Streamer and FaZe Clan member Jarvis Kaye (aka FaZe Jarvis) has been banned from Fortnite for life after uploading YouTube videos where he played matches of the battle royale game while using a popular type of cheat called an aimbot.
Aimbots make players virtually invincible, modding all their weapons so every single shot they fire at a target is an instant, high-damage headshot. In one of the now-deleted videos, 17-year-old Kaye booted up a fresh Fortnite account not tied to his main profile, and announced that he was going to play with an aimbot.
“I heard that when you make a new account and use aimbot, you’ll get banned really easily, ’cause your aim’s so good in your first game,” he explained to viewers. “So we’re just gonna play a game or two without aimbot.”
Once he’d played a handful of non-cheating games in an attempt to fool Fortnite’s systems, he enabled the aimbot software. While it was running, he ultimately seemed to be out to test the limits of the cheat, taking long-odds potshots at distant players from up on mountaintops and inviting friends in to try their hands at hitting targets (who, again, were other players in live matches) with the bot’s help.
And, according to Fortnite’s developer Epic Games, none of what he did was OK. This week, the publisher hit Kaye with a lifetime ban, citing a “zero tolerance policy for the usage of cheat software.”
Unlike a casual player, for whom a ban could result in a loss of fun but not much else, Kaye’s ban will have an immediate impact on all his sources of income. He’s a professional Fortnite player for FaZe Clan, and being banned means he can no longer play in professional tournaments; he’s already dropped out of this coming weekend’s Simon Cup, which offers a grand prize of $50,000. As for YouTube, he brings in around 30M views per month on the platform, where he has 2.03M subscribers, and where the vast, vast majority of his videos involve Fortnite gameplay. He ostensibly could get around the ban by making a new account, but even if he successfully accomplished that and used it to play, he still couldn’t upload gameplay to his channel without Epic finding out.
Kaye appears to know what a dire situation he’s gotten himself into. His newest YouTube upload is a tearful apology, where he tells viewers he’s sorry and says that “it didn’t even cross my mind to think I could be banned for life on Fortnite for those videos.” He adds that he should’ve known better, per the game’s terms of service and community rules (which ban the use of all cheats in all situations, bar none).
Kaye has also tweeted about his ban:
I’m going to take accountability for my actions and I understand completely why this has happened, I just wish I had known how severe the consequences were at the time and I would have never thought about doing it. I love all of you who still support me, this is not the end.
As Engadgetpoints out, some esports pros and internet denizens alike are speaking up in defense of Kaye (the hashtag #FreeJarvis is currently trending on Twitter), pointing out past situations where more serious instances of cheating resulted in short-term bans rather than lifetime ones. Perhaps the most infamous of those incidents involved pro players Xxif and Ronaldo, who were caught cheating during the qualifying rounds of a tournament with a $30 million prize. Epic banned them for two weeks, then let them come back and, shortly after, qualify for the next Fortnite World Cup, which Epic itself operates, and during which it dishes out at least $50,000 in prize money to each qualifying player.
Filed under: Uncategorized by James Hale Comments Off on ‘Fortnite’ Pro FaZe Jarvis Banned From Game For Life After YouTube Videos Showed Him Cheating
Eight months ago, the close-knit group of friends behind long-running Dungeons & Dragonsweb series Critical Roleran Kickstarter’s most-funded film project ever. They started with a modest $750,000 goal, hoping to make one 22-minute animated short film, but ultimately ended up bringing in a whopping $11.4 million, enough to produce a full season of 10 22-minute episodes.
But the adventure won’t end after just those 10 episodes, because now, Amazon’s Prime Video has: acquired exclusive streaming rights for the entire series, called The Legend of Vox Machina; has ordered the production of two more episodes for its first season, bringing the total to 12; and has already ordered an entire, 12-episode second season of the show, Varietyreports. The arrangement also includes a first-look deal with Critical Role to develop additional series.
For those who aren’t familiar, Critical Role is spearheaded by seasoned voice actor Matt Mercer, who has, for years, run tabletop roleplaying games for friends and fellow voice actors Ashley Johnson, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, Laura Bailey, and Liam O’Brien. The gang’s flagship series came to be when they decided to broadcast their ongoing Dungeons & Dragons adventures to the internet, and quickly drew in a fanbase so enthusiastic that Critical Role became the No. 1 web series on Tumblr for all of 2018.
