Spotify has taken the next step in its mission to challenge YouTube’s powerful position in the domain of on-demand music videos. In the U.S. and Canada, all Spotify Premium subscribers can now watch music videos from major pop artists.
The expansion of Spotify’s music video ecosystem comes nearly two years after the platform first made those videos available in beta. Thanks to the latest update, U.S. and Canada-based Premium subscribers can locate available music videos by looking for relevant icons on the official artist pages for select acts. At the time of this post, the list of participating musicians includes TikToker-turned-pop star Addison Rae, rising K-pop outfit BABYMONSTER, and Galinda herself, Ariana Grande.
When a Premium user plays a song that has an available music video, they can watch it by tapping a “switch to video” icon. Of course, if they change their minds, they can simply “switch to audio.” It’s the same design that can be found across Spotify’s library of video podcasts, which now includes more than 500,000 multimedia shows.
In a blog post announcing the music video expansion, Spotify pointed to the community-building power of those clips. “Music videos are a proven way to help build fandom. After a fan engages with an artist’s music video, they’re more likely to dive deeper into their artistry,” reads the post. “We’ve seen that when fans discover a track with a music video on Spotify, they’re 34% more likely to stream it again and 24% more likely to save or share it in the following week.”
Music videos are good for creators, but they’re also good for Spotify, too. The platform’s video podcast ambitions have paid off in a big way, but that medium becomes increasingly competitive with each passing month. As rivals like YouTube and Netflix seek their own video podcast libraries, Spotify is elbowing its way into a category YouTube has dominated for more than a decade.
YouTube has been the go-to home for music videos since the 2009 advent of Vevo, and it has capitalized on that status to the tune of billions of views. Spotify is still best known as audio streaming platform, but its video-related products hold great potential — and Premium subscribers from the U.S. and Canada can now take one of those features for a test drive.
TikTok‘s new features really put the “social” in “social media.” The app is encouraging more camaraderie through Shared Feeds, which combine the tastes of multiple individuals within a single hub.
In a Newsroom post, TikTok explained that Shared Feeds can entertain two people at once by showing “new content tailored to both of their tastes.” When a pair of users agree to share a feed, they will be able to find it in their direct message thread (where TikTok recently rolled out several updates). Each day, that feed will be filled with 15 videos that appeal to both users.
Translation: TikTok is giving its community a video-based version of the Spotify Blend. Given the popularity of that feature — and the fact that YouTube also copied it for its own music service — TikTok has plenty of reasons to install Shared Feeds in your DMs.
If the idea of a collaborative playlists appeals to you, but you don’t want the algorithm to curate it, that’s where TikTok’s other new feature comes in. Shared Collections are private video archives that allow two or more users to save videos that are meaningful to them. Instagram previously launched a similar Collections feature, so TikTok appears to be continuing its trend of copying the platform that loves to copy it.
Curating a collection of meaningful videos sounds like a good (and inexpensive) idea for a creative holiday gift. If you plan to go that route, you can add on one of TikTok’s new Greeting Cards, because nothing says “how do you do” like an animated salutation dropped into a loved one’s messages.
Of course, there’s plenty of real holiday shopping to be had on TikTok, too. Even as the app expands its ecommerce presence, it is not abandoning the social media experience that first launched it to prominence. Shared Feeds can bring TikTok users closer together — even if you’ll also discover which of your friends has the weirdest For You Page.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Want a unique gift idea for a TikTok fan? Share a feed with them.
YouTube has quite suddenly become a key player in Netflix‘s plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The streamer announced last week that it would get a Hollywood level-up by purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets in a deal valued at $82.7 billion (aka $27.75 per share). That deal came after a tense bidding war–and one of the losers isn’t going down without a fight
On Dec. 8, Paramount launched a hostile bid, offering $30/share for the Warner Bros. film studio, Game of Throneshome HBO and other cable TV brands, and streaming service HBO Max. The bid’s federal securities filing indicates it’s backed by funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, plus cash from Affinity Partners, the Jared Kushner-founded firm that also just acquired Electronic Arts in a $55 billion deal.
As part of its pitch, Paramount (which, stop us if you’ve heard this before, also recently acquired Skydance Media, becoming the Paramount Skydance Corporation) pointed out that Netflix’s deal has to pass muster with regulators, and insists its own offer “provides a superior alternative to the Netflix transaction.”
