Nicole Alston, YouTube’s head of legal, told Bloomberg, “Egregious actions committed by R. Kelly warrant penalties beyond standard enforcement measures due to a potential to cause widespread harm. Ultimately we are taking this action to protect our users similar to other platforms.”
Alston also noted that Kelly will no longer be able to use, own, or create YouTube channels. A YouTube spokesperson also said in a statement, “We can confirm that we have terminated two channels linked to R. Kelly in accordance with our creator responsibility guidelines.”
That said, as it stands now, at least a portion of the videos that originally appeared on these channels are still accessible, but with caveats. Searching YouTube for “Ignition (Remix),” for example, shows an audio-only result (a video just featuring cover art) that appears to be from the RKellyTV channel. When clicking on the channel link, though, the channel is blank except for the message, “This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
When going to watch that actual “Ignition (Remix)” video, the page is accessible and the video is able to be played, but the page indicates the video is from the “R. Kelly – Topic” channel, instead of RKellyTV as indicated in the YouTube search results.
Meanwhile, the page for the RKellyVevo channel behaves differently than the RKellyTV channel. Instead of a message about the channel’s termination, it is as though the channel never existed at all, as the error page is the same one yielded when trying to access an invalid YouTube URL: “This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”
Videos for songs on which Kelly features, like Ja Rule’s “Wonderful” and Nick Cannon’s “Gigolo,” are still available on YouTube, as they were uploaded to different channels. As of now, Kelly’s music is still available on YouTube Music, as it is on other audio streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” video continues to cause controversy for its explicit content but when one parent decided to complain about the video’s prominence on her YouTube search, Nas (who already tweeted out multiple disclaimers about this subject) had to remind them how search functions work. Other Twitter users joined in, pointing out that YouTube already has parental control functions to prevent small children from seeing inappropriate content — and while it’s far from a perfect feature, it’s probably well capable of keeping Nas’ gyrations aware from concerned parents, with just a little more effort than taking screenshots and posting angry messages on a completely different platform.
“This was the THIRD video that popped up when I searched ‘Baby videos’ on YouTube,” read the original complaint. Ordinarily, that’d be enough to garner some sympathy, but the next line kind of belied the bad faith argument the user was actually trying to make. “How much more proof do people need that they are after our kids???” Nas, who is pretty much the Shang-Chi of Twitter trolling, expertly reversed the argument with a sarcastic quote-tweet, highlighting that merely searching “baby videos” might not be the most effective method of finding quality kids’ programming.
This was the THIRD video that popped up when I searched “Baby videos” on YouTube. How much more proof do people need that they are after our kids??? pic.twitter.com/DnXcheJG5Y
“BREAKING NEWS,” he joked. “Local woman shocked that search results for ‘baby’ included videos with baby in the title.” Other users were quick to point out that YouTube has a wholly separate app, YouTube Kids, to circumvent exactly this concern. “Just say y’all not attentive parents and move on,” one jabbed.
BREAKING NEWS: local woman shocked that search results for “baby” included videos with baby in the title https://t.co/bbJ6GrW7VR
Meanwhile, the phrasing of the bad faith questioning “that they are after our kids” — implying that evil gay people are out to brainwash children into … being gay, I guess? — echoed more conspiracy nonsense recently spouted by Louisiana rapper Boosie. However, true to form, Nas disarmed that line of reasoning just as deftly on last night’s MTV VMAs as he won the award for Video Of The Year for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” shouting out the so-called “gay agenda” in his cheeky acceptance speech. Check out more responses to YouTube’s parental control policies below.
YouTube kids & Parental controls exist for a reason. A tiny amount of actual parenting can prevent your kids from seeing content that’s not age appropriate. https://t.co/vuHPPV2aL1
Some of the biggest names in YouTube and TikTok will be going pound-for-pound this Friday (June 12) at the Miami Hard Rock Stadium for the highly-anticipated event Social Gloves: Battle of the Platforms. Ahead of the massive showdown, a few of the fighters, including YouTube superstar Austin McBroom of the Ace Family as well as TikTok influencers Vinnie Hacker, Ryland Storms, shared with Uproxx the songs that get them amped up and ready to rumble.
For McBroom, who will go up against TikTok topliner Bryce Hall, it’s the vibey-yet-hard-hitting 24KGoldn cut “Company” by 24KGoldn featuring Future. “Makes me feel like I’m on top of the world,” he told us.
Hacker, who will see YouTuber Deji, chose “Young, Wild and Free” by Wiz Khalifa. “I first heard this song when I was filling up my car with E10 and it stuck with me,” he said about his choice.
Popular TikTok star Michael Le, who is expected to face off with YouTuber Faze Jarvis, uses J. Cole’s “95 South” to get pumped. “’95 south’ is a raw, dope ass song,” he told us. “The energy I get when I listen to it is the exact vibe I want people to feel when they see me Saturday night. I’m goin’ in with a beast mentality, ain’t nothin shakin’ that off me.”
