Remember Buzzfeed quizzes? Let's do one for the creator economy. Honor code. I'm going to list what I consider to be the top 50 creator economy trends happening in 2026. No cheating! Count the amount you're hip to and I'll give you a score at the end. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Kai Cenat built the thing Hollywood forgot how to make: ways for new talent to break into the industry. Streamer University has resulted in many of the most exciting new social media stars from the past few years: Tota MC, Rakai, Yonna, Snowcone. If these names mean nothing to you, it's time to catch up! Let's talk about what Kai is doing, why it works, and how you can play.
It's me! Phil Ranta!
And I'm not even writing this with AI. Here I'll prove it by saying something AI would never say: "I don't like your idea. You should just stop trying to fix it."
This community is built to connect people in the creator economy, big creators and small creators, interns and CEOs, LDA compliant creators and alcohol brands, and everythign in between.
But most importantly, I believe there should be spaces where you can feel free to ask dumb questions, provide advice for free, or laugh during the workday.
I promise you: nobody here will make a bigger fool out of themselves than I will.
Proof, here's the graphic of my short-lived NFT podcast that took me hours per episode to dig deep into NFT culture and nobody listened to:
Anyways, I'm on here daily. I hope you will be too. Enjoy!
- Phil Ranta
Sick of all of those 'comment your email in this LinkedIn post to apply for my brand deal' posts?
Here's the last one you need.
Add your roster to the Internet Creator Roster Database and brands can search your roster, get some contextual data (full data is private), then easily reach out to you, their wonderful reps.
Free here: https://icrdb.com
For the first time, Forbes' Top 50 creators cleared a combined $1 billion in earnings. Champagne, right? Not so fast. The top 10 took home over 60% of that money, and the gap between the mega-creators and everyone else is widening at the worst possible time. Let's talk about what this means for the creator middle class, and the reps who serve them.
We all want children to be safe, right? But are social media bans really about child safety or government controlling speech? There are loud voices on both sides but, most importantly, if you couch any issue in something as popular as 'child safety' the citizenry is likely to be on the side of the bill. Is there a middle-ground to be reached?
VidCon 2026 is in the books and we're all in 'hot takes on LinkedIn and email follow-ups' zone. And with Cannes looming large over creator economy conferences, there were a ton of takes to be taken. I'm mirroring the format of my last issue preparing for VidCon to talk about what I saw, what the leaders were talking about, and the future of the conference.
Every year I write a version of this, but this year I wanted to dive deeper. Are you going? Do you know what you're going to do? Is everyone giving you bad advice? I won't. This is it. This is the whole game:
There's FYPM, and it's essential, but what happens when deals aren't 'flat fee' anymore. There's no Glassdoor for brand deals. No Kelley Blue Book, no Zillow estimate telling you what a 1M-subscriber gaming creator's mid-roll is "worth." The entire pricing layer of this industry runs on backchannel texts and "hey, what'd they offer you?" DMs. And this week, a report dropped that's about to make that whisper network a lot harder to read.
Stephen Colbert's CBS show ended and he immediately set up @colbert on YouTube and TikTok. Meanwhile, the last few weeks involved Jay Shetty getting $100m to go to Netflix and Spotify, Guy Fieri and Travis Kelce announced YouTube shows, The Sidemen got an Amazon Prime cooking show, Netflix announce real-time syndication of The Breakfast Club, and Spy Ninjas is betting $25m that they can go Hollywood. What does this cross-pollination mean for creators and creatives?
How often has the creator economy heard this story: company gains traction, raises nine-figures from huge investors, announces shutdown a few years later. There are a few companies in the market today that lay somewhere on this path! But StreamElements had 23 million users, a really useful tech stack for streamers (especially earlier in their growth), and a consistent flow of brand deals. This wasn't some fly-by-night operation. So what can we learn from this?
The FaZe Clan is dead. Long live the FaZe Clan. Er...I guess I mean CORE, the new name with the same game. After a disastrous negotiation where FaZe's ownership attempted to get the team to sign contracts taking 20% of their whole books of business, the team had an epic group quitting, only to reform last week as CORE. Are all talent-led lifestyle brands doomed to suffer the same fate?
Attending the Brand Innovators Creator Economy Summit at Dhar Mann Studios wasn't just an honor, but I felt like I was invited into a space where people like me generally aren't allowed. This was elite creators like Adam W, Nic Cannon, Jordan Matter, our client Devan Key, and Dhar himself, along with brand leaders who control massive influencer marketing budgets. But what happened on stage wasn't the story. We've seen those panels. What happened in the hallway convos is where the magic happened.
