The Creator Rep
Agents, managers, and business-savvy creators! This newsletter will give you the top news, strategies, and interviews relevant to creator representatives from Phil Ranta, who has been a 'creator manager manager' for over a decade!
Featured Posts
How to Help Los Angeles
A lot is going on in the digital industry, but, to be honest, as a proud resident of Los Angeles who just saw a large portion of my city burn, it just doesn't seem like the right week. I'll talk about the TikTok ban in next week's edition (which is also a day after the ban will go into effect).
60 Best New(ish) Creator Economy Platforms
Creator economy start ups are springing up left and right these days, and, as any creator or rep can tell you, there's no way to properly vet every single one. So I went ahead and did it for you! From updates on the obvious to new entrants, here's the top 100 on my mind, not including any that don't have products you can sign up to right now (for example, we all know services companies are cool but not exactly something you can hop on and use right now). Please also note: I'm sure I'll miss plenty so if you work at a platform I missed, I mean no offense!
YouTube's 20th Birthday Celebration 🎉
This week marked YouTube's 20th birthday, from a video at a zoo talking about elephant trunks to multi-billion dollar businesses (if MrBeast's math is to be believed). Let's give some space to where YouTube is, where it's heading, and why it's still the best place to build a digital video career.
Archive
Why We Built Stealth Talent 🕵🏼♀️
Greetings from sunny Monte Carlo, where I'm speaking at the 2025 Microsoft MSN Summit. Along with a new company newsletter refresh! Stealth Talent is now out of stealth, and we're bringing together the best creators and entrepreneurs to build generational companies. Because the spirit of 'The Creator Rep' newsletter is providing value to representatives of creators, and we're building a creator representation company, I'm going to get overly transparent and tell you exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we could fail.
The TikTok to SNL Pipeline 👷🏼♀️
Five new hires at SNL. Five faces you've probably seen on your FYP page. This is the most internet-heavy SNL additions we've seen on a show that has thrived on YouTube for decades. The virality of 'Lazy Sunday' made sketch comedy on the platform cool, which stayed the norm for the first 10 years of growth. And although SNL has had some internet-heavy past hires (I was watching Sarah Sherman a lot back when she was Sarah Squirm online), we're seeing the tipping point tip even harder. Does this mean TikTok is the new Second City?
How To Run a Talent Representation Org 💌
In honor of Labor Day in the U.S., I've been reflecting on what I've learned from working as an executive at six different digital organizations, where my primary role involved building careers for creators. None of these were failures (all of my start up failures were when I ventured out of the creator space), but some grew faster than others. And, more importantly, I'm more proud of some than others. I demoed bits of this in my LinkedIn post yesterday, but I wanted to make a special edition where I focused on my most important learnings from my time in this space.
Will AI Save Us or Destroy Us? 🤷🏻♂️
Markiplier is doing the AI work capitalism can't: launching a 501c3 non-profit with industry experts called Real Good AI, with a goal to figure out how AI can be used for humanitarian means. I also attended a meeting-of-the-minds at UCLA this week with one hundred of LA's leading creator economy AI experts, and when asked for a show of hands around who is an AI pessimist, I was only one of a handful (though my feelings are more complicated than that black/white sampling). Let's look at some likely outcomes from the AI revolution.
Digital Media's Blockbuster Era 👑
With only 24 hours of advance notice, Taylor Swift appeared on her boyfriend Travis Kelce's sports podcast 'New Heights' to officially announce her 12th studio album 'Life of a Showgirl'. The result? 1.2m concurrent viewers and 11m views in 24 hours. And the internet is abuzz with 'K-Pop Demon Hunter', the movie that topped 200m views on Netflix and already amassed well over 1 billion streams on Spotify in two months since its release. Oh, and this week, MrBeast did a live stream on Kick and raised over $12m dollars. Are we entering our digital blockbuster era?
Roblox Reaches 1 Trillion Views 🤯
If every man, woman, and child on Earth spent their entire day watching 100 YouTube videos of Roblox, we'd still be 180b views short. Roblox isn't a game. It's a platform where kids (80% of users are under 18) socialize, monetize, and, yes, play games. Not to be confused with the very similar Minecraft, another platform that hit 1 trillion YouTube views back in 2021. What does this milestone teach us about how games should view the creator economy?
Charity is SO Hot Right Now 👼🏼
Ryan Trahan raised over $11m for St. Jude's by visiting 50 states in 50 days. MrBeast and Mark Rober announced #TeamWater to raise $40m to bring clean water to households. And don't sleep on creators like DrLupo and Jacksepticeye, gamers with yearly initiatives who have each raised tens of millions of dollars. Charity is hot right now, and I'll get a bit cynical and break down why now is the perfect time.
Sydney Sweeney is Not an Outlier 👖
A lot of ink was spilled this week about Sydney Sweeney's dominance as the 'it' influencer, following a drop of her American Eagle ad, which led to a 22% bump in the stock price, adding a projected $228 million in valuation to the company. Yes, this is influencer marketing. No, this is not an anomaly. I'll break down what happened.
Mia Zelu is Not Real 🤖
The real winner at Wimbledon: Mia Zelu's puppet master. Or puppet masters. At the time of this writing, it has not been released whether this AI model was created by a brand or a 14-year-old with a Midjourney subscription. Both feel equally plausible. So what does this 18-week-old account with millions of likes and enviable media virality say about the future of AI creators?
Is AI Welcome in Social Content? 🤖
YouTube has clarified its stance on its recent demonetization announcement. When they announced plans to demonetize 'repetitious content,' they actually meant 'inauthentic content,' which I find even more confusing. They also clarified that they still welcome AI content. Meanwhile, other platforms vary from a full embrace of AI to a full rebuttal, sometimes both on the same platform. So, where do the platforms currently stand with AI?
Are All Talent Managers the Same? 🤷🏻♂️
July 4 always makes for a slow news week as most execs are on some sort of yacht in some sort of amazing place. So I figured it would be a great time to reflect on talent management companies and ask the operative question creators are always asking each other: what's the difference? I'll cover a few things creators should know before they sign, and discuss how some of the top orgs are differentiating themselves.
Beast Breaks With AI Thumbs 👍🏼
MrBeast, the world's biggest YouTuber, has a YouTube analytics and optimization platform called ViewStats. He launches an AI thumbnail product (we've seen many of these) for $80 per month, where you can automate thumbnails just like MrBeast's. The product works, but the internet goes nuts because they hate AI. He shuts it down. So what does this mean for the future of AI products in the creator economy?