One of the biggest misconceptions of the modern age is who has money and who doesn't. The folks we think are killing it on YouTube actually aren't; the people controlling the purse strings are the same people it's always been. In this instance, a wave of content creators of fairly popular YouTube channels have been coming clean and reporting that not only have they not been killing it, but that their channels were taken over by private equity bros.
This is so strange to me. Some of these channels have a million subscribers, sure, but it takes ages to get there and then you have to feed the beast. And what some of these recent admission videos show is that the new owners of the channels, in classic private equity fashion, only exist to suck whatever money they can get out of the content creators and then move on. So, if a video doesn't "hit" the right way, or the numbers flat-line after the lack of a viral smash, the owners of the channel are simply going to carve it up for parts while continually asking the remaining skeleton crew of staff members to keep trying to make a video that will drive 5 percent more ad revenue.
This recent video from a so-called former creative director at Donut Media discloses that he and several others left the organization due to disagreement with the new management structure. I have to admit, it sounds damn near impossible to be "forced" to make new videos that somehow, continue to rack up millions of views, especially knowing what we know about how awful YouTube's compensation plans are. At the same time, the private equity firm likely expects its creative folks to continue to be creative and understand which direction audience behaviors are heading.
All in all, it sounds like once again, the wrong people are in charge and channel creators are way too eager to sell their souls for a little bit of cash and zero creative freedom.