Didn't get tickets to Coachella this year? Don't worry. You could watch every second of every stage for free on YouTube, with concert-film-quality streams. Or if you're in it for the vibes, you could tune in to the hundreds of influencers streaming, story-ing, and good old-fashioned vlogging the two weekend concerts. And this year the shows felt even more 'internety'. Coachella is driving youth culture, so let's dive into what creators, brands, and publishers can learn from it.
Meta's Head of Global Business, Nicola Mendelsohn, said something at Shoptalk Spring that we've all been feeling: link-in-bio tools were useful solutions to platform problems. Now, Mendelsohn actually said the words "the era of link in bio is finally over." Reminder: Linktree has raised $166m for their link-in-bio solution, and there are a slew of similar companies with respectable funding and traction. Let's look into the status of link-in-bios, where platforms are honing in on their business, and what the future may be for these companies.
Losing a $6 million lawsuit for companies like Meta and Google is a rounding error of a rounding error, like when the guys in the movie Office Space stole fractions of a penny per transaction. But, also like the guys from Office Space, this could have disastrous impacts as a bellwether ruling. If one 20-year old can sue them and win for their product causing depression, and there have been strong academic studies linking social media time to increased depression and even suicide, this could be the first domino to fall. Does this mean Congress will finally leave their lobbyist-sponsored lobster dinners and do something?
There's been a two-year debate in the creator rep community about whether or not AI will take our jobs. The most common answer, "No way! What I do is so unique and special and valuable that it can't be done!" I may have even been one of those people. So I decided to spend this weekend being a terrible father and to spend 20 hours in Claude Code vibe-coding three of my most time-consuming tasks: adding value to our creators, pitching brands, and building businesses in the creator economy. How did it do? The answer will shock you! Maybe!
Spotter, perhaps best known as a creator investment company that holds the sales rights for many of the top YouTube creators' catalogues, held its second annual 'Spotter Showcase' in NYC last week. The theme? Creator TV. But wait, you may be saying, haven't we just witnessed two decades of 24/7 creator channels on Pluto TV, dozens of digital-first premium platforms from go90 to Quibi hit the advertising market, not to mention Tubi, Amazon, and Netflix buying creator shows left and right? So what does Spotter mean by 'Creator TV' and how is it different this time?
MrBeast's editor bet on the wrong horse. He won over $5,000 on Kalshi by betting (or, as they call it, 'predicting') with insider info. He was forced to pay the money back plus a $15,000 fine. But this just shows the flaw we all know about these 'prediction markets' as they legally have to call themselves: almost every non-sports-related bet has someone who has knowledge of or can impact the outcome. And there have been accusations from creators to the White House. Since there are so many creators playing and being sponsored by these prediction markets, is this an FTX-sized scandal waiting to happen?
Night Media announced a $70 million raise shortly after Fixated announced a $50 million raise (transparency note: I was their founding COO). Both said in their press releases that these funds will be used for M&A in the creator economy, signaling that huge, moneyed interests believe the industry is too bifurcated and ready for a massive roll-up. But this is the second time we've seen this. The first: the end of the MCN era. So is it doomed to be another creator economy bubble destined to burst, or is this what is needed to finally stop all of the 'Wild Wild West' analogies?
Happy President's Day! Originally created to celebrate George Washington, then Lincoln, and now even William Henry Harrison gets some props in North Bend, Ohio. So it's a great time to look at some of the most pressing issues our government faces in the creator economy, and why, in my humble opinion, the United States is asleep at the wheel while driving over a bridge without guardrails and a 500-foot drop over a ravine of shark-agators.
By all accounts, YouTube had an unbelievable 2025. For the first time, Alphabet revealed 2025 annual YouTube earnings, which topped $60b, with over $41b coming directly from YouTube ad revenue. This comes at a time when other OTT players, notably Ted Sarandos of Netflix, have taken aim at YouTube's social impact. So what does this impressive number mean for YouTube creators?
Paramount+ joins previously announced Netflix and Disney+ with leaked documents announcing a push into short-form content. Oh, did I forget to mention their real competitors in the space? TikTok, YouTube, Meta, Snap, and, you know, every other social app on Earth. Does this make more sense now than the Quibi days?
If April 24, 2024 seems like a long time ago, that's because it absolutely was. But that's when then-President Biden signed the bipartisan legislation into law, wherein TikTok must either be sold to an American entity by January 19, 2025, or shut down completely. A year after the deadline and with only one dark night, the app has survived and thrived. But what will happen to it next?
Creator economy, assemble! Get all of the hot takes from the industry insiders that live this stuff. Perfect for professional creators, creator economy experts, aspiring social media people, and people who look at the creator economy news like watching the howler monkey cage at the zoo.