Critical Role was originally produced by Felicia Day’s Geek & Sundry, with weekly, multiple-hours-long episodes airing on the company’s now-shuttered streaming service Alpha and on YouTube (where its dedicated channel has 688K subscribers). Now, the show is self-produced and premieres on Twitch (notably owned by Amazon), with episodes uploaded to YouTube later.
The Legend of Vox Machina is based on Critical Role’s first campaign, where, for five years, they played members of a group of heroes collectively known as Vox Machina. They’ve since moved on to play new characters in a new storyline (and are chronicling that in current Critical Role episodes), but Vox Machina’s enduring popularity with fans prompted them to, through their Kickstarter, seek funding that would allow them to continue the heroes’ adventures in animated form.
Amazon doesn’t currently have a firm premiere date for The Legend of Vox Machina, in which Mercer and co. will all reprise their roles via voice acting. However, it told Variety it hopes to get the first season out by late 2020.
“We were absolutely floored by the level of enthusiasm we received on the Kickstarter campaign, and now we can deliver exactly what the fans wanted, and more,” Riegel and Willingham said in a joint statement.
Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, added, “Critical Role blazed a new trail for original digital content, with fresh new voices and humor that earned devoted fans around the world, as evidenced by their wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.”
She also hinted that the first-look part of the deal is already in the works with a mention that Amazon is “thrilled to work with the whole team to bring The Legend of Vox Machina, and a new Critical Role series” to life.
The pair’s deal was brokered by CAA, which represents Critical Role. The Legend of Vox Machina will be executive produced by the entire Critical Role squad, plus Brandon Auman (who’s currently head writer on Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and animator/director Chris Prynoski. Emmy-winning animation director Sung Jin Ahn, who works for lauded animation studio Titmouse, has signed on as the series’ supervising director.
Filed under: Amazon by James Hale Comments Off on Amazon Picks Up Critical Role’s $11.4 Million Kickstarter Series ‘The Legend Of Vox Machina,’ Orders A Second Season
The cheekily-named Tiny Meat Gang — comprising creator duo Cody Ko and Noel Miller — have signed with illustrious record label Arista.
In addition to serving as a musical duo, Ko and Miller also host a podcast under the Tiny Meat Gang banner, and have also embarked on a nationwide comedy tour. Under Arista’s tutelage, however, the duo are set to release their third as-yet-unnamed EP later this year, Billboard reports. The group formed in 2017 and has dropped two EPs to date: Bangers & Ass (2017) and Locals Only (2018). The Gang has continued to release new music this year, including highly-viewed music videos for the singles “Walk Man” and “Short Kings Anthem.”
“We couldn’t be more pumped to join the Arista family,” Ko and Miller told Billboard in a statement. “David [Massey, president and CEO of Arista] and Matt [D’Arduini, SVP of A&R] and the rest of the team are the best in the biz and have launched careers for some of the most successful acts in the world. As we continue to grow, we wanted to find a home that is as dedicated to our music as we are, and we’re confident that they are the best people to help take us to the next level.”
Both Ko and Miller rose to fame on Vine, but have since established a formidable presence on YouTube, where Ko counts 4 million subscribers and Miller counts 1.6 million. They are repped by Fullscreen, UTA, and the law firm Morris Yorn.
Sony-owned Arista, founded by music mogul Clive Davis, was relaunched by Massey in 2018. The label has repped iconic artists like Whitney Houston, The Kinks, Patti Smith, and The Grateful Dead.
You can check out Tiny Meat Gang’s latest music video for “Walk Man,” which has accrued a cool 11 million views, below:
Prolific YouTuber, podcaster, and fashiondesignerEmma Chamberlain’s is adding to her creative docket with Adulting With Emma Chamberlain, a weekdaily Snapchat show airing now through the end of December.
Produced by Studio71, Adulting is part of Snapchat’s first crop of Creator Shows — bite-size series that air on the app’s Discover page, featuring content from traditional celebrities and digital influencers alike. Chamberlain (who has 8.51M subscribers on YouTube and nets around 40M views per month) is joined by fellow first-round Creator Show hosts including Serena Williams, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maddie Ziegler, Keke Palmer, Denzel Dion, The Real Tarzann, and FaZe Banks.