“Our public offer, which is on the same terms we provided to the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors in private, provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion,” David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, said in a statement.
That “quicker path to completion” is where YouTube comes in. Netflix–or, at least, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos–has been somewhat bitter about YouTube being the #1 most-watched streaming service in the U.S. for over two years running. In the wake of Nielsen’s numbers confirming YouTube’s supremacy, Sarandos hasn’t missed an opportunity to try putting YouTube and its creators in their place–but that hasn’t changed the simple fact that YouTube is the reigning king.
And apparently, Netflix is only too happy to call on the king when it’s convenient.
On the same day Paramount filed its hostile bid, Sarandos’s fellow co-CEO, Greg Peters, used his time onstage at the 2025 Global Media and Communications Conference to point out that if the Netflix/Warner Bros. deal closes, the new entity will still be behind YouTube in terms of watch time.
“We go from 8% of viewed hours today in the United States to 9%. We’re still behind YouTube at 13%,” he said. (HBO Max currently accounts for around 1.2% of watch time in the U.S., according to Nielsen.)
Meanwhile, he specifically pointed out, if Paramount acquired Warner Bros., their newly combined portion of U.S. viewership would jump to 13.8%. That would put them above YouTube–and, he seems to be insinuating, means Paramount is a bigger anticompetitive threat than Netflix.
“We think that there’s a really strong fundamentals-based case here for why regulators should approve this deal,” Peters added.
Netflix previously estimated it would take between 12 and 18 months for regulators to approve its Warner Bros. deal. It’s not clear whether that timeline will be disrupted by Paramount’s last-ditch bid–but what is clear is that Netflix considers YouTube its most serious competitor…and is willing to invoke its name, so long as Netflix is the one that benefits in the end.
Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale Comments Off on Netflix is leaning on YouTube to defend its Warner Bros. acquisition
On June 25, 2026, the creator gathering VidCon will return to the Anaheim Convention Center for the 15th edition of its flagship event. Informa, the current organizer of the event series, plans to pair fan-favorite features with brand-new experiences, and individuals who want to experience that spectacle can now purchase their tickets.
One of the biggest changes coming to VidCon Anaheim in 2026 is a semantic one. Rather than organizing around fan, creator, and industry “tracks,” VidCon is offering three ticket types: A VidCon Pass intended for the general public, a Creator Pass tailored to attending professionals, and a Pro Pass that offers access to the complete lineup of industry-oriented sessions. (Us press members can also apply for credentials.)
VidCon Anaheim is also expanding its IRL gaming content after hosting a “Roblox Hunt” in 2025. The event’s Gaming Zone will be expanded, and a Sports Court will serve attendees who prefer aerobic competition. VidCon will also expand its podcasting presence by welcoming fans and their favorite Featured Creators to a Live Podcast Studio.
Speaking of Featured Creators, VidCon has revealed some of the notable names who will be on the guest list in 2026. The world of short-form content will be well-represented, with everyone from makeup artist Emmy Combs to chart-toppers Jasmin and James set to meet-and-greet their admirers. A full list of Featured Creators can be found here — and VidCon tends to update that roster as its flagship event draws near.
2026 will be the second edition of VidCon Anaheim since Informa acquired the event series from previous operator Paramount Global. As Informa looks to 2026 and beyond, it is trying to figure out what VidCon will look like in an era of numerous creator events and siloed social media culture.
The road forward for VidCon hasn’t always been easy. An East Coast edition of the gathering, which took place in Baltimore, was cancelled after just one year. The COVID-19 pandemic also forced VidCon organizers to cancel the Anaheim event two years in a row.
Now, Informa seems to be honing in on the most essential elements of VidCon. The Featured Creators list shows that the annual get-together can still draw big names, and the sprawling setup will ensure that those attendees have as much fun as possible.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Tickets are on sale for VidCon Anaheim 2026, which will be held from June 25-27
If you expected 2025 to be filled with espresso-headed ballerinas and sequential numeric memes, well, I don’t believe you. Predicting the future is an inexact science, especially when the internet’s volatile culture becomes part of the equation.
