Streampunks

YouTube and the Rebels Remaking Media

Robert Kyncl, Maany Peyvan

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780062657732
• eBook ISBN: 9780062657749
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Business

An entertainment and tech insider—YouTube’s chief business officer—delivers the first detailed account of the rise of YouTube, the creative minds who have capitalized on it to become pop culture stars, and how streaming video is revolutionizing the media world.

In the past ten years, the internet video platform YouTube has changed media and entertainment as profoundly as the invention of film, radio, and television did, more than six decades earlier. Streampunks is a firsthand account of this upstart company, examining how it evolved and where it will take us next.

Sharing behind-the-scenes stories of YouTube’s most influential stars—Streampunks like Tyler Oakley, Lilly Singh, and Casey Neistat—and the dealmakers brokering the future of entertainment like Scooter Braun and Shane Smith, Robert Kyncl uses his experiences at three of the most innovative media companies, HBO, Netflix, and YouTube, to tell the story of streaming video and this modern pop culture juggernaut. Collaborating with Google speechwriter Maany Peyvan, Kyncl explains how the new rules of entertainment are being written and how and why the media landscape is radically changing, while giving aspiring Streampunks some necessary advice to launch their own new media careers.

Kyncl persuasively argues that, despite concerns about technology impoverishing artists or undermining artistic quality, the new media revolution is actually fueling a creative boom and leading to more compelling, diverse, and immersive content. Enlightening, surprising, and thoroughly entertaining, Streampunks is a revelatory ride through the new media rebellion that is reshaping our world.

1

Rise of the Streampunks

Your Orientation to a New Class of Creators

THEY COME IN cameras first.

The doors of a soundstage in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood swing open, and more than a hundred of the most successful entertainers of the digital age flood into the room, their phones held high to capture the moment while the Calvin Harris track “How Deep Is Your Love” booms over the sound system. Their ages, which span decades, seem to dictate how quickly they enter the room. The youngest, those in their late teens, rush in to get the best seats toward the front of a wide stage. The older Millennials come in behind them, prizing the opportunity to interact with each other over the chance to sit up front. The last to come through are the Gen Xers, the “elders” of YouTube, and you can spot them almost instantly; they’re the only ones with backpacks. But whether young or (relatively) old, almost all of these streampunks record their entrance to later share the moment with millions of their fans from around the world.

This is the YouTube Creator Summit, and it is one of the most privileged gatherings in entertainment. Every year, we at YouTube host the most popular personalities on the platform for a whirlwind few days in New York, where they get to socialize with one another while hearing inspirational talks from some of the leading creative voices in entertainment. It’s Davos for the digital set.

The Summit is one of the few times these creators spend off the clock. Most spend their entire year either working on new videos for their channels or engaging with their fans. Sometimes that engagement is sanctioned, during fan meetups or conventions, but most often it’s spontaneous and fueled by sightings and subsequent tweets. When word got out on social media (as it inevitably does) that more than 100 top YouTubers were in New York for the Summit, dozens of eager teenagers lined the block of their hotel for their chance at a prized selfie. And unlike many mainstream celebrities, who shy away from the public and keep their fans at arm’s length, YouTube creators tend to work the crowd. Their success is due in large part to their accessibility in the digital world, which translates into expectations of accessibility in the physical world.

Perhaps the break the Summit affords is why the creators look so at ease on this April morning in New York, clapping in surprise and breaking into smiles as many meet each other for the first time. Maybe that’s why they start to put their cameras down after capturing that initial shot and start to embrace each other. It’s a global crowd, but they recognize each other regardless, as Tyler Oakley, one of the most popular creators in the United States, hugs Brits Dan Howell and Phil Lester (all three of them are best-selling authors). Though most creators eventually sit with their compatriots, in these first five minutes there is an overwhelming sense of respect as they exchange greetings with their peers from around the world. You can sense the camaraderie between them, as if they all play for the same team.

And the truth is, no matter where they’re from, they look more alike than different. They look like people who are doing what they want to be doing for a living and don’t have to answer to anyone but themselves. They wear the rarest sneakers, the sharpest athleisure, the Brooklyn- and Berlin-based labels that are as relevant in fashion today as any you’d find in Milan. Or they just wear the global creative uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. So many have tattoos or dyed hair that the ones who don’t seem like the exceptions.