The shows are meant to be extensions of content the creators are already producing in their public Snapchat Stories (which are, like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube’s equivalent tools, ways for creators to upload short videos that are then pinned to their profiles and viewable for a set amount of time). So, while you won’t see Chamberlain’s signature YouTube editing style in Adulting, you will see the 18-year-old’s most relatable moments as she gets up to speed with just how many things you have to figure out as a modern adult. Like the most unfun activity of them all: taxes.
When Snapchat announced Creator Shows back in July, Chamberlain said she’s keen to make content for the app because it’s “so relaxed.”
“My favorite part about it is that I get to watch my own Snapchat Stories a few hours after I post them,” she added. “Kind of embarrassing, I know.”
The first episodes of Adulting are available here.
Filed under: Snapchat by James Hale Comments Off on Digital Star Emma Chamberlain Grows Up In Original Snapchat Series Called ‘Adulting’
YouTube has a key role in the music industry’s latest beef with PresidentDonald Trump and his associates.
Military and intelligence analyst Sebastian Gorka, who in 2017 served a brief stint as the Trump administration’s deputy assistant to the president, has had nearly all the videos stripped from his YouTube account following multiple copyright strikes.
Gorka was using his YouTube channel as a repository for episodes of his radio show, America First, uploading them to the platform after they aired. Like Trump himself, Gorka is apparently a fan of using popular music in his productions — in this case, songs from rock band Imagine Dragons. The band’s lead singer, Dan Reynolds, began publicly requesting that Gorka stop using his music in August.
In late October, Reynolds provided an update on the situation, tweeting that Imagine Dragons’ publishing company, Universal Music Publishing Group, had flagged 42 offending videos. Reynolds noted in his tweet that the flagged videos had been removed — likely by Gorka, as uploaders can voluntarily remove videos containing copyrighted content (and, by doing so, avoid getting a copyright strike) — but also said that Gorka was continuing to upload new videos with Imagine Dragons’ music in them.
Now, nearly two weeks and an unknown number of copyright-violating videos later, YouTube appears to have hit the limit of its patience with Gorka. Or…perhaps not?
The situation is currently unclear, as YouTube has issued a statement to multipleoutlets confirming it terminated Gorka’s account for repeated copyright violations. But Gorka’s channel still appears to be present and operational; it’s simply been stripped of the offending videos, leaving it with just five uploads, all put up within the last 18 hours.
At this time, we’re not sure whether Gorka himself pulled all of the channel’s videos down, or YouTube did. Tubefilter has reached out to YouTube for clarification about whether or not Gorka is actually banned. We also asked, if he is banned, whether that ban is (à la fellow far-right radio show host Alex Jones) permanent, or if Gorka (à la other fellow far-right commentator Steven Crowder) could have or already has had his channel reinstated with the policy-violating videos are gone.
As mentioned above, this is not the first time Trump and his supporters have faced backlash for using music without creators’ permission. Many musicians and bands, including Queen, Elton John, Steven Tyler, Rihanna, Adele, Guns N’ Roses, Pharrell Williams, Neil Young, and The Rolling Stones, have all gotten — to be frank — pretty pissed off about Trump using their music.
Most recently, Trump crossed late icon Prince, whose estate went after him for playing the hit “Purple Rain” during a campaign rally in Minneapolis. Parts of the rally recording, uploaded to Twitch and YouTube, had sound removed because they contained Prince’s copyrighted content.
Filed under: YouTube by James Hale Comments Off on YouTube Might Have Banned Former Trump Adviser, Sebastian Gorka, For Copyright Violations
Whether or not you have an army of nine-year-olds, be warned! Buried in the lengthy $170 million settlement between the FTC and YouTube – dispensed due to the world’s largest video sharing site’s violations of kids’ data privacy law COPPA – are required changes to the platform and details on how advertising on YouTube will work moving forward.
These changes will affect thousands of YouTube creators who are completely unaware the vast majority of their advertising revenue could disappear in less than 10 weeks. But there is a brief window for creators to raise their voice to the FTC and have an impact on how we’re all affected. Here’s a primer to get you up to speed.
What is COPPA and what’s it got to do with me?
COPPA is a 1998 U.S. law that restricts operators of websites and online services from collecting the personal information of under-13 users without parental permission. Its original goal was to prevent kids from giving out their names, addresses, phone numbers, and other data online that could put them in danger from online predators. However, in 2013, the FTC amended COPPA, broadening the scope to (1) expand the definition of “operators” to include creators who publish on ad-assisted platforms like YouTube, and to (2) expand the definition of “personal information” to include persistent identifiers (such as web cookies), which advertisers rely on to run ads matched to an appropriate audience (colloquially known as “targeted ads” or “personalized ads”). For six years, this amendment was never enforced against YouTube creators; however, as part of the aforementioned settlement with YouTube, the FTC has stated that they intend to start enforcing the regulations on creators individually.