That said, there are data-driven forms of divination that are a bit more precise than palmistry or tea leaves — and that’s the approach Whatnot is taking. The virtual auction house looked at its fastest-growing categories to make some guesses about the direction the live shopping ecosystem will take in the year to come.
Whatnot, which recently announced its second nine-digit funding round of 2025, keeps its users glued to its shoppable live streams for an average of 80 minutes per day. That watch time provides Whatnot with a deep trove of data, which the company mined to produce its 2026 insights.
The first trend mentioned in the resulting report is a phenomenon that has grown throughout 2025: Interest in women’s sports is on the rise. Whatnot noted that the percentage of female users on its platform has doubled year-over-year, and trading cards featuring WNBA players have become a popular auction item for users of all genders. In 2025, search traffic for those cards increased three times faster than for NBA trading cards. At the top of the pyramid, a Caitlin Clark rookie card broke records by fetching a $660,000 price on Whatnot.
Ancient coins also enjoyed a glow-up in 2025, and Whatnot expects that uptick to carry into 2026. Forget NFTs — the hot new forms of alternative currency are old forms of payment made from gold, silver, and platinum. All of those elements saw their Whatnot search traffic more than double this year.
Some of Whatnot’s 2026 predictions align with elemental facets of internet culture. Nostalgia, for example, has always been a big deal online, but Whatnot expects next year’s shoppers to retreat further into the past by revisiting classic toys like Furbies and Beanie Babies. I don’t know what’s causing the sudden surge of early 2000s nostalgia, but I’m going to blame all of those Joey episodes that made it to YouTube.
But the internet of the future won’t just repeat the recent past. Whatnot, for example, is seeing a clear pivot to louder fashion choices like patterned shirts and bold makeup. So if we say goodbye to the “clean girl aesthetic” in 2026, don’t say that Whatnot didn’t warn you.
Whatnot is not the first platform to attempt this type of clairvoyance. Last year, for example, Pinterest guessed that pickles and boho outfits would spike in 2025. While we’re still waiting for some of those predictions to come true (where is all the cream soda content I was promised?), studies like these take the temperature of contemporary social media culture. Even the biggest live shopping success story of 2025 can’t view the next 12 months with perfect accuracy, but if we spend the next 12 months talking about drachmas, talents, and pieces of eight, I for one will be satisfied.
It’s an indisputable fact of life: Taxes suck for everybody. But for creators, that suckage tends to be maximized by a structural lack of understanding in the traditional financial services sphere. As the creator industry has matured, becoming a full-time career for millions of people, entire secondary industries have sprung up to support talent’s production needs.
But things like taxes and bookkeeping remain fickle and difficult beasts to master for already-overburdened creators, and we’ve reported before how they’re missing out on potentially millions of dollars of write-offs and other savings because they work with bookkeepers and CPAs who don’t understand what they do.
The company–stealth-launched in January 2025 by creator/industry vet Jon Youshaei, Amanda Marcovitch (named one of Business Insider‘s Top Rising Stars in Talent Management), former Yes Theory and Airrack COO/CFO Varun Bhuchar, and The Good Internet founder/CEO Zack Hornavar–aims to handle “all the paperwork creators hate,” it says.
Over the last year, Boring Stuff has been in charge of things like taxes, bookkeeping, operations, and back-office needs for creators including Airrack, The Try Guys, and Yes Theory.
“Creators who want to be taken seriously by traditional media investors and brand partners need to operate like media companies, not solo creators,” Airrack said at launch. “But trying to hire and manage operational staff while growing a channel can be overwhelming. Boring Stuff has been a game changer for me–they understand the unique challenges of the creator economy better than anyone else.”
Now Boring Stuff is going wider, and Youshaei wants people to know he’s seen “too many creators who lost tons of money because their taxes were a mess or they trusted accountants who didn’t understand creators at all.”
“Everyone hates taxes, but creators especially. Most of us do this to follow our passion, not file paperwork. But the latter is just as important as you grow,” he adds.
Marcovitch, who joined Youshaei’s production company in 2022, says, “In building Jon’s business past seven figures, I saw first-hand how impactful it can be to maximize write-offs, avoid penalties, and improve operations. Now we’re excited to help other creators with that too.”
Boring Stuff is led by CEO Bhuchar, who explains the company has a “white-glove, high-touch approach to each and every creator who signs up for our service.”