Storms, who will fight YouTuber Tanner Fox, happens to get his adrenaline going with Giorono’s Theme from anime series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, whereas Deji prefers to get hype off his own song “The Truth.” YouTube star AnesonGib on the other hand, who will fight TikTok’s Tayler Holder, likes to get in the zone by listening to the rambunctious “Original Nuttah 25” by UK Apache with Shy FX, which he described as “A song fit for a mad man!”
Fans can livestream the PPV fight on the LiveXLive.com Platform. If you want to catch it in person tickets are available over at Ticketmaster. Lil Baby, Migos, Trippie Redd and DJ Khaled are all expected to grace the stage with fire performances.
“It’s going down at Social Gloves on June 12, and I’m excited to be a part of it,” Lil Baby said in a press release. “It’s great to see all these YouTubers and TikTokers putting in the hard work to prepare for these fights. We are bringing big energy to Social Gloves. I’m looking forward to this day, and I’m sure fans won’t be disappointed.”
Social Gloves: Battle of the Platforms is the first in a series of events planned in partnership with LiveXLive.
Check out the Social Gloves: Fight Night playlist below featuring picks from Austin McBroom, Vinnie Hacker, Ryland Storms, and more!
In June 2020, Blackpink debuted the video for “How You Like That,” which was then their first new song in a year, on YouTube. About 1.6 million people tuned in to watch the clip’s live premiere, which was a record for platform. Just a couple months later, that record was broken by BTS’ YouTube premiere of their “Dynamite” video, which is estimated to have had somewhere between 3 and 4 million people watching live. That is where the record stands today.
There’s one key factor those two videos have in common, both with each other and with every other video that has ever premiered on YouTube since the feature was introduced in June 2018: the countdown.
Every YouTube premiere is preceded by a colorful countdown that features vibrant, abstract animations and a clock ticking its way down to zero. Every countdown also includes the same song playing front and center, a two-minute instrumental track that stirs up anticipation with its nostalgic electronic synths, drum machine percussion, and orchestral string plucks. It comes across like a brighter cousin of Washed Out’s “Feel It All Around” (which is famous for the snippet of it that was used as the Portlandia theme song).
Commenters on YouTube re-uploads of the song agree, as they’ve shared a variety of feelings about the track. One person noted, “People in 2030/2040 will be like: This is soooo nostalgic!! Only real ones remember this.” Somebody else wrote, “This is honestly such a fitting song for YouTube Premiere countdowns, it just perfectly goes with your imagination running wild about what you’re about to see.” Another user painted a picture of the end of YouTube with “Space Walk” as the soundtrack: “I feel like this is something that would play in the final minutes of youtube before the site shuts down. Just this music and a few minutes to remember everything that has happened on this site over the decades before it all goes away.”
The song is beloved and has been heard millions (perhaps billions) of times at this point. Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You,” the most popular all-time song on Spotify, has nearly 3 billion spins, and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the YouTube premiere song — across every YouTube premiere ever, music video or otherwise — has been heard more times than that.
The odd thing, though, is that the story behind the YouTube premiere song and the identity of the person (or people, or something else) who made it is mostly a mystery.
Some answers about the track can be easily found: A quick Google search for “YouTube premiere song” reveals that the tune is called “Space Walk” and it’s credited to an artist named Silent Partner. Beyond that, it’s not immediately obvious where the song comes from. One thing we can tell is that the song wasn’t specifically made to be used for YouTube countdowns: The oldest uploads of the song on YouTube date back to early 2015, which pre-dates the premiere feature by over three years.
YouTube themselves offers a free download of the song as part of the audio library in their YouTube Studio, a set of back-end tools for video creators to freely use. The song’s listing there notes it was added to the platform in November 2014 and describes its genre as “ambient” and its mood as “bright.” Downloading the MP3 file of the song from YouTube and viewing its ID3 tags — metadata used by programs like iTunes (rest in peace) to indicate the file’s title, artist, and so on — doesn’t reveal much more info, aside from the fact that the album is listed as “YouTube Audio Library.”
As far as publicly available information about “Space Walk,” this seems to be the end of the road. However, we can learn a bit more more about Silent Partner, but not much more.
Silent Partner seems to be a Kevin MacLeod-type of artist. For those not familiar, MacLeod has made thousands of songs available under Creative Commons licenses so creators can use them for various purposes, and indeed they have. His work has become popular because of that fact and because he works in a variety of genres. In his vast library, there is bound to be at least one song that is suitable for any sort of project. If you’ve spent time on the internet, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ve heard his work.
Similarly, Silent Partner has “about 1,383” songs available in the YouTube audio library (which seems like too specific a figure to preface with “about”) and they’re listed under genres spanning from electronic to hip-hop to classical. All of the songs were added to the platform between September 2013 and November 2014.