Perhaps the best hair in the room belongs to Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach (dyed Kool-Aid red) and Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin (mint green), the most popular gaming creators from the United States and Ireland, respectively. For many people unfamiliar with YouTube, the success of Mark and Seán, who primarily film themselves playing video games, is difficult to comprehend. But their model—wherein creators offer spontaneous reactions and commentary as they stream themselves playing different gaming titles—is employed by thousands of people around the world. These gamers fuel a massive-attention engine, with hundreds of millions of people spending hundreds of millions of minutes watching people play video games every single day.

But the gamers aren’t the only ones in the room making content you wouldn’t expect to see in your average prime-time lineup. They’re joined by lifestyle gurus such as Bethany Mota, Raye Boyce, and Dulce Candy Ruiz, who offer hair and makeup tutorials and lifestyle tips to their viewers. Vloggers such as Casey Neistat are commanding TV-size audiences by sharing scenes from their daily lives while offering their viewpoints direct to camera. And gadget gurus like Lewis Hilsenteger, who regularly averages a million views a video on his channel Unbox Therapy, give fans a taste of consumer gratification without having to open their wallets by revealing—or “unboxing”—the latest tech products.

The genres these creators represent—gameplay commentary, beauty tutorials, unboxing—had never been seen on TV. No executive, including those of us at YouTube, would have guessed that these genres, along with several other novel content categories, would become some of our most popular.

In fact, try placing yourself in the seat of a network studio head. If someone came to you and said they wanted to film a show of themselves nailing trick shots, braiding his or her daughter’s hair, or filming cool things with a 4K high-speed camera in superslow motion, would you give that person the green light? Probably not. But that’s exactly how the members of the sports collective Dude Perfect, the family behind Cute Girls Hairstyles, and the creators of The Slow Mo Guys racked up millions of subscribers to their channels and find themselves at the Summit today.

The stars of these original channels are joined in the room by creators who are reinventing familiar TV tropes for modern audiences. The British chefs from Sorted Food don’t just host cooking shows, they listen intently to the feedback of their viewers to prepare the dishes fans are clamoring for, with turnaround times measured in days, not seasons. Destin Sandlin, an engineer from Alabama, hosts a series called Smarter Every Day, in which he explains the physics behind topics as varied as space travel and laser tattoo removal; the series runs far more often than the educational content that airs on PBS on Saturday mornings or the occasional shows on TLC that are still focused on learning. Jamal Edwards founded the digital music network SBTV on YouTube when he was just sixteen years old, showcasing the East London grime scene that MTV had largely ignored (eventually launching Ed Sheeran’s career in the process). And Cenk Uygur, the founder of The Young Turks, created the first Internet video news show in 2002; it’s now the largest online news show in the world.

In addition to content you wouldn’t see on TV, a glance across the room reveals faces you wouldn’t typically see on the air, either. Amid controversies about diversity in Hollywood such as #OscarSoWhite, YouTube creators tend to provide a much more accurate reflection of the cultures they represent. Lilly Singh, better known to her fans as ||Superwoman||, rose to fame by embracing her immigrant origins and impersonating her Indian parents in sketch videos (I take back what I said, she has the best hair in the room). Her friend and occasional collaborator “sWooZie,” aka Adande Thorne, made waves when he interviewed President Barack Obama about topics such as police violence and racial profiling in 2016 after the final State of the Union address of his presidency. Wesley Chan, Ted Fu, and Philip Wang, of the production company Wong Fu, are determined to create series and films that feature Asian American casts, long a blind spot in Hollywood. And Sami Slimani, a lifestyle guru with Tunisian roots who goes by the name “HerrTutorial,” is one of the most popular YouTubers in Germany.