Services currently available to creators include:
bookkeeping with monthly financial reports
tax prep, filing, and compliance
payroll and contractor management
and ops and HR systems for scaling teams
“[O]ne size does not fit all for creators,” Bhuchar says. “Every creator has different needs and our team is trained to know those nuances, maximize deductions, and save costs so creators grow faster.”
Airrack says having someone knowledgeable handle these tasks has helped him “breathe easier” and make better videos. “Plus,” he adds, “they’re constantly helping me find new ways to save money.”
“Hiring Boring Stuff was one of the best decisions we’ve made for our channel,” Ammar Kandil of Yes Theory says. “We tried handling it in-house, but honestly, this was way better. Now, we actually know every detail of where our money is going so we can focus on being creative.”
Boring Stuff doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing, but promises it operates on a retainer system that “scales based on your unique needs” instead of on a revenue-share model.
With tax laws lagging behind and more people finding themselves awash in sudden megavirality, services like this can help guide creators (whether they’re newbies or long-established professionals) in preventing financial losses and ops issues–plus keep the IRS’s pockets from being any fuller than they need to be.
Filed under: Boring Stuff, Homepage Feature by James Hale Comments Off on Boring Stuff wants creators to know: Taxes don’t have to suck
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. 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. 👇
There’s a particularly international flavor to this week’s Global Sub Top 50 chart. Among the 15 channels that added the most subscribers during the first full week of December, five different continents are represented. The only non-Antarctic landmass not in the mix is Oceania, which will have to settle for multiple top-five placements in the Global Top 50 ranking.
As far as our subscriber-based chart goes, the creator on top of the heap is John Fairclough. The motivational speaker and podcaster picked up in December where he left off in November. By adding 2.1 million weekly subscribers at the onset of the 12th month, Fairclough pushed his all-time subscriber total up to 5.6 million.
Hay muy reacciónes en el Top 50
Initially, the rise of reaction videos was mostly an American phenomenon. A decade ago, U.S.-based creators like Jinx and The Fine Bros set the table for the YouTube Shorts chart-toppers who reinvented the reaction format to suit a Shorts-heavy YouTube meta.
In 2025, however, Latin America has become the epicenter of YouTube’s reaction genre. Within their own communities, Spanish-language channels have figured out how to apply the formula perfected by Americans like Zach D. Films and Dylan Anderson.
The first Global Sub Top 50 chart of December explains exactly what I mean. Multiple Latin American reaction creators cracked the ranking after hauling in tens of thousands of new subs per day.
The biggest uptick in the Top 50 belonged to Alex Coimbra, a Brazil-based creator who finished 16th in this week’s subscriber ranking. Coimbra added 398,000 new subs during the week that was, bringing his lifetime total above one million in the process.
Though Coimbra mixes in some live streams on his namesake YouTube channel, his reactions are his bread and butter. Thanks to his uploads, Portuguese speakers can experience some of the biggest videos Shorts has to offer.
If your Spanish is better than your Portuguese, then Coimbra’s channel might not be for you. Instead, you’ll need a visit to the doctor.
I’m talking about Dr. Duh, another entrant in this week’s Global Sub Top 50 ranking. Though the Hispanophone channel’s moniker may seem condescending, the good doctor is only trying to help. His channel description claims that he posts “porque alguien tiene que explicar esto.” Translation: “Because someone has to explain this.”
That statement seems to sum up the current state of reaction content, especially as it relates to global audiences. Some fascinating concepts just needed to be translated into different languages, even if the content of those videos may seem obvious (or should I say duh-worthy).
There’s some Dr. Duh videos that I’d rather not have explained to me, but you can’t knock the channel’s performance. With 270,000 weekly subscribers, Dr. Duh ranked 42nd on our list of the 50 most-subscribed YouTube hubs of the week.
Data via Gospel Stats
Can anything slow down this Latin American trend? I can think of one particular factor that could usher in a shakeup: That oh-so-fickle recommendation algorithm is at it again.
Some channel owners have noticed changes to YouTube’s Shorts algorithm, which now seems to be promoting newer, fresher uploads at the expense of recycled recommendations. The implication of that alleged shift aren’t clear yet, but I’m curious to see how the enterprising creators in this week’s chart will react to it.
