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It’s Thursday and Netflix wants to take Stranger Things fans back to the ‘80s with a VHS-style rerelease of the show’s first season. |
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Today’s News |
🏫 Streamer University is in session 🛑 YouTube limits eating disorder content 📈 This week on the branded charts… 🤖 Spotify doubles down on AI 🎸 Tessa Violet helps fans relive 2014
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STREAMER UNIVERSITY |
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School is in session. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images.) |
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At Kai Cenat’s Streamer University, the stars have aligned (and enrolled) |
The big event: What happens when you combine the aesthetics of a scholastic setting with the personalities of big-name creators? |
Kai Cenat first answered that question in 2025, when he launched Streamer University and quickly accumulated 27 million hours of watch time across all participating accounts. Now, the 24-year-old Bronx native is bringing creators back to school. |
Eight months after his record-breaking Mafiathon 3 event, Cenat reemerged to drop a Hogwarts-inspired trailer for the second edition of Streamer University—and a star-studded attendance list. This year’s event will bring students like Jasontheween and PlaqueBoyMax to Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas (a change from last year’s setting at the University of Akron). Classes and student clubs will be led by professors and faculty like Lizzo, FaZe Adapt, Cinna, Ludwig, T-Pain, and Lethal Shooter. |
The context: The streaming world has evolved in the year since Cenat first launched Streamer University. While large-scale collabs have long been popular among streamers, that format took off after the creator dismissed his first class. MrBeast pitted 50 streamers against one another in a massive competition, and French streamers united to raise €16 million for charity. |
Now, amid a creator culture obsessed with tentpole events, Cenat is ensuring that his collabs are as splashy and groundbreaking as possible. He’ll lead the way by broadcasting Streamer University happenings on his personal channels. |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
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YouTube has limited eating disorder videos, but there’s more work to do. |
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GOSPEL STATS 📈 |
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MrBeast is on top of the charts (again). |
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Top Branded Videos: MrBeast, FIFA, and nostalgic toys |
Even the World Cup can’t knock MrBeast off the top of the charts. For the second week in a row, a video sponsored by the international soccer tourney came second to a MrBeast challenge in Gospel Stats’ ranking of most-watched branded YouTube videos. |
🥇 #1. MrBeast Gaming x Feastables: If You Build It, I’ll Buy It! (50M views)
For his latest cash-fueled challenge, MrBeast offered five builders a real-life car and a chance at a $250,000 house if they could construct a digital version of a Tesla. Like most MrBeast Gaming uploads, this one promoted his chocolate line, Feastables.
🥈 #2. Max the Meat Guy and FIFA: FIFA Street Food Battle: Uruguay vs Saudi Arabia #ad (42M views)
Max the Meat Guy‘s partnership with FIFA makes it clear that the international organization’s PR team thought out of the box when setting up creator collabs. It would’ve been easy for FIFA to exclusively work with sports influencers; instead, the org spread its sponsorships across creators from every niche, resulting in varied content like Max’s World Cup-inspired food battle. |
🎰 #2,664. ilinnuc x Mall of Toys: This New “Beyblade” Game Is Going Viral…And It’s Awesome. (58.5K views)
This week’s wildcard video comes with a hefty dose of nostalgia. Mall of Toys, which sells the iconic ‘90s toy brand Beyblades, teamed up with gaming creator ilinnuc to bring fans of the Beyblade-inspired game Slayblade to its digital storefront. |
Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights. |
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AI BOOM |
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Spotify is going all in on AI. |
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Spotify is using AI to turn Wrapped into a year-round phenomenon |
The update: If you love Spotify Wrapped but don’t want to wait until December to dive into your personal listening stats, you might want to consider paying for Spotify Premium. Users in that tier can now access a conversational AI chatbot to find out when and how often they’ve listened to specific tracks. |
Premium subscribers can find the chatbot on the Spotify app’s Home screen, where a search bar prompts users to “Talk to Spotify.” The bot offers a typical assortment of contextual functions. Users can have the AI assistant generate a playlist inspired by their favorite artists, skip to a previous section in a podcast, or provide audiobook recommendations. |
The Wrapped angle: The Spotify bot’s relationship with Wrapped adds an interesting wrinkle to the equation. Premium users can ask the bot to tell them how many times they’ve listened to a particular song, and which genres and artists they’ve been playing most often. |
Those details were previously reserved for Spotify’s end-of-year Wrapped posts, which have evolved into such a cultural sensation that other platforms have begun emulating the same format. Last year, for instance, YouTube put a capstone on 2025 with personalized recaps that bore a strong resemblance to Spotify Wrapped posts. |
With Wrapped clones popping up all over the web, Spotify has taken steps to ensure that periodical wrap-ups remain closely associated with its platform. It celebrated its 20th birthday with a lifetime edition of Wrapped that included personalized playlists filled with each user’s all-time most-listened-to tracks. Now, through its AI chatbot, Spotify is making sure Premium users can feel the Wrapped rush whenever they like. |
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WATCH THIS 👀 |
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Ah, the era of ukuleles and twee. |
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Tessa Violet is taking fans back to 2014 |
The never-before-seen video: If you’ve been a fan of Tessa Violet since the 2010s, you’re in for a nostalgic treat. On Tuesday, the YouTuber-turned-musician brought viewers back in time by releasing a never-before-seen music video filmed in 2014 for her track, “Just Right.” That reveal came shortly after the song went unexpectedly viral thanks to players of the game Geometry Dash. |
Of course, if you’re in the mood for a more 2020s-style musical experience, you can always tune into Violet’s latest music video, “Something to Lose.” |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. |