In practice, that means as of Jan. 1, 2020, all content creators will have to designate whether or not each of their videos is “directed to children” (aka “kid-directed” aka “child-directed”) by checking a box during the upload process. Checking that box will prevent the video from running personalized ads.
Newly uploaded videos aren’t the only ones creators will have to categorize. Per the FTC’s current settlement, every single video on every single channel must be categorized, including all previously uploaded videos. That amounts to millions of hours of content which must be manually reviewed by tens thousands of creators to see if their content meets a number of factors that would make it “directed to children” .
YouTube has notified creators about the impending changes and published preliminary information about it on a YouTube Support forum, but plenty of individuals and organizations are still unclear about the broad strokes and idiosyncrasies of the new protocols.
So what exactly does “kid-directed” mean?
“Kid-directed” might seem self-explanatory at first – if you’re thinking about “Baby Shark” or the latest Ryan’s World video – but it’s a frustratingly vague term. Plenty of adult creators make content that could, by someone, somewhere (like one of 10,000 contracted humans hired somewhere in the world to review YouTube content) be designated as appealing to kids, even if creators didn’t intend for kids to watch it.
The exact definition of “kid-directed” is entirely based on the discretion of the FTC, and is determined by evaluating the given video against 10 factors, including:
the subject matter of the site or service
the video’s visual content
the video’s of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives
music or other audio content in the video
age of models featured in the video
presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children in the video
language or other characteristics of the website or online service
and whether advertising promoting or appearing on the website or online service is directed at children.
What’s more is the FTC wants to expand the above criteria to also encompass “child-attractive” content, which would even more broadly include anything that children might be interested in. (Consider anything from toy reviews or any form of cartoon or animated programming, to “Draw My Life” videos or Minecraft “Let’s Plays”.)
The bottom line is if you make content that is intended for teens or adults, but also contains elements from the FTC’s list of 10 factors that appeal to kids under 13, you’re in danger of being demonetized starting the beginning of the new year.
Why does personalized marketing make up so much of creators’ ad revenue?
On YouTube, advertisers can choose to whom their ads are shown to make sure those ads are matched to a relevant audience.
When an advertiser uses YouTube’s backend marketing customization tools to target a specific demographic for its ads, two things happen. 1) The ad ideally gets put in front of more people who might actually want to buy the product, based on their personal data, viewing history, browsing activity, and more; and 2) in exchange for that targeting service, the advertiser pays YouTube more to run the ad. That means creators with videos that run “personalized ads” take home more revenue than they would if non-targeted ads ran against their content.
How drastically will creator income be impacted? By our assessment, very drastically.
We asked creators to go into Creator Studio and disable personalized ads (called “Interest-Based Ads”, under the “Advanced” tab) for a few days. Based on our initial testing, a video not running personalized ads sees a loss in revenue somewhere between 60% to 90%. So, if a video on a given channel could generate $100 in revenue for a creator right now with personalized ads running, categorizing the video as “directed to children” (and therefore removing the personalized ads) would mean the video’s revenue would drop to somewhere between $10 and $40.
Facing a loss that large might be enough to make some creators consider not checking the “directed to children” box even if they make videos for kids. But consequences for that are stiff. If the FTC decides an uploaded video is kid-directed, but sees it is not marked as kid-directed, the creator could face a fine of over $42,000 per video. That financial liability is enough to bankrupt most creators.
YouTube also plans to use machine learning (for better or worse) to implement a system that will find kid-directed videos and identify them as such, even if the creators didn’t check the box.
Why is the FTC bringing creators into this?
This enforcement action isn’t happening to protect kids from all ads. Nickelodeon and the Disney channel run content-based ads all day long (while abiding by the Children’s Television Act). It’s happening to protect kids from a perceived threat from personalized ads and the data collection inherent in the distribution of those ads.
The FTC believes that creators runningpersonalized ads poses a privacy risk to kids, despite the fact that the creators themselves have no access to data about individual viewers. The FTC assumes that banning personalized ads on any content kids enjoy is in a child’s best interest; it doesn’t see the unintended consequences for creators who, in some cases, rely almost entirely on personalized ads to make their livelihoods.