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
United States: 12
India: 7
Brazil and Spain: 4
Egypt and Indonesia: 2
Australia, Czechia, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, and Türkiye: 1
This week, 43 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all our news by subscribing to our newsletter. You’re going to love it. 👉 Newsletter.Tubefilter.com.
As the 2025 holiday season hits its stride, eMarketer is explaining just how much American users impact TikTok‘s bottom line. The data firm published a report in which it claims that U.S. users generate 41% of TikTok’s ad revenue, even though they only account for 10% of the app’s overall user count.
eMarketer backed up its research by citing another recent dataset published by Edison Research. That report claimed that 83% of U.S. TikTok users have taken a relevant action after viewing an ad on the platform. For 43% of those respondents, the action in question was a purchase.
These statistics are especially interesting as they relate to TikTok’s operating status in the U.S. Back when federal politicians were still debating whether to enforce the Biden administration’s “divest-or-ban” law (which targeted TikTok in particular), we argued that the U.S. needs TikTok more than TikTok needs the U.S. After all, when you look at parent company ByteDance’s earnings outside of America, its sales figures on the U.S. version of TikTok Shop don’t seem so impressive.
The eMarketer report tells a different story. Markets like China may account for the lion’s share of ByteDance’s outsized valuation, but the purchasing power of U.S. users — and the sophistication of ad offerings available there — are too big for TikTok to ignore.
“Drop this into any deck questioning TikTok’s role in your media mix,” eMarketer advises in its report. “Even with the app’s future uncertain, this chart makes the case for why the US market still commands attention and budget. Use it to defend domestic TikTok investment despite regulatory headwinds.”
Advertisers who have heeded that message during the holiday season have seen significant returns on their investments. With help from stars like Kim Kardashian, TikTok had its biggest Black Friday weekend ever, hauling in $500 million of sales in the U.S. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, the numbers are even more striking. By taking in $19 billion in quarterly sales, TikTok Shop turned itself into as big of a U.S. ecommerce hub as eBay.
With numbers like those, TikTok has plenty of incentive to keep its business running in the U.S. Thanks to the Trump administration, it seems like that mission will be accomplished — though no ban-averting deal has been made official just yet.
Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.
We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.
And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here. You can also download our YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Reporthere.
This week’s Gospel Stats Brand Report leads with two self-sponsored videos–by which we mean creators using their videos to promote their own companies. You probably won’t be surprised at who those YouTubers are, or their staggering view counts. As for the rest of this week, you’ll have to read below to find out…
Much of MrBeast‘s early Feastables branding pitted his brand against the established king of cheap chocolate, Hershey’s. And, look, we respect the decades-long Halloween staple, but its signature taste is divisive to say the least, so the bar was pretty low. Which left the Feastables team with an interesting proposal: What would happen if their chocolate was challenged by S-tier stuff?
$100, $400, all the way up to over $600–that’s how much MrBeast HQ paid for the boxes of chocolate involved in this taste test. As is the case with some MrBeast2 videos, this one isn’t hosted by the man himself. Instead, it’s longtime friends Nolan and Karl doing the snacking. They unwrap massive boxes of expensive truffles, and while they proclaim some “taste like nothing,” the last (and most expensive) chocolate is deemed “objectively the best one so far.”
But, Karl points out in the Branded Moment™, “It’s still nowhere close to being as affordable as Feastables.”
Yup: the 90-second video is just one big ad to get the word out about Feastables’ Amazon Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. And it apparently did its job, since it’s the #1 most viewed sponsored video on all of YouTube this week.
Like MrBeast‘s take on the idea, Mark Rober‘s is tied to a promotion of his own company, CrunchLabs. But unlike MrBeast’s video, Rober’s involves a homemade robot instead of hired (metal) hands. Not exactly surprising, since Rober is a former NASA engineer and is used to making insane projects in his garage.
Rober, who’s played soccer almost his whole life, says he was inspired to invent his robotic goalie after being invited to play in the Sidemen‘s charity match. The game was streamed to millions of people, and Rober got to take a penalty kick in front of 90,000 live audience members. No pressure! Thankfully he sank the shot…but what if the goalkeeper had been Superman-speed instead of relying on normal human reflexes?
Obviously he had to investigate, and what better person to test out his new goaliebot than arguably the world’s top soccer player–and accomplished YouTuber—ChristianoRonaldo?
