New York City: Home To The Next Generation of Young YouTubers

Brief history: YouTube is a global platform, with creators all around the world. But every 5 years or so, specific locations become hubs for breakout and rising YouTube talent. Los Angeles was an enormous factor contributing to the success of new media expression, with teenagers coming together and popularising vlogging, filmmaking, online entrepreneurship & more. However, with those original creators moving on and possible LA fatique, the hustle and bustle of New York has now become the current exciting place to create.

New kids on the block: Casey Neistat led the NYC-based mixture of filmmaking, lifestyle and storytelling videos but creators like Tejas Huller, Colt Kirwan, Kelly Wakasa, Ashley Alexander, Luke Eich and more are all making a cool impact too. These young YouTuber’s create around different niches from adventurous content, to pop-culture breakdowns, lifestyle vlogs, filmmaking tips & more.

People already love the excitement which NYC brings, now there are all these creators capturing unique aspects of the city’s chaos.

Mr Cole Bennett: The Collider of Worlds

The Chicago music video director, Cole Bennett, has slowly unveiled his groundbreaking musical album “All Is Yellow" over the past few months. The founder of Lyrical Lemonade has been creating on YouTube since 2013, with the channel amassing 21.4M subscribers so far. His work for artists such as Juice World, Lil Skies, Drake, Eminem, Jack Black, Justin Bieber and more has accumulated 11 billion views.

His entire aim is to bring together artists who would traditionally never collaborate such as Jack Harlow and Dave on “Stop Giving Me Advice” which has already gained 6M views since it’s release in December.

Creating just one video is a commitment in itself, but Cole plans on filming a unique video for each song. A total of 8 videos have been released from the 16-song album. The reoccuring theme of the album is yellow ties, black suits and a yellow curtain.

Video directors are traditionally hired by artists and can only create as much as labels allow. However, given the reputation of Cole Bennett’s directing skills alongside his relationships with artists’, he’s been able to string together a complete tracklist of stars who trust his vision. For each song, Cole secures the track licensing then approaches the artists most suitable for that sound. Everytime it’s an unreleased song with two or more rappers who’d never be seen together if it wasn’t for “All Is Yellow”.

Sticks Release BTS of Episode 4 In Their YouTuber Trailer Series

It’s that time again. The Nicotra twins have just released their latest trailer on a YouTube creator - this time on Zach King. The Australian twins are embarking on a mega-series, creating these 4-5 minute trailers on creators until they finish it with a Mr Beast feature length film. The only catch, set by Mr Beast himself, is that the talks for his movie will only start when Sticks hit 5M subscribers.

Their format: Each trailer is a masterclass in filmmaking, research, casting & creativity. The Nicotra brothers both have a background in video production and use YouTube as a platform to express their art and collaborate at the highest level.

The effort is to make this trailer happen was unreal - secretly preparing the script alongside Zach’s wife, found an almost identical lookalike, travelled & filmed in his childhood town & visually recreated his entire story starting as a kid, teenager and now as an adult.

The final goal: Sticks have only released four episodes now - Airrack, Ryan Trahan, Mark Rober and now Zach King. It’s exciting how early we are in the series, there is potential for so many creator trailers before Mr Beast. As of February 13th 2024, the boys have 463,000 subscribers & it’s growing very quickly!!

Latest on STORY STREET: Why Jack Quit University To Work With The Inspired Unemployed

So many creator’s are impacting society in their own creative way. This new generation of media culture is slowly unfolding and most impactful on YouTube. This year on STORY STREET, we’re trying to produce authentic creator documentaries, which help personalise these remarkable individuals and their story.

Jack Soepono is the videographer for the Inspired Unemployed’s YouTube channel which has 125,000 subscribers with 236 videos. Matt Ford and Jack Steele are pioneers in Australia’s creator space. The duo create short comedic sketches but have built an impactful presence on YouTube this year too. They are constantly travelling, taking on new adventures and creating content - so for Jack, his job is to capture it all and upload it to YouTube. Being apart of the Inspired team means Jack get’s to experience the adventues too. You’ll find out in Jack’s STORY STREET documentary that he has an entirely unique and inspiring story outside of T.I.U too & his journey to full-time creating began a long time ago…

Top 3 Videos Of The Week 🌐

Business moves in the creator space 💡

1. Ryan Trahan launches a sour candy company JoyRide with a superbowl-like commercial directed by Sticks. The ad features Mr Beast, Mark Rober, Colin & Samir and Airrack.

2. Cole Bennett prepares for the Lyrical Lemonade drink release in March 2024. You can already buy their lemonade, however, they are

   re-launching with new branding, more flavours and different cans.

STORY STREET Update 🌐

This is the first week of trying a new format for the STORY STREET magazine. There will of course be feature articles coming soon but a newsletter feels fun too, like a nice morning update whilst sipping a cuppa. Also, this year we are posting a lot more short-form content - more BTS of us trying to build a newsletter / documentary company from scratch.

The STORY STREET newsletter will release every Sunday 🩵

We started STORY STREET in August 2023 and hopefully we can create something amazing, whilst positively impacting as many people as possible.

- Tom