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Three items for you today:
🎼 A band that’s less a band than an attention provider with three clients
💵 Notes from the winds of change shaping creator monetization
🤝 One question about your preferred relationship to advertising partners
— Francis Zierer, Lead Editor
Is it a band?
If you haven’t seen the musical act Boy Throb on your Instagram page, here’s a quick rundown:
It is a four-person band with three American members and one Indian member.
They’re constantly trying to prove to the U.S. government that they are “a real band,” so that Indian member Darshan Magdum can get an O-1 visa to visit the U.S. (These visas are gained through “extraordinary ability,” which in this case would be artistic skill, and would be proven through collaborations, press coverage, and genuine audience buzz.)
All four members have backgrounds as creators and musicians in their own right; this is a collaborative, ultimately cross-promotional creator project.
Despite only having existed since October 2025, they’ve built a dedicated audience of over 2 million followers.
They are sponsored by brands, notably the B2B software company Air (full disclosure, I worked for Air as recently as 2023).
On Tuesday night (May 12, 2026), totally sponsored by Air, they had their first concert, a sold-out show in New York City.
Is it a legitimate band, as they’re trying to prove to officials? Of course!
Their most popular song, Finger, has 1.8 million streams on Spotify. Their next-most-popular song has 439k streams. They only have three songs, the third of which has 203k streams. And they’re all legitimately catchy pop songs!
@boy.throb Will you be there???💖💖💖 May 12th in NY! We’ll fly one Non-New-Yorker to the show! Pause this video and read the flyer!
But the purpose of a system is what it does.
For our purposes — looking at what other creators and brands can learn from this project — the music is functionally a byproduct, the castoff coal of a machine whose true purpose is to generate attention.
Boy Throb is a machine producing attention for three clients:
First, the group’s members. All four gain followers and financial opportunities as individuals. This project will eventually end, but the four members of the group will have used it to further their own careers. Darshan may receive a U.S. visa.
At the end of October 2025, when Boy Throb launched, Darshan had around 660k Instagram followers; his count has increased 32% in just over half a year.
At the end of November 2025 (the oldest available data), Zachary had 183k TikTok followers. His count has more than doubled since, a 102% increase.
Second, media companies looking for content. Boy Throb represents a novel concept for various outlets (present company included) to meet their publishing needs.
Besides throwing a concert during their visit to New York City this week, the band made a slew of media appearances: TMZ, The Washington Post, Yahoo, MSN, Ad Age. (Not to mention Link in Bio and, of course, Creator Spotlight).
All of this coverage is on top of much previous coverage from both large media organizations and independent creators.
Third, brands seeking creators for sponsored partnerships. The Boy Throb concert — which was free for attendees — would not have happened without its sponsor, Air, which even held a contest to fly out one non-local fan to the show.
What makes Boy Throb a desirable partner for a B2B software company? Audience sentiment. The project’s genius is in its participatory fandom: by liking, following, engaging, the audience member is actively increasing the band’s “realness,” and thus the chances of Darshan getting a U.S. visa.
I asked Ariel Rubin, Air’s Head of Content, why the band is a worthwhile partner for the brand:
“At Air, we want to take your weirdest ideas and scale them to the moon. Boy Throb playing Bowery Ballroom is the single most culturally important moment in New York City history since Bob Dylan played the Gaslight Cafe. To play even a small role in that was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”
Translation: Air makes software for creative teams, and the messaging around their product is that it supports creative teams, so financially supporting creative projects with their marketing budget is a concrete representation of that message.
By the way, all that coverage Boy Throb received? Air’s team set it up. The brand put their thumb on the scale to maximize their creator partner’s exposure, and thus their potential for new followers to the brand accounts and an increase in the brand’s reputation.
There are a few simple, replicable lessons for creators in here:
Collaboration with other creators, especially unexpected ones (Darshan being on the other side of the globe from his collaborators), can create an attractive sense of novelty.
Audiences will engage with projects that include a tangible goal. (Getting Darshan a visa.)
Audiences will engage all the more actively when their very engagement increases the likelihood of achieving that tangible goal.
If you can achieve this level of active audience engagement, you have a highly attractive sponsorship opportunity for brands looking to spend on brand awareness campaigns.
My only question, really, is what happens when Darshan gets his visa. Does their stock go to zero? Is the moment over? Doesn’t matter; the sponsor will have already achieved their goals. The pressure is simply for the band members to ride any residual momentum.
More funds for (big) creators
By Francis Zierer
In media, attention begets money, which begets more attention, and so on.
Platforms that were once full of lower-budget creators, partially because they were underserved by advertisers, are now being served by advertisers and are well-funded.
For many years, part of the charm and promise of the creator economy — of social platforms — was that creators did not need much money to attract audience attention. This has become less true. Below, three links illustrating that change.
We can argue chicken-or-the-egg style whether money or attention comes first … but I’m coming down on the side of attention.
As covered by Nieman Lab, Deborah Turness, the former CEO of BBC News, gave a speech in London this week.
Early on, she notes that consumers are looking for more specialized, niched-down voices. While she’s talking about journalism specifically, this applies across all media; there are increasingly more, better producers across all subject areas.
Because independent voices proved they could hold attention, they’re now receiving money that might otherwise have gone to traditional media.
“A glance at the Apple or Spotify top 10 podcasts or YouTube’s most popular channels shows us that this space is dominated by independent media, and traditional media have just not yet been able to fully crack the code and break their way in. These new forms of content are driving growth in audiences and in revenues. This is a new gold rush, with private equity investors eager to fund the next big talent and turn their brand into an empire.”
A common issue among the creators I’ve met over the last few years: creative talent does not mean business talent. Brand deals don’t grow on trees; you need some business acumen to identify opportunities and negotiate favorable contracts.
What’s the solution?
Creators can learn to become shrewd operators (difficult, many won’t) or work with partners who shoulder the burden for them.
YouTube is already one of the most creator-friendly platforms out there (creators’ 55% share of YouTube AdSense dollars is unrivaled among platform revenue share programs). Now, for select, in-demand creators, they’re making connections with major sponsors to help fund ambitious projects.
We will see this more and more — major entertainment companies building programs that let creators retain their prized independence while helping them land major sponsor dollars.
Finally, in the New Yorker this week, Kyle Chayka wrote about hyperlocal newsletters. We’ve often covered local newsletters in the Spotlight; this article is about even more niche, neighborhood-level products.
But for the purposes of today’s newsletter, see journalist Rick Paulas’ take on the trend:
For hyperlocal producers who choose to monetize through ads rather than subscriptions, they will, for now, have to learn to hunt. Marketplace advertising offers don’t (yet) enable these creators to maximize their earning potential.
How do you prefer to interact with sponsors?
Click one option to let us know what you think. We’ll share the results in next Friday’s newsletter.