We’re seeing it more and more: smaller creators getting deals from big brands, and then going on to rack up big views. This week’s edition of that is a 33-second video from Cozy K, who has 322,000 subscribers (def nothing to sneeze at, but often the creators who make top 5 have multiple millions of subs) and snagged a deal from Best Buy.
Like most sponsored Shorts, hers is entirely about her brand partner, and urges people to up their cozy gaming game with tech like the Nintendo Switch 2, fresh from Best Buy. While Cozy K’s video was the top performing for Best Buy, it wasn’t the brand’s only creator-made ad this week; at least 11 videos were sponsored by Best Buy, several of which also targeted tech-savvy gamers, urging them to level up their rigs, desks, and lighting. Holiday splurge-couragement is in full swing!
Speaking of gamers, Dimucc is in spot #4 with a partnership from cosmetics brand Kiehls. If you’re wondering how a makeup and skincare brand ties into gaming…well, you’d be surprised how much of gaming boils down to dressing up your characters and making sure their little houses look cool. But all that outfit-buying and furniture-arranging can take hours of real-life time, which means hours where gamers’ skin is getting, let’s be honest, a little crusty.
Dimucc’s take on this turns the whole thing into a skit where taking damage from a boss gives him “winter dry skin debuffs.”
“Luckily Kiehl’s Hydration All The Way Set is basically a full HP restore! (plus it’s a great gift for your mom!)” he adds. Awww.
Over the last few years, Critical Role has become a major force of internet culture, driving massively renewed interest in tabletop gaming–and, thanks to a deal with Amazon and production studio Titmouse, adult animation. With the animated adaptation of their first campaign The Legend of Vox Machina still underway and slated for five seasons, Critical Role now has another show out, this one following its much-lauded second campaign.
The Mighty Nein dropped a surprise YouTube premiere of its first episode early last month before premiering on Amazon Prime Video Nov. 19. Since then, fans have weighed in–and Danny Motta, for one, is thrilled. This pro reviewer is all in on covering top animated series, from ND Stevenson‘s adaptation of She-Rato uberhit The Amazing Digital Circus.
Now, sponsored by furniture company FlexiSpot, he’s got his eye on The Mighty Nein. And he likes what he sees.
…and there’s a lot more data where that came from. If you like our Weekly Top 5, you’ll love everything else Gospel has to offer. Start with our newly released YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Report, which you can download right here.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. 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. 👇
A new month has brought significant changes to the Global Top 50 ranking. KIMPRO, the Korean hub that got more YouTube views in November than any other channel, finished fifth in the first chart of the last month. Jasmin and James, a couple channel known for its affiliation with Cadel and Mia (#3 in the ranking) surged up to first place after collecting 1.63 million weekly YouTube views.
This week’s ranking is particularly interesting, since it arrives right after YouTube dropped its year-end recap for 2025. That review showed that Shorts is currently the most powerful cultural driver on the platform, so let’s see how that idea translated to the latest Global Top 50 running order:
YouTube’s biggest game isn’t showing any signs of slowing down
Roblox was all over YouTube’s year-end recap. Creators like Caylus challenged MrBeast’s title as the top creator on the platform, minigames like Steal a Brainrot became big business, and even advertisers got in on the action.
Those of us who write about YouTube for a living have watched Minecraft dominate the platform’s gaming subculture for more than a decade, so it still feels unfamiliar to see any other game atop the YouTube leaderboard. But Roblox hasn’t just gotten bigger than Minecraft — its lead seems to be growing with each passing week.
That trend is evident in the latest edition of the Global Top 50, in which yet another Roblox channel has made its first chart appearance. The name of the hub in question is Roblonarium, and that portmanteau is also an accurate description of the channel’s content. The genres featured among Roblonarium’s most-watched Shorts range from comedy to challenges to (of course) gaming, but the common thread between them all is the presence of Roblox-created machinima.
Roblox is a creative tool first and foremost, and its versatility powers channels like Roblonarium. In the real world, you would never want to hit your friend with the backswing of a hammer, but Roblox can make fantastical situations into actual scenarios.
That creative spirit is keeping Roblox on top of the YouTube leaderboard. Roblonarium finished 47th in the Global Top 50 after picking up 298.2 million weekly views during the first week of December. That sum was good for a week-over-week increase of 16%.