Without revenue from personalized ads, creators could be forced to stop making quality, kid-friendly content. That will only hurt kids and parents who depend on free, ad-supported entertainment. Meanwhile, the FTC’s privacy concern already has an available solution. Parents concerned about privacy issues can let their children watch YouTube via the free YouTube Kids app (which has never and will never run targeted advertising) without the FTC needing to disrupt YouTube’s main platform. That’s a choice easily available to every parent. The FTC should not be punishing creators for the fact that parents choose to let their kids watch YouTube instead of YouTube Kids.
Is there anything creators can do?
Yes. Yes, there is.
The FTC is now asking the public for comments about its enforcement of COPPA, including the 2013 changes, before the Jan. 1 enforcement begins. This is a rare opportunity for the creator community and its fans to raise their voices and be heard. The FTC wants to hear from creators about the impact this will have on their businesses, and from parents about the impact this will have on them and their children.
In response to the first wave of comments, the FTC already extended the deadline for people to provide input. We want to use this opportunity to request the following:
The FTC should allow parents to decide whether their kids will use YouTube Kids or YouTube’s main platform, without punishing creators when parents choose to let kids use YouTube’s main site.
The FTC should not expand the scope of COPPA to child-attractive content as it pertains to content creators.
The FTC should put out an enforcement statement on how it intends to enforce COPPA against individual content creators.
The FTC should provide clarity on the rules defining what constitutes “directed to children,” as the definition is extremely vague in the creator context.
The FTC places a six-month moratorium on enforcement against content creators, allowing us more time to adjust to the new post-settlement YouTube ecosystem.
Roll back elements of the 2013 amendment as they pertain to content creators to preserve our ability to continue producing free, ad-supported content for the families who choose to consume our content on YouTube’s main site.
In coordination with Jeremy Johnston of the channel JHouse Law, we are planning a massive mobilization of creators and fans to flood the FTC with comments starting today, Nov. 5, 2019. We’re asking for your help in three ways:
Share and tweet this article to your fellow creators to spread the word about what is happening
We’ve put together a comment template below, and have provided talking points for creators and viewers to help express their thoughts to the FTC.
Talking points for creators are here. Talking points for viewers are here.
Comment Template
I am a Content Creator on YouTube and as an entrepreneur and small business owner, I rely on revenue from YouTube to be able to continue making content [that serves XYZ audience].
[Insert YouTube channel name if you want, or describe your videos, the audience you’re trying to serve, or the story of your business.]
[Describe the impact that the anticipated reduction in revenue will have on your business]
I understand that the FTC is reviewing its COPPA rules and enforcement policies, and I am concerned that the discussion so far has not factored in the impact to the overall ecosystem of Content Creators. As the YouTube settlement hasn’t gone into effect yet and the 2013 amendment has not previously been enforced against Content Creators, there are still many unknowns as to how YouTube’s changes to comply with COPPA enforcement will affect our businesses. As such, we request the following:
The FTC does not expand the scope of COPPA to child-attractive content as it pertains to Content Creators
The FTC puts out an enforcement statement on how the FTC intends to enforce COPPA against individual Content Creators
Clarity on the rules defining what constitutes “Directed to Children” as the definition is extremely vague in the creator context
The FTC places a 6-month moratorium on enforcement against Content Creators allowing us more time to adjust to the new post-settlement YouTube ecosystem
The FTC should allow parents to use YouTube Kids or YouTube Main, without punishing creators when parents choose to use YouTube Main.
Roll back elements of the 2013 amendment as they pertain to Content Creators to preserve our ability to continue producing free ad-supported content to the families who choose to consume our content on YouTube Main.
Jonathan Katz is an attorney who has been representing the creator community full-time for the past six years. Victoria Fener is a startup consultant who advises creators on how to develop their businesses. Together they launched Clamour Summit in 2017, an annual conference allowing professional creators to develop business skills, network, meet with brands, and build a stronger community.
Filed under: YouTube by Jonathan Katz and Victoria Fener Comments Off on Is A YouTube COPPAcalypse Coming? FTC Rules Could Start Demonetizing Creators In 2020
Longtime NASCAR exec Lou Garate is exiting the auto racing org for a new lane: the ever more competitive streaming space.
After the current NASCAR season concludes later this month with the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Miami Speedway, Garate will join Twitch as its first-ever global head of sponsorship sales, perSports Business Journal.
