Author: Emma Wilkes

NME

MrBeast has become YouTube’s most-subscribed creator, with 112million subscribers.

The US YouTuber has taken the title from PewDiePie, who had been YouTube’s most subscribed creator for the last decade and was the first person on the platform to have passed the 100million subscriber mark.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, joined YouTube in 2012. According to Guinness World Records, he has accumulated a total of 18.5billion views on his videos. He has four other channels besides his main one, all of which have more than 10million subscribers.

Donaldson is best known for his videos featuring absurd stunts and large scale productions, many of which have involved huge cash giveaways and prizes.

Last year, he spent $2million (£1.6million) on recreating a selection of games from the smash hit Netflix show Squid Game, which involved flying 456 people to a private island and offering a $456,000 (£382,173) cash prize up for the winner.

In the past he has given away a private jet and offered people $100,000 (£83,830) to quit their jobs, while also giving his 100millionth subscriber an island.

Donaldson is also well known for his generous contributions to charity. Last year, he launched a charity that functions as a food bank to feed communities across the US.

He also teamed up with fellow YouTuber Mark Rober for the initiative TeamTrees, which has raised more than $24million (£20.1million) to plant 20million trees globally. They later launched TeamSeas to fundraise to remove 30million pounds of plastic and other waste from oceans, rivers and beaches.

British YouTuber Steven Bridges told the BBC that MrBeast had “mastered the skill” of making compelling content.

“There’s probably no other YouTuber in the world who understands it as well as MrBeast,” he said. “Making an entertaining video is one thing, but ensuring that every single second of a video keeps the viewer hooked is very difficult to pull off, and MrBeast’s retention – the percent of the video the average viewer watches – and view counts speak for themselves.”

PewDiePie had also anticipated that MrBeast would surpass his record-breaking subscriber count. In a video posted to the platform in August the Swedish YouTuber said: “I can’t wait for it to be over. He definitely deserves it. I hope he does it.”

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NME

Rats can dance, according to a new study from the University of Tokyo.

Researchers fitted ten 10 rats with wireless accelerometers that can measure even the slightest of head movements before playing them a variety of music.

Songs included Mozart’s ‘Sonata For Two Pianos In D Major (K.448), ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ by Queen and ‘Born This Way’ by Lady Gaga. Twenty human volunteers were also involved.

The researchers noted that the rats would jerk their heads to the beat as the music played. They were most synchronised when the music played was between 120BPM and 140PM, similar to humans.

In a statement, Hirokazu Takahashi, Associate Professor from the Graduate School of Information said: “Rats displayed innate – that is, without any training or prior exposure to music – beat synchronisation most distinctly within 120-140BPM, to which humans also exhibit the clearest beat synchronisation. However, the rats were less responsive when the music was slowed down or sped up.”

“Music exerts a strong appeal to the brain and has profound effects on emotion and cognition,” he continued. “To utilise music effectively we need to reveal the neural mechanism underlying this empirical fact.”

Beat synchronisation was once thought to not be particularly common in species other than humans but this research, published in the journal Science Advances, could be more widespread among animals that previously thought.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on innate beat synchronisation in animals that was not achieved through training or musical exposure,” Takahashi said.

“Next, I would like to reveal how other musical properties such as melody and harmony relate to the dynamics of the brain. I am interested in how, why and what mechanisms of the brain create human cultural fields such as fine art, music, science, technology and religion.”

In other news, an aggregate study has found that as many as 1.35billion teenagers and young adults are at risk of hearing loss due to exposure to unsafe sound levels.

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NME

N-Dubz have announced five outdoor gigs for next summer.

The London trio will perform in Brighton, Margate and Scarborough on July 7, 8 and 20 respectively before playing their only hometown show of 2023 in London’s Gunnersbury Park on August 11. They will also perform in Cardiff on September 8.

Special guests are to be announced in due course. Tickets go on general sale on Friday November 25 – buy yours here.

Bandmembers Dappy, Tulisa and Fazer are currently in the middle of an arena tour after reuniting earlier this year. The band’s first shows for 11 years were met with huge demand, with many dates completely selling out and six new dates being added.

The trio’s reunion was accompanied by a new single, ‘Charmer’, which was released in May. There has been no official word yet as to whether more music will come.

N-Dubz broke out in the late 2000s and released three studio albums, ‘Uncle B’ (2008), ‘Against All Odds’ (2009) and ‘Love.Live.Life’ (2010) before splitting up in 2011.

At the time both Tulisa and Dappy said that the break was only supposed to last for a couple of years, during which all three members carved out solo careers.

A reunion was originally pencilled in for 2015, with the band vowing to “come back like the Black Eyed Peas” but this never came to fruition. Fazer also told OK in 2017 that he believed they would reunite “really soon-ish”.