Outside of the YouTube audio library, Silent Partner has a mostly silent web presence. There’s a SoundCloud account that has a bit over 2,100 followers and a YouTube channel with around 500 subscribers, both of which have uploads of some songs from the YouTube audio library. It seems that is the entirety of Silent Partner’s online footprint.
The most recent upload on the YouTube channel, a song called “Get Back,” was posted on July 3, 2016. The latest post on SoundCloud is from May 15, 2018, although the two most recent uploads before that are from 2017 and 2015.
The closest thing we have to any biographical info about Silent Partner comes from the About section of their YouTube page, which reads simply and appropriately, “…silently here…” It’s not clear if Silent Partner is an individual person, a band, a collective of artists releasing music under one overarching label, or something else entirely.
The only other “statements” we seem to have from Silent Partner are their handful of SoundCloud comments, which are mostly brief responses to positive feedback about their music and telling inquiring creators they are allowed use Silent Partner songs in their projects.
What we can gather from SoundCloud, though, is that it seems Silent Partner has an interest in Buddhism and/or meditation: The four accounts they follow on SoundCloud are Khyentse Foundation (which provides “support for institutions and individuals engaged in all traditions of Buddhist practice and study“), Samye Institute (a “place where students from all corners of the globe explore how to work with their minds in order to realize the liberating wisdom and compassion of the Buddha”), Tergar Meditation Community (which “supports individuals, practice groups, and meditation communities around the world in learning to live with awareness, compassion, and wisdom”), and Study Buddhism (which uploads podcasts about Buddhism). Most of Silent Partner’s liked tracks on SoundCloud are also about similar topics.
All of these biographical discoveries come with the assumption that these accounts are actually affiliated with whoever is behind Silent Partner. All of the uploads on both SoundCloud and YouTube were posted after the songs were made available on the YouTube audio library, so it’s completely possible that somebody who has nothing to do with Silent Partner downloaded a bunch of their MP3s and re-shared them to pose as Silent Partner. It’s not like a potential imposter would have had an established Silent Partner web presence with which to compete.
Beyond YouTube and SoundCloud, the only other online resource that seems to have info about Silent Partner is IMDb. On the site, Silent Partner has a few dozen credits spread across TV shows, movies, and other projects from between 2007 and 2021. Meanwhile, fans of various other creative endeavors have taken to the comments of Silent Partner uploads to share where they came across their music, like one person who heard a Silent Partner song in a video from mega-popular YouTube personality Miranda Sings (aka Colleen Ballinger), or others who discovered Silent Partner through Thunderf00t, who has nearly a million YouTube subscribers.
Despite a greatly appreciated effort, a YouTube representative was unable to provide Uproxx with more information about Silent Partner or how “Space Walk” was chosen as the YouTube premiere song. SoundCloud direct messages sent to Silent Partner by Uproxx have also gone unanswered. Last year, an attempt by a BuzzFeed journalist to get in touch with Silent Partner via the comments section of a SoundCloud upload was also not fruitful. It’s not just us who wants to know more about Silent Partner but can’t get a hold of them.
Somebody out there made this music, but for some reason, they’ve opted to not come forward and claim their deserved praise. Maybe anonymously enjoying the success of “Space Walk” is enough for them. Maybe they’re somehow unaware of the impact their compositions have had. Maybe Silent Partner is no longer with us.
So, who or what is Silent Partner? That question has two answers. One is that Silent Partner is the artist behind “Space Walk,” one of the most-heard pieces of music of the past few years. The other is that we don’t know who they are and perhaps never will, making the answer to this question one of the premier unsolved musical mysteries of our time.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Offset was right — they do anything for clout. “They” in this case is a Spanish rapper named Aaron Beltran, who is being accused of cutting off his roommate’s penis with a kitchen knife for a YouTube video. The Independent reports that the two men apparently had a mutual arrangement for the gruesome task in which Beltran would pay Andrew Breach, a British teacher staying with him in Zaragosa, Spain, between $240 and $3,000 depending on the video’s performance.
The two men were discovered when Breach went to the hospital for treatment. The doctors were able to reattach the member, then reported both men to the authorities. However, Breach later claimed that he was the one responsible for the amputation, claiming he was “unwell” at the time. However, authorities don’t believe the updated version of the story, and prosecutors are pursuing charges against Beltran despite the apparently consensual arrangement. Beltran denies the charges but is facing up to four years in prison as the case goes to trial.
An anonymous officer who spoke to The Independent is quoted, “When interviewing the victim in hospital he told us the accused cut off his penis. Andrew said he did not feel 100 percent a man and wanted to get rid of his penis. He agreed a deal with the accused to pay him €200 which would depend on how many views the video of the amputation received on YouTube. It was done on the basis of hits.”
If that’s truly the case, it was a bad plan; YouTube’s terms of service would see to it that such a video would be instantly demonetized and deleted.
(@TierraLarai_) 
(@LilNasX) 