Garate held a similarly sponsorship-focused position at NASCAR for 12 years, serving as its senior VP of partnership marketing. In that role, he oversaw the organization’s many, many deals with various brands. If you’ve ever seen a NASCAR race — or just one of participating racers’ cars, plastered with sponsors’ names and logos — you’re aware of how reliant on branding the organization is. If you haven’t, well, see above re: Ford EcoBoost, and the fact that the entirety of NASCAR is now technically called The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series after a major sponsorship deal brokered in 2017 under Garate’s leadership.
Prior to joining NASCAR, Garate worked as a sports sponsorship consultant for consulting company Ryan Partnership, and prior to that, he worked in supervising roles at sports organizations like the NFL and Millsport.
In a statement, Walker Jacobs, Twitch’s chief revenue officer, said that with the hiring of Garate, Twitch is “taking another key step in demystifying esports for our partners and the broader marketplace.” He added that Garate “will play an integral role in strengthening Twitch’s position as the future of live entertainment and the home of esports.”
“Twitch is at the forefront in changing how the world watches and experiences live entertainment, and is clearly the global leader in esports broadcasting and sponsorship,” Garate said in his own statement.
He added that in his new position, where he’ll be based out of Twitch’s New York City office, he will focus on “helping brand partners navigate the complex esports landscape.”
It’s worth mentioning this onboarding comes at a time when Twitch is hemorrhaging major stars. In August, it lost its biggest streamer, Ninja, to competitor Mixer; since then, it’s also lost notable creators Shroud and Gothalion to Mixer, and yesterday, it lost CouRage to YouTube. Bringing on an established name from a traditional sports organization with an impressive track record (er, no pun intended) of large-scale sponsorship deals could be a way for Twitch to offer more lucrative brand deal perks to the creators still on its platform.
Filed under: Twitch by James Hale Comments Off on Longtime NASCAR Exec Lou Garate Switches Lanes, Becoming Twitch’s First Global Head Of Sponsorship Sales
YouTube is opening up yet another revenue stream for creators — building on its Super Chat feature, introduced in Jan. 2017, that enables viewers to pay to have their comments made more visible during live broadcasts.
Now, YouTube is integrating Super Stickers into the mix — a feature that feels roughly akin to Twitch Emotes, or the wildly popular emojis that populate chat boxes on the Amazon-owned game-streaming platform. Super Stickers will be available today in 60 countries (a full list is available here), enabling viewers to purchase Stickers to greet their favorite streamers, congratulate them on games well played, or to express their general appreciation, YouTube detailed in a company blog post.
Super Stickers will be eligible to the same channels who have access to Super Chats — meaning that creators must be over age 18, and channels must be monetized and count upwards of 1,000 subscribers in order to qualify. Super Stickers aren’t available on age-restricted, unlisted, or private videos — or on videos where the live chat has been disabled. Eligible creators can opt in to Super Stickers via YouTube Studio, though creators that have already activated Super Chat will automatically be opted in.
The initial release of Super Stickers will comprise eight sticker packs — five of which are animated — priced between 99 cents and $50, YouTube says. The stickers were designed by YouTube’s in-house team who partnered with a creative agency and artists across the globe, a YouTube spokesperson tells Tubefilter. The company researched the different ways people express gratitude around the world — “from bowing and giving a gift with both hands, to buying someone a cup of coffee, it was important for us to show how different cultures portray appreciation,” YouTube said. “Super Sticker sets are focused on global audiences, and specific countries including France, Japan, Korea, as well as genres such as gaming.”
To this end, the stickers feature original animated characters, including Popo The Hippopotamus (who in one sticker, below, appears perched on a gaming chair), Energetic Lemon, Baby Lemon, Bushiba (an adorable fox, below, who in one iteration bears a karate headband), and more. The sticker packs will be translated into English, French, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese for international viewers, and more stickers will be rolling out soon, YouTube says. (At VidCon, the video giant said that stickers would be themed around different content categories beyond gaming, such as fashion, beauty, sports, music, and food).
All told, more than 100,000 channels have received Super Chats to date, YouTube says, with some streamers pocketing upwards of $400 per minute during their live streams.
Kyra TV, a YouTube lifestyle content production company its cofounder James Cadwalladersays wants to “recreate TV for the YouTube generation,” has signed deals with two digital stars, and plans for them to host its next crop of shows on the platform.
