In this week's newsletter, we delve into Whalar's vision for creator campuses and run through the numbers from TikTok’s music festival In the Mix, and our creator of the week is someone who shares my namesake but with a cooler accent and a lot more wacky ideas.

Goodbye, Coffee Shops, Hello, Campuses!

Whalar, the company known for its creator and talent management services, is entering the creator office and educational space with the launch of The Lighthouse. The Lighthouse, which will have two campuses opening up in Venice, California, and Brooklyn, New York, in 2024, with a third expected to open in London in 2025, The campuses will provide creators with facilities like podcast suites, editing bays, photography and music studios, and a test kitchen to use to create content. The campuses will also offer career development programming hosted by guest creators and industry experts.

Along with the launch, longtime creators Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, also known as Colin and Samir, will co-chair the initiative's creator council and elect future council members, but they will also become Lighthouse's first ever creator-in-residences, with an office space at Lighthouse Venice.

The Lighthouse will be a four-year application membership program, which will cost around $5,750 per year ($23,000 for all four years), but it will also offer an economically friendly alternative called "Lighthouse Academy," which will be a subsided membership for underrepresented creators from the local community and will provide them access to the physical spaces, production spaces, and mentorship programs.

I think Whalar is extremely ahead of its time with this concept and program. We constantly see that more and more kids and young adults want to become YouTubers, creators, or social media influencers. With that being the case, there really aren't any colleges or trade schools offering a direct path to becoming one. So, I see this as a trade school where you spend $23,000 for a four-year education to learn and understand how to apply the knowledge to real-world solutions.

Move Over Coachella, TikTok In the Mix Just Set the Festival World on Fire

TikTok's In The Mix was a music festival that took place at Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona, and that had headlining acts by artists and performers like Cardi B and Peso Pluma. Charlie Puth, Niall Horan, and Anitta broke was a massive success and even broke TikTok's record for most viewed livestream on the platform.

On the day of the festival, a total of 9.6 million people tuned in to watch the concert, but it doesn't stop there. TikTok aired three rebroadcasts of the event, with brands like Paramount and Coca-Cola sponsoring those rebroadcasts, and released an hour-long special on Disney+ and Hulu. With the additional rebroadcasts, the total viewership for the entire event totaled a whopping 33.5 million people, which doesn't include in-person ticket sales for a sold-out crowd of around 17,000.

While the festival featured big names, TikTok also used it as a chance to highlight artists from Elevate, a TikTok initiative that identifies and incubates emerging talent on its platform. Paul Hourican, the Global Head of Music Partnerships and Programming, had this to say about In the Mix and what it showcased: "the power of the platform’s [TikTok's] music discovery.

I wrote about this event two issues ago and what it could mean for creators and brands if it was a success. Most brands and creators aren't willing to participate in the marketing material for the first year of an event because they have fears of all the things that could go wrong. But now that TikTok has proven that it can produce an event of this scale successfully, I am certain that next year, In the Mix will not only be bigger and better but will also include more opportunities for brand activations and a stronger push with creators.

📸 Creator of the Week 📸

Meet Max Fosh!

Max is a UK-based content creator and trickster. Max's content is centered around hair-brain ideas that you would never think were possible to pull off. Some of my favorites include " I Legally Became Draco Malfoy's Best Friend" and " I Got A Presidential Pardon For A Crime I Committed In 2009."

YouTube tricksters and pranksters are notorious for having a bad wrap for being obnoxious and rude. That's where Max's content is different; his pranks don't come at the cost of someone's humiliation. Rather, it comes to a lighthearted ending where anyone involved has a good laugh and the viewers sit in shock wondering how he was able to pull off his wacky idea.

I can't count the number of times I finish watching one of his videos and ask myself how the hell he pulled it off. Max, your videos only get better and better with every crazy idea. So keep on being silly, and hopefully we Maxs can join forces to create a truly silly idea.

Check out Max's latest video here.