The truth is, YouTube Shorts creators will flock to any game that lets their creative juices flow. Roblox just happens to be the most convenient and accessible sandbox out there. Other channels in the Global Top 50, such as Rowdy Playz, find other virtual canvases they can use to set up their popular short-form video concepts.
So if you want to know how to dethrone Roblox from the top of the YouTube tower, there’s your answer: Any game that aids players’ creativity is bound to be a hit on Shorts. Just ask Rowdy Playz.
Data via Gospel Stats
This trend is not just a big deal for the creators who play games like Roblox. It’s also a significant competitive advantage for YouTube, which has established itself as the go-to source for on-demand video game skits.
With Netflix set to eat Warner Bros. and potentially level up its gaming library along the way, YouTube’s competitive edge is a big deal. Everyone wants video game content, but none can deliver it with the same ease or efficiency as Google’s video hub.
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
India: 18
United States: 12
Indonesia: 5
Australia and South Korea: 2
Argentina, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and United Kingdom: 1
This week, 40 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all our news by subscribing to our newsletter. You’re going to love it. 👉 Newsletter.Tubefilter.com.
Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.
This week, a streamer who likes collecting plaques is vying for a Grammy trophy, a soda brand is opening up a can of holiday cheer, and a huge acquisition shakes up the streaming landscape.
Pop culture minute
PlaqueBoyMax is the first streamer to go from Twitch to the Grammy nominee list. The 22-year-old New Jersey native is nominated in the Best Dance/Electronic Recording category for a track he co-created alongside British DJ Fred Again. Despite his rapid rise, Max admitted that he “didn’t expect” his first Grammy nom to come so soon.
Markiplier’s horror movie finally has a release date. For years, the YouTube gaming star has been working on a film adaptation of the horror title Iron Lung. Now, we know that Iron Lung will get a limited theatrical release during the final weekend of January 2026. Can Markiplier bring excitement to a traditionally sleepy period on the Hollywood release calendar?
The Internet Racing League is revving its engines. Motorsports has become a significant creator content category (just ask Amelia Dimoldenberg and Squeezie). The IRL will look to turn that trend into a global phenomenon by pitting creators from various regions against one another across a variety of racetracks.
The ad world
Pepsi MAX recruited creators to share a message of holiday season mindfulness. The sugar-free beverage line teamed up with the agency NewGen to add a creator-led series to its global “it can wait” campaign. The initiative invites consumers to prioritize togetherness over day-to-day drudgery during the holiday season, and more than a dozen “ambassadors” are checking in to support that mission.
Stavros Halkias and Daniel Thrasher are helping Patreon go on the offensive against…Santa Claus? The stand-up comedian and the musician star in a spot that emphasizes Patreon’s supportive communities at the expense of raw consumerism. Santa may not like that shift in consumer behavior, but Patreon sees itself as a beneficial asset for creators. Even so, the creator economy hub is definitely going on the naughty list for this one.
Maybelline is the latest brand embracing the microdrama. Actors Lacey Chabert and Dustin Milligan are the stars of a makeup-oriented microdrama that gives off some serious Hallmark vibes. Viewers are flocking to short-form serials, so we’re not surprised to see brands following suit during a competitive holiday season.
Creator commotion
Jake Paul elevates his brother, raises $30 million for Anti Fund. The elder Paul sibling Logan is the new General Partner at the funding firm co-founded by his little brother. Anti Fund has also raised a fresh war chest of $30 million, which the Pauls have earmarked for the “next generation of American innovation.”
CAA adds an internet legend to its creators division. For two decades, Greg Goodfried has been an innovative operative in the creator world. After co-creating lonelygirl15, joining UTA, and helping the D’Amelio family launch brands, Goodfried is now joining CAA as an agent.
Noel Miller is saying goodbye to the Tiny Meat Gang podcast. For years, Miller and his partner Cody Ko co-hosted one of the most-listened-to podcasts on YouTube. After allegations against Ko caused him to step back from the show, Miller kept Tiny Meat Gang running, but he recently admitted that the “fundamental change” to the podcast’s personnel has been hard to get past.