The global nature of YouTube can’t be emphasized enough, with nearly 80 percent of its traffic coming from outside the United States. In the past, a TV series that made its way from one country to another was a rare occurrence, typically a BBC hit that was then exported around the globe. On YouTube, the members of the comedy troupe Porta dos Fundos are going a long way to redefine sketch comedy in their native country of Brazil, but their videos are also being viewed by tens of millions of people in Europe and Asia. HolaSoyGerman, one of YouTube’s most popular creators, has nearly as many fans in the United States as he does in his native Chile. And nearly everyone knows that YouTube’s most viewed video of all time is Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” a K-pop song about a neighborhood in Seoul sung mostly in Korean.

Music has long been a core part of YouTube’s appeal. The platform has become a powerful source of discovery for fans interested in new music, as well as record labels interested in new talent. Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube at the age of twelve after an enterprising music executive named Scooter Braun spotted footage of him at a Canadian talent show; three years later Justin was selling out Madison Square Garden. Macklemore was another artist who burst to fame when his video “Thrift Shop” took him from YouTube sensation to Best Rap Album Grammy Award winner. Joining these now-mainstream artists are the independent, homegrown YouTube groups such as Pentatonix and Boyce Avenue, whose cover videos and original recordings have helped them mint platinum records and top charts around the world.

Digital success has translated most strikingly to the publishing world. A quarter of the creators at the Summit have written best-selling books, from Tyler Oakley’s collection of funny stories, Binge, to boxed-wine enthusiast Hannah Hart’s cookbook, My Drunk Kitchen. Zoe “Zoella” Sugg, a vlogger who lives in Brighton, wrote the fastest-selling debut novel in UK history, beating out J. K. Rowling. But by far the most famous author in the room is John Green, whose book The Fault in Our Stars is one of the best-selling books of all time and was optioned into a chart-topping film adaptation.

The film industry is increasingly casting its gaze to YouTube for talent. Both Pentatonix and German YouTube comedian/actor/DJ Flula Borg were given significant roles in the box-office smash Pitch Perfect 2. In 2009, a Uruguayan director named Fede Alvarez uploaded a short film called “Panic Attack!” about an alien invasion that he made for $300; three days later, his in-box was full of invitations to Hollywood studios, and five weeks later, he had a deal reportedly worth $30 million to direct a slate of films, including a remake of The Evil Dead. And the Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple recently released a documentary about YouTuber Gigi Gorgeous’s gender transition, which premiered at Sundance.

On TV, the story is much the same, with YouTube creators not only starring in shows but writing, producing, and occasionally directing them as well. When Rachel Bloom won a Golden Globe for her performance in the musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a TV series she also created, she thanked her cocreator, the writer Aline Brosh McKenna, who had discovered her from the humorous music videos she had uploaded to YouTube. That was a similar path to the one Issa Rae followed, transitioning from her hit YouTube series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, to her HBO series, Insecure. And Colleen Ballinger’s obnoxious character Miranda Sings was a mainstay on YouTube before she starred in and produced her own Netflix Original series, Haters Back Off.

If all of this is news to you, you might have been surprised at the results of a recent Variety survey, which asked American high schoolers to name their favorite celebrities. It was YouTubers who held the top six spots in that survey, ranking above names such as Taylor Swift, Johnny Depp, and Leonardo DiCaprio. In fact, surveys yielded similar results in Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and even Finland (where twelve of the top twenty most popular celebrities were YouTube creators!).

Those surveys begin making sense once you start asking teens and Millennials about their relationships to their favorite YouTube creators and how those bonds differ from their relationships to traditional celebrities. When we surveyed our teen and Millennial subscribers, 40 percent told us that YouTubers understood them better than their friends or family.^* But a whopping 60 percent of them told us that a creator has changed their life or view of the world.

Perhaps that’s why traditional TV stars are increasingly using YouTube as a way to connect to a younger generation of viewers. In the 1990s, the late-night wars were a battle fought between two networks during one time slot. Today, the battlefield has shifted online, with Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert joining Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, and Seth Meyers as late-night stars racking up views every hour of every day. Indeed the format of late night itself has changed, moving away from what felt like rehearsed promotional interviews to a series of skits that we can snack on individually during a quick mobile break.

