Jellysmack Earmarks $500M for YouTube Video Licensing Rights

Creators might be sitting on a goldmine of content inventory licensing rights.

Now, they may be eligible to license it for a windfall of cash without diluting their ownership.

Earlier this year, Jellysmack announced it was allocating $500 million to a content catalog licensing initiative. For qualifying creators, they could receive offers ranging anywhere from $100,000 to $50 million or more.

Jellysmack’s sophisticated creator detection technology proactively seeks out high-performing, high-potential creators to partner with. As part of its latest effort, the company has added new functionalities to its deep data, machine learning creator detection technology. These developments leverage historical performance and growth data to appraise the value of a creator’s content library. 

In addition to proactively seeking qualified inventory, creators interested in licensing rights to their back catalog can apply for consideration. 

Under proposed catalog licensing rights terms, creators will retain full ownership of their content and intellectual property. Additionally, content creators will retain any and all revenue generated from newly published content. 

Generally speaking, videos posted on social media platforms garner the largest swell of their organic lifetime views within the first few weeks of being published, particularly for channels that publish new content consistently. For most creators, programmatic advertising revenue is paid out incrementally over time. 

Rather than wait for money to trickle in, Jellysmack Catalog Licensing deals offer creators an opportunity to secure capital upfront. They can then invest that capital into future projects, equipment upgrades, studio space, hiring support staff such as video editors or research assistants, or in some cases, a long overdue break from the content grind to reduce creator burnout. 

The practice of licensing content rights out is hardly a new one. Netflix famously paid $100 million for one year of streaming rights to sitcom Friends; HBO paid $425 million to take over the rights to the show as soon as Netflix’s contract came to term. However, the application of these well established business practices have not caught up to the changing media landscape. Jellysmack’s Catalog Licensing initiative applies similar principles and valuation methods to proven YouTube content – an all but untapped market. 

Presently, creators have fewer routes to secure funding than more conventional business ventures. Now, Jellysmack is stepping in to bridge that gap without taking any equity value away from creators, nor indebting them as conventional business loans would. Jellysmack is offering creator’s real value for the already invested time, talent, and labor creators put into making their content. Jellysmack is offering content creators a hands-free avenue to accessing capital or remonetizing existing inventory.

The launch of the Catalog Licensing initiative is a complement to Jellysmack’s exceptionally successful Creator Program. The Creator Program was launched in 2019 and has since partnered with creator powerhouses including PewDiePie, MrBeast, Bailey Sarian, and Patrick Starrr. 

As an eminent enterprise in the content creator economy, Jellysmack’s latest venture is an expansion of the company’s product suite available to creators. The company aims to be an end-to-end resource for creators seeking assistance in scaling their content creation businesses. 

Empowering creators with options, opportunity, and the tools to grow their ventures is the heart of Jellysmack’s mission. The company runs proprietary content verticals including Oh My Goal, Beauty Studio, Laugh Society, and several other owned-and-operated properties. As creators themselves, Jellysmack understands the challenges and opportunities creators face in the fast-moving, ever changing creator economy.