A very special Netflix-Warner Bros edition of Have You Heard
Netflix’s Warner Bros. acquisition is an $82.7 billion deal. The streaming platform led by Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced its Warner Bros coup through a triumphant blog post. The bidding war for the legacy studio was fierce, but Netflix came out on top. Its reward is that it will have to contend with theatrical chains.
Paramount’s last-ditch acquisition effort is a hostile takeover. Netflix’s Warner Bros deal includes a mix of cash and stock, and it will require certain cable channels to be spun off. Paramount is positioning its all-cash offer as a stable option that is more likely to receive regulatory approval, though Netflix execs don’t seem to be worried about the possibility of their deal being nixed.
Larry Ellison’s plan for Warner Bros. would have been nakedly partisan. The Oracle boss and Trump ally wanted to acquire Warner Bros. so that he could force out certain CNN personalities. I think we can all agree that we dodged a bullet there. Ellison will have to settle for a massive role related to the spun-off version of TikTok.
The internet is a strange place
Is watching someone trip the key to longevity? In streams on YouTube, X, and Instagram, Bryan Johnson consumes psilocybin mushrooms while his followers watch from afar. Hearing people describe their trips is infamously dull, but there’s something oddly compelling about watching Johnson as he embarks on his spiritual journey.
Subreddit drama forced Reddit to tighten its moderator rules. After an /r/art moderator went on a bit of a power trip, Reddit put a limit on how many subreddits its mods are allowed to oversee. I guess that’s one way to discover that art is inherently subjective.
Columbia Sportswear tells flat-earthers to prove it. The apparel brand is promising to pay up if someone photographs the end of the world. Of course, if said photographer accidentally falls off the edge of the earth, how will they make it back home to claim their prize? For Columbia, the dare is a win-win.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Have you heard? PlaqueBoyMax vies for the dance track of the year while Pepsi MAX spreads holiday cheer.
Recently, YouTube Shorts content strategists have noticed a curious trend across channel analytics dashboards. On some channels, viewership of older Shorts has declined precipitously, suggesting that YouTube is tinkering with its recommendation algorithm to favor newer uploads.
One operative who noticed the downturn is Mario Joos, who was appointed earlier this year as the CEO of the brotherly creator channel Stokes Twins. On LinkedIn, Joos shared a telling screenshot that shows anonymous viewership data. Sometime in September, “dozens of channels” experienced what Joos dubbed “the flattening.” Uploads published more than 30 days prior saw sudden and dramatic viewership declines, while newer uploads remained unaffected.
Photo credit: Mario Joos via LinkedIn
Other creators and channel owners validated Joos’ findings by noting the downturns they had discovered in their Shorts analytics. “2B views on this chart, and in September all of the evergreen videos simply tanked,” creator Tim Chesney wrote on social media. “It pushes the creator to produce more instead of better. In the long run, if the trend continues, YouTube will become the same trash bin as TikTok.”
Joos echoed Chesney by arguing that this sort of algorithmic update makes its harder for channels to put out quality content. “I don’t believe this is a creator focused update,” he wrote. “It feels more like a push to hit internal targets and compete with TikTok. But if that’s the case, it’s creating a massive overcorrection that hurts almost every creator on the platform.”
Both Chesney and Joos invoked TikTok in their commentary, and the prevailing theory seems to be that YouTube is tinkering with its algorithm in an attempt to keep up with its rivals. Meta, for example, has adjusted its algorithm to favor newer uploads as part of a broader effort to promote original content.
If YouTube is trying to keep up with the short-form Joneses, it wouldn’t be the first time. After falling behind TikTok in terms of raw viewership numbers, YouTube adjusted its view-counting methodology on Shorts so that it could make the numbers go up.
Pushing creators to upload more new Shorts could also lead to higher overall view counts, but that growth comes at a cost. Last decade, when YouTube shuffled its algorithm to turn watch time into the most important metric, some creators found it difficult to keep pace. Sure, gamers like PewDiePie used the new algorithm to get ahead, but on the whole, YouTube’s watch time era seemed to favor corporate media companies. Channels with enough resources to post new long-form videos every day gained a crucial algorithmic advantage.
Even if individual creators can figure out how to thrive amid the new Shorts meta, they may feel frustrated by YouTube’s algorithmic switch-up. The observed change seems to be yet another update that YouTube enacted behind the scenes without informing its community. Tubefilter reached out to Google for comment, and we will share updates as they become available.
