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Many of you may have felt quite relaxed at certain points in your life, like laying by the beach or listening to some soft music just before bed, but did you know there is a HUGE network of YouTubers called "Asmr-tists" who create videos purely for relaxation? But what is ASMR? The new-age acronym stands for "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response", which is defined as a relaxing tingling sensation which runs throughout your body, the most popular locations being the scalps and limbs. Think goosebumps, but pleasurable. No one has yet done scientific research into the phenomena, but with millions of views being gathered on the video below, its hard to believe so many people could be wrong; These videos are often listened to in bed, or somewhere relaxing for the viewer. The video consists of various "triggers" known to the community to which certain sounds or visual stimuli trigger the previously described sensation of ASMR. Triggers include soft speaking, whispering, scratching on objects, tapping on objects, foam sounds, mouth sounds, water sounds, and various other mundane sounds which people may find relaxing. The industry of ASMR is steadily growing, going from a few channels to thousands in a few years. The videos are often misinterepreted as "Sexual" or "Erotic", which is completely false. What do you think of ASMR? Do you experience it? Do you think it is a sexual fetish? Do you think it is a great new trend? Let us know in the comments section. We will be covering lots of ASMR topics in the future! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube & #ASMR including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

Have you ever wanted to raise money for chaity, as a YouTuber? Have you often thought there could be an easier process than simply, and riskily, asking for paypal donations to then be trusted to forward to charity? Well YouTube have come up with an an ingenius solution of allowing its U.S users to direct donations to non-profit organisations. From the interface of a video, a user can donate to upto 1.8 million certified donors. An inportant factor that might have some people wondering is that Google take 0% cuts from this venture, the kind donations go straight to the non-profit, 100%. Google do plan to make this feature available to all of its users, however, for now, the feature is reserved for those who reside in the United States,

Starting a YouTube channel is a daunting process. You have to compete with people that already have established fan bases and millions of subscribers! But don't worry... everyone that has a successful started somewhere; and we've identified what they all had in common. There is a clever trick to this which is more obvious than may first appear! Let us share this little secret trick with you. Have A Regular Upload Schedule So when you first start your channel, unless you get very lucky, the views will be slow to build, and the subscriber count even slower. What you can do to build on these numbers very early on is to have regular uploads at regular times, so that the early subscribers are more likely to pass you onto their friends. Basically, you will not be forgotten about. Reminding fans on your social media accounts about your schedule, and importing your schedule into either channel art or the videos themselves will give fans a reminder of when to next tune in! Don't Expect To Get In The Big Leagues Straight Away Starting your channel should be about having fun and creating great entertainment. You shouldn't start a YouTube channel because you want to make money. You need to build an audience based on fun, amazing content before you start worrying about ways to rake money from your hard work. Be Original To be able to bring in the subscribers and views you really want, you're going to have to do something brand new. You can still pull influences form different channels and do similar things, but make your style, production, and delivery your own. There is no need to rush into creating videos. Take your time to develop ideas and the viewers will come. Brand Yourself This last tip follows on form all the others. The most important step as a new YouTuber is to get some great graphics or channel art that people will remember you by? Someone is more likely to follow someone with a sick display picture on Twitter than someone with the default blue and white egg. Hopefully these quick four tips help you with starting your YouTube channel. If you follow these four rules, it will help you have the best possible start on YouTube! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

Have you wanted to be sponsored by a brand on YouTube? Do you consider it to be the next step? As markets change and develop, brands are very careful in choosing who represents their products. BRANDS ARE SELECTIVE! You’ll get the most interest from brands if your content is original, top-quality, have an engaged and active audience, and have a family-friendly channel. This not only exposes their content to engaged consumers but also has their brand promoted by a professional and high-quality content creator. So how can you attract brands? REGULAR UPLOADS! Make sure you content is consistent in quality, as well as coming out on a regularly schedule. Maybe a few times a week. BE SAFE! Make sure that a brand will be comfortable advertising on your channels. Try to aim for PG-13 content and avoid those R-ratings. MAKE GREAT VIDEOS! You can read our other articles on how to make the very best content you can, but this is a self-explanatory point! LOOK BEYOND YOUTUBE! Make sure you engage with your users across social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Vine, and also Snapchat if you’re not shy! You can read our recent announcement regarding EPOXY to get the latest on social media cross-action. BE PERSONAL! Brands love when you can give their products their own personality from your point of view. Incorporate products into your videos! FACE TIME! Showing your face will give Brands more trust in you and make it more likely for your pitches of sponsorship to succeed. Try to keep these points in mind when looking for partnerships with brands, but keep an open mind and be aware not every brand is the same! But don’t stop trying. The more effort you put in, the more likely success will come your way!

