Kai Cenat, Livestreaming, and The Emerging Media Landscape
Song of the week: Kaytranada feat. Rochelle Jordan - Lover/Friends
Kaytranada on a Friday is always the move. Grab some coffee, let’s vibe for a lil bit on today’s piece.
Kai Cenat just had one of the most-watched live streams of his career last weekend, featuring Kevin Hart.
Ironically, it was Kevin’s first livestream too, and he saw firsthand how powerful the world of streaming is, and how dedicated the fan base can be.
Even if you weren’t on Twitch to see it, you could still get a feel for how fun the shenanigans of that night were. Social media gained a ton of new memes & clips to react to, and just like that…
A light bulb went off in a lot of people’s minds.
For many, there was a sudden realization that the media landscape has drastically changed from what it was even a year ago.
Are radio and TV still important? Sure.
But to reach the youth, many stars (and brands, finally) are recognizing that streamers should be a part of their paid media plans.
So today, let’s talk about one of the biggest streamers leading the pack, Kai Cenat.
A little Background…
Kai is a native New Yorker (From The Bronx, to be exact).
He’s been on social media for over a decade, and started his career as a content creator on Facebook and IG as a teenager before getting into streaming.
By 2018, Kai took the popularity he generated on social media and moved over to YouTube, where he began uploading videos faithfully.
YouTube eventually picked up enough steam to where he knew he had something special. It was then that he decided to drop out of college, to focus on growing his platform as big as possible.1
Around the same time, Fanum, one of the creators of the popular content collective AMP (Any Means Possible), saw Kai Cenat online and asked if we wanted to join the crew.
Joining AMP proved to be a turning point in Kai’s career — he was around a group who wanted similar things, refined his online presence, and doubled down on growing his platform. He would go on to join Twitch in 2021.
Upon getting on Twitch, Kai’s audience continued to grow.
Eventually, in February of 2023, he broke the all-time record for Twitch subscribers amassing over 300k subs. Since then, the world has paid attention to Kai Cenat.
Kai’s ascent was big moment for streamers because the news bubbled outside of the regular demo of fans he reaches.
Large media publications picked up the news, and even those who never watched Twitch streams were curious what was happening in that world.
Slowly, more of Kai’s content would seep over to platforms like Instagram, and X — and just like that, both he and Twitch were firmly in the conversation with other platforms like YouTube.
That leads us to the first realization about this new media landscape:
I. Streamers are the New Curators
There’s a multitude of content that exists in this world, but reviews and reaction videos seem to be the bread and butter of streaming content.
Because of that, many livestreamers function as curators — telling the crowd about their unique tastes, what they like and dislike about products, music, pop culture, etc.
With that in mind, the magic of the streaming world is two-fold:
a. The reactions are real-time
Because the reactions aren’t delayed like television, the streamers don’t have a chance to “fake” it, or clean up their reactions in post-production.
That means if they don’t like something they’re recommending, you can instantly tell. It doesn’t matter how much the brand paid for the plug.
The real-time reactions are priceless because they hold more weight than a five-star rating. It’s the power of hearing someone validate that you are indeed feeling the same thing about a product that the streamer is (whether that feeling is hype or disdain).
b. The streams are a Press Stop.
In just under a year artists like Nicki Minaj, Offset, and Tyla have dropped by Kai’s stream as part of their album promo cycle.
Moreover, brands are reaching out for collabs, and more importantly, record labels are treating his stream as must-stop in order to gain traction before dropping.
The moments generated by the livestreams are priceless. And again, the real-time reaction neutralizes a lot of the inauthentic nature of pre-planned celeb content that’s meant to promote a polished image.
And when it works, it works well.
On top of that, In April, Kai was incredibly active in reviewing the Drake & Kendrick Lamar tracks as they dropped in real time.
Think about that for a sec…
Neither Drake nor Kendrick reached out to a radio station or a streaming service when it was time to drop.
They went directly to YouTube, alerted fans on Twitter, and sent records to the streamers first.
As many music heads know, back in the day, for a record to gain traction, you had to visit a myriad of radio stations, DJs, etc. Even then, it could take months for a record to catch on with the public.
However, the events of May have proved that formula isn’t as potent as it once was.
Radio and DJs are still important, but because of streamers like Kai, we’ve now seen the effects of….
Democratized Distribution.
If it hasn’t been said enough, social media has changed the way we can spread information.
To be global, you don’t even have to leave your hometown these days. All you need is a streaming card, a good camera, and a dope personality, and an internet connection.
II. The Power of Fandom
What makes streaming so dope is that the creators cultivate a strong community.
Because of that, fans routinely pay for others to watch the stream without a paywall. They also send donations to their favorite streamers and purchase content, and access to live events to do their part in keeping their favorite creators going.
On the flipside, streamers actively communicate with their chat groups, have private Discords, and Reddit threads for them, and they even take the occasional call from fans.
We saw the power of fandom last year with Kai Cenat. He literally caused a riot in NYC when he announced that he’d be near Central Park giving out PS5s.
If you didn’t see the mayhem, check out the clip below.
III. Repurposed Content
A final, and critical piece of how streaming is becoming more prevalent is that the live content has been repurposed a countless amount of times, not only by the creators themselves, but by fans, and budding media platforms.
This is important because if you aren’t on Twitch, you don’t have to worry about missing what happened on a stream, or what the streamer has to say about important cultural topics.
In fact, by the time the stream is over, fans will already have shared the best parts countless times (as they did with the Kai/Kevin Hart stream), and it leads to traction on social media.
The repurposed content is also a timesaver for those with a busy schedule.
Streamers sit in front of their cameras for hours, sometimes upwards of 12 hours. It’s hard to catch everything they do if you’re out and about or at work.
However, with superfans (and their teams) working to cut clips to share them, they’ve effectively helped Kai reach new (and I’d venture to say older) audiences.
WHAT NOW?
There are a ton of streamers out there, but Kai Cenat seems to be leading the pack when it comes to the space.
It still hasn’t reached critical mass, so now might be a good time for marketers to start exploring it in earnest.
Admittedly, streaming can be tricky for brands to consider.
Everything happening is live, after all. But this is where the future is going, so it’s worth paying attention to.
You can only resist change for so long, so if you’re a marketer looking to make an impact in 2024 and beyond, consider getting into the world of streaming.
Only time will tell how that world will continue to develop, but I know I’ll be watching. Hopefully, you will too.
One.