The world of sports is undergoing a similar transformation. YouTube has long been the home of highlights, the place to catch last night’s can’t-miss dunk or the latest gravity-bending goal. More and more, we’re also getting to see what happens off the court as well, with behind-the-scenes footage and training camp film being shared online. And forward-thinking sports leagues such as the NBA and NFL are increasingly sharing archival footage of old games on YouTube, giving the truly devoted fans among us yet another way to enjoy the sports we love. Today’s generation of sports fans can now watch MJ in his prime as easily as they can see Steph Curry in his.

Even advertising has found new life online. You may think of commercials as something you can skip on YouTube, but in fact content created by brands accounts for some of the most popular videos on the platform every single year. A new generation of Mad men and women, motivated by the fact that commercials can extend beyond the limits of the average thirty-second spot, are creating some of the most brilliant advertisements ever seen. The Super Bowl used to be the only time people tuned in just to watch ads. Today, they do so every day. In fact, brands have started running prospective Super Bowl ads on YouTube first as part of our annual “Ad Blitz,” so they can choose the most popular spot to air during the big game.

And so the world of YouTube extends far beyond this Chelsea soundstage, encompassing Madison Avenue and Madison Square Garden, the Thirty Mile Zone of Hollywood (yes, that’s what TMZ stands for), and the foreign film capitals of Bollywood and Nollywood. It’s connected to every music capital, from Nashville to Berlin to Seoul, and to national capitals, too, offering up the latest news from Washington, London, Brussels, and Moscow. It attracts talent from every corner of the earth, with tens of millions of aspiring creators in places as far afield as Rio and Nairobi, Dubai and Mumbai, Tokyo and Tel Aviv. It even reaches back into the past, providing the most comprehensive archive of human history to date, keeping records of events both banal and transcendent, from trips to the zoo to trips to the moon.

The enormity of what’s happening on YouTube is why I felt compelled to join it. Prior to YouTube, I had worked at Mutual Film Company (a movie financier) and HBO before decamping to Netflix. It was there that I found a passion for what the Internet could bring to entertainment, helping lead the company’s transition from a mail-order DVD business to a streaming subscription service. But it was YouTube’s open and global nature, its limitless potential, and its global presence that led me firmly to believe that it represented the future of entertainment. When I was given an opportunity to help YouTube shape its future and attract even more great content, I leapt at the chance.

And now it’s time for me to take the stage and kick off this day of inspiration for our top YouTubers, where they’ll hear about creativity from the Coen brothers, about successful show running from Aziz Ansari, where they’ll cook with Rachael Ray, discuss trends in comedy with the women from Broad City, and tell stories with the team behind The Moth. As luck would have it, I have some good news to share, as Interpublic, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, has just announced that it will shift $250 million from its budget for TV commercials over to YouTube. With TV ratings declining and YouTube’s reach growing at incredible speed, many in the press call it a sign of things to come.

Armed with that bit of knowledge, I go up to the microphone: “Wel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Rise of the Streampunks: Your Orientation to a New Class of Creators
• 2. ||Superwoman|| Comes to the Supermarket: Why Shelf Space Is the Key to Understanding How the Media Industry Works Today
• 3. Nerding Out: The Green Brothers and the Importance of Online Community Building
• 4. True Blue Hair: Tyler Oakley, Authenticity, and the Changing Nature of Celebrity
• 5. No Passport Necessary: Lilly Singh, Mr. Bean, K-Pop, and the Global Media Melting Pot
• 6. Show Me Something I Haven’t Seen Before: Satire, Representation, and Bias in Online Video
• 7. Stick to Your Quilting: The Deep Appeal of Narrow Niches
• 8. The Struggle Is Real: Why Today’s Stars Have to Give 110 Percent in a 24/7 World
• 9. Revenue Streams: Funding Creativity in the Digital Age
• 10. “This Just Uploaded . . .”: Vice, Storyful, and the New Business of the News Business
• 11. [Pardon] Welcome the Interruption: Casey Neistat Is Making Ads Great Again
• 12. Streampunk Rock!: The Fall and Rise of the Music Industry
• 13. What to Watch Next: Just When You Had Millennials Figured Out, Here Comes Gen Z
• Conclusion: A Window to the World
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher