users.

In addition to its influencer-led compilations, Heard Well recently helped curate music for Gayby Baby, an Australian documentary about four kids growing up in same-sex households.

Filed under: Connor Franta, Industry, News, Syndicate by Geoff Weiss
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If you’re wondering what happened to Beme, the social app launched by vlogger Casey Neistat — which enables users to share videos captured with their phones clutched to their chests — you’re not alone. In a new video titled What The Hell Happened To Beme (below), Neistat addresses the current state of the app after its auspicious debut last summer — during which roughly half a million people downloaded the platform and uploaded one million videos within days of its July launch.

Despite the buzz, Beme’s beta version was still rife with kinks, Neistat explains, and as a result, growth slowed. Additionally, in order to dissuade more users from downloading the beta version while they worked out the bugs, Neistat stopped discussing the app altogether — until now.

“Ultimately, that app that we launched last summer — the beta version — it just didn’t deliver enough on the promises that we made. So we spent the last six months fixing it,” he says in the video. “It’s awesome. Today, Beme comes out of beta and into version 1.0. There may still be some bugs, but version 1.0 is the version I wish we’d had last summer.” The free app is now available on Android, Neistat added.

Beme, which describes itself as an “unfiltered way to share your personal experience,” begins capturing videos on iOS and Android devices when users cover their phone’s proximity sensors — the idea being to encourage users not to experience the world through their smartphone screens. Eight second videos are then shared automatically to the network without the ability to preview.

New features include an Instagram-like main page, profile pages for users with a grid of all their past videos, and the ability to watch videos an unlimited amount of times, Techcrunch reports. Additionally, there is now an onscreen record button — though the screen still turns black when capturing video.

Beme was co-founded by Neistat and former Tumblr exec Matt Hackett. The company raised $2 million in seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Vayner/RSE last July.

Filed under: Channels, News by Geoff Weiss
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