N-Dubz play the following dates in summer 2023:

JULY
Friday 07 – Brighton, Stanmer Park
Saturday 08 – Margate, Dreamland
Thursday 20 – Scarborough, Open Air Theatre 

AUGUST
Friday 11 – London, Gunnersbury Park 

SEPTEMBER
Friday 08 – Cardiff Bay Series 

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NME

Rihanna has named Beyoncé as the person she’d most like to see on the runway for the next Savage x Fenty show.

After Volume 4 of the annual televised fashion show premiered on Amazon Prime last week, the singer looked back on the show and talked about its future in an interview with E! News. 

“I mean, Beyoncé got body. That would just trump everything for me,” Rihanna said when asked who she wants to see on the catwalk in the future. Savage x Fenty has a history of putting A-List names on its runway, including Cindy Crawford, Gigi Hadid and Cara Delevingne.

The two pop stars were often pitted against each other, with rumours of them feuding, in the early days of their respective careers.

This year’s Savage x Fenty show faced backlash after Johnny Depp was asked to walk the catwalk, following the controversial defamation case he won against his ex-wife Amber Heard earlier this year. He was awarded $10 million (£8 million) in compensatory damages and $5 million (£4.2 million) in punitive damages by the jury, while Heard walked away with $2 million (£1.7 million) after the jury found that Depp had defamed her through his attorney.

Despite winning the highly publicised trial, Depp has been targeted online by some people who believe he emotionally and physically abused Heard, which he has continually denied. However, he did admit to drinking heavily during their relationship.

Years & Years‘ Olly Alexander said he would no longer wear Savage x Fenty after Depp’s appearance in the show was announced, expressing his disappointment on Twitter by sharing the news with the caption of a frowning face. He previously starred in one of the brand’s promotional campaigns, wearing a harness and underwear.

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NME

Research conducted by the charity Help Musicians has found that 91% of musicians are no longer able to afford equipment in what has been described as a ‘cost of working crisis’.

The research paints a grim picture of life for musicians in 2022, amid soaring energy and fuel costs, double digit inflation and the sector beginning to feel the effects of Brexit, which is adding to the cost of touring abroad. Nearly all musicians (98%), the charity found, are worried about earning enough income in the next six months, with half ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ concerned that their financial situation will force them to leave the industry.

Furthermore, 90% of the 500 musicians surveyed are worried about affording food, while 84% are concerned about their ability to pay their mortgage or rent.

The cost of living crisis appears to be having an even greater impact on musicians than  Covid-19, with 60% saying they are earning less than they were a year ago, and 8 in 10 say they are earning less than they were before the pandemic.

It is also widely impacting musicians’ mental health, with 88% admitting that poor mental health is negatively impacting their careers.

“It is hard to imagine any point since the Second World War when it has been tougher to be a professional musician – put simply, the current environment is brutal,” said James Ainscough, Chief Executive of Help Musicians. “The pandemic had a catastrophic impact, with most simply unable to perform. Afterwards, venues were booked up for months or years in advance due to rearranged gigs. This has been followed by Brexit, which has impacted their ability to tour, for many emerging musicians a vital step in building a sustainable career.”

He continued: “We need to put significant time and resource into sustaining musicians over the coming, challenging months, if we are to have a thriving music ecosystem in 2023 and beyond. We cannot afford to lose any of the talent from our passionate community of UK musicians if we want to continue enjoying the music that inspires us all every day.”

“It is now, sadly, all too common to be informed of highly skilled musicians deciding on alternate career paths, Arts organizations having to shut down, or community orchestras and choirs folding in these extremely harsh financial times,” added Help Musicians ambassador Dame Evelyn Glennie.

“It takes a great deal of physical and mental energy to function and sustain a career in music; the current challenges are unprecedented which is resulting in a catastrophic avalanche of stress, disillusionment, lost talent and shortened careers. We know what it feels like when music uplifts us – every aspect of our being is positively impacted. We must try to do all we can to support the immense creativity that the UK has to offer and be sure that musicians’ needs are listened to, supported and acted on.”

Help Musicians have announced they will be implementing £8 million worth of support measures to help musicians who are struggling, including expansion of provision of debt management and financial crisis advice, funding to support the costs of touring, and further investment in their 24/7 mental health service, Music Minds Matter.

NME attended a hearing at the House of Lords in September led by industry insiders and the #CarryOnTouring campaign, which revealed the true extents of the damage caused to the touring industry by Brexit. The government was warned that musicians and crew could “find themselves unemployed en masse”.

Elsewhere, five organisations representing the UK hospitality sector wrote an open letter to the Government in August, calling for urgent action to help businesses stay afloat amid the energy crisis.

“With chronic challenges in the supply chain, labour shortages, interest rates and inflation, rocketing energy prices have become a matter of existential emergency for businesses in our sector,” they wrote.

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