Details of Eubanks’ partnership with Kyra (prnounced Kai-ra) aren’t available, but Tabach’s deal is a three-year contract that includes a revenue-sharing clause and an option to renew the contract two years in if Tabach’s show is doing well. The series is still in development, but Tabach told Variety its working title is The Eric Show, and it’ll be a blend of comedy, entertainment, and travel.
If the show does end up in those genres, it (and possibly Eubanks’ series as well) will mark Kyra TV’s first departure from the fashion and beauty world. Its first two programs, and the only two it’s produced thus far, are streetwear series PAQ (launched in February 2017, has 740K subscribers on its dedicated YouTube channel) and weekly fashion and beauty series NAYVA (launched October 2018, has 365K subs on its dedicated channel).
While the shows’ subscriber counts aren’t overwhelmingly sizeable, they’ve racked up impressive watch times for Kyra; the two together recently surpassed one billion minutes watched on YouTube, the company told Variety. Those watch times play a part in the shows’ combined $10 million forecasted revenue for 2019, but a bigger chunk of that revenue is brand deals Kyra TV has arranged for them with companies like Google, Nike, Apple, Gucci, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Nikon, and Axe.
Kyra bringing digital stars like Eubanks and Tabach on as hosts will presumably results similar deals for their shows, and perhaps be a gateway for the fledgling production company to partner with businesses in new lifestyle sectors.
It’s worth mentioning here that Kyra also recently closed a different kind of deal: $7.3 million in seed round investment from the likes of Guardian Media Group, First Minute Capital, Playfair Capital, Torch Capital, and Rainfall Ventures. Additionally, it just opened a new studio in Los Angeles, bringing it now to having offices in L.A., New York City, and London.
Filed under: Uncategorized by James Hale Comments Off on Lifestyle Content Studio Kyra TV Partners With Noen Eubanks, Eric Tabach For New YouTube Shows
Word to the wise: when one of the biggest creators in YouTube history makes a multi-part docuseries chronicling a product collaboration with the platform’s biggest beauty channel, a staggering number of fans are going to want to buy it.
Beauty mogul Jeffree Star, the subject of Shane Dawson’s latest series, The Beautiful World Of Jeffree Star, took to his Instagram Stories yesterday to update fans on the future of the Conspiracy Collection after its gobstopping — and technically-challenged — debut last Friday. Despite the fact that demand for the items crashed Shopify for several hours (which will be chronicled in episode seven of the series), the makeup range — comprising eyeshadow palettes, lip products, and accessories — sold out in its entirety.
Star notes that the release shattered a record for Jeffree Star Cosmetics (JSC), with 1 million total eyeshadow palettes sold — including the flagship Conspiracy Palette as well as a smaller Mini-Controversy Palette — in roughly 30 minutes. In the past, JSC palette launches have vended that quantity within a six to nine-month timespan, he said. As a result, while most influencer collabs are developed as limited launches, the Conspiracy Collection is becoming a permanent addition to the JSC family.
While that means that fans who wants to own the collection will presumably be able to purchase it at some point, a preorder for the first restock is slated for today — a somewhat stunning turnaround. (Star and Dawson aren’t announcing the exact time so as to avoid any more technical glitches). That said, only the two eyeshadow palettes are being restocked, and only 60,000 units of each palette (as compared to the hundreds of thousands that JSC ordered for the initial run) will be available. They will begin shipping later this month. The reason that only 60,000 palettes can be printed right now is due to a limited supply of one of the shades in the Conspiracy Palette, Star explained — a bright yellow hue dubbed ‘Food Videos’.
“If you watch the series, you know it took us a long time to get everything together,” he says, noting that a restock of the collection will roll out in full in early 2020. “So we wanna be transparent. Now that everything is made, we can make things way quicker, but it’s still two or three months out — on a real level.”
As for Dawson’s sold-out merch line, which he is now vending with another company co-owned by Star, Killer Merch, a limited restock is planned for this Friday, when embroidered logo hoodies, Conspiracy hoodies and T-shirts, and phone cases will be replenished. Other items, which take longer to produce, will return with a full restock on Black Friday, Star said.
You can check out Star’s full Insta Story with details about the launch and restock below:
Filed under: News by Geoff Weiss Comments Off on After Selling 1 Million Palettes In 30 Minutes, Jeffree Star And Shane Dawson Announce ‘Conspiracy Collection’ Restock