Ever since we posted our tutorials and tips on how to improve your content and fan base we get asked a lot of questions about utilizing Facebook. Well, we told you videos can help promote you and your channel, but now they will help you even more. In a world driven by video it's always nice when companies like Facebook continue pushing forward with new features which can help content creators from all walks of social media improve their presence. As of today, you can now go LIVE in groups and events; meaning if you have a specific YouTube fan page or event for a stream, you can go LIVE! and have a super snappy announcement which will give all liked and interested fans a notification, as well as appearing on their news feed. This will not only garner great online presence but give you a chance to interact with your fans "face to face", as so far as you can on the internet! Not only is this feature now accessible, but there are WIDE range of reactions to use exclusively for live videos, meaning your audience can react with you better, meaning you can learn an adapt to what your audience enjoys. Or doesn't enjoy... The videos also have a cool filter feature! Move over Instagram.

Original veteran developers of one of the most beloved games of all time; DOOM, are reaching out for support. John Romero and Adrian Carmack are lookg for around $700,000 ( which converts to£480,000) on Kickstarter to make a game called BLACKROOM! The game is described as paying homage to the original Doom games, being "visceral, varied and violent". Romero and Carmack were two of the founders of iD, the developers behind the new and upcoming DOOM game. They had a hand in creating Wolfenstein, Quake and many other classic games we can all remember playing before graphics were realistic and 60 FPS was the norm. The Kickstarter outlines that the virtual setting of the game will take the player through many environments. This includes Victorian mansions, wild west towns, and also Pirate ships! Boost items in game allow you to "hack" into these environments for extra fun, which keeps in line with the "virtual" setting of the game. The game will also ship with tools to create your own maps and weapons on launch, adding an extra layer to the game. The game will be released in late 2018 for both Windows and Mac computers You can back them on Kickstarter here.

A PlayStation store leak has given validity to a leak over the past week on Reddit which showed the cover art of the new CoD game, titled; "Infinity warfare". Not only is this big news for CoD fans that our beloved Infinity Ward will be making the next game, but the game may also come with a HD remaster of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Modern Warfare was one of the most popular CoD games and is what launched the Franchise into every household in the world. The PlayStation store leak was the where the title reveal came from. November 4, 2016. Last night, the game’s name was displayed in the PS Store before being taken down. We're actually approaching the time of year when Activision announce the newest Call of Duty, so these leaks are more than likely true! How many of you would love to see Modern Warfare remastered?

We all know the effect music can have on our YouTube creations. They can make a sort of O.K. video into a fantastic one. Simply by adding a range of emotions and energy to the video! Whether it be your intro, outro, or simply music over the whole video, getting your hands on high quality, good music is difficult. One amazing website, called Incompetech will give you access to all your musical whims which are required for that great, high grade content! There are hundreds of tracks on the sight which have been composed and created by professional musicians. The videos are licensed copyright free and are available for use on your videos! Check out the website here

In a great sweeping initiative YouTube is starting to invest in more and more female creators. YouTube just announced two new programs which will see female content creators flourish in the world of YouTube. One program is appointing specially chosen creators as ambassadors for the Change Ambassadors position for the organization’s Sustainable Development Action campaign which attempts to promote gender equality. The second program plans to invest in over 50 videos through the new YouTube Spaces program, which aim to put women in front and behind of the camera. YouTube announced its first wave of Change Ambassadors as Ingrid Nilsen, Jackie Aina, Yuya,Taty Ferreira, Hayla Ghazal, Louise Pentland, and Chika Yoshida. These girls will be working with the U.N to campaign for equality and to push women content creators. An example of the work YouTube and the YouTube spaces program can be viewed below, and it's truly breathtaking stuff.

For years, even going back to the days of the original Xbox and the Playstation 2, Microsoft and Sony fans have often wanted to take each other on within online competition. Until now, we thought that this feature would be forever forgotten behind a veil of competition and rivalry. However Microsoft have announced a new big feature. That feature is cross-network play. Players across PC, Xbox One, and PS4 can finally expect to see this feature applied to upcoming, and even current online games. Developers creating games for Xbox one and Windows 10 will have first access to this feature, but Sony must agree to take part in the development for it to become a reality. One of the first titles which will use this cross-network system is the beloved Rocket League. With Microsoft hinting that there is an "open invitation for other networks to participate as well," meaning PS4 users may be able to compete against Xbox One and PC users. Developers can now get behind Microsoft and support cross-network play. This will most likely shape the way games are made, and played, in the future. Online multiplayer matchmaking would see a huge increase in server populations, possibly prolonging the life of certain games by several years. But which titles will allow cross play between PC’s? There are clear advantages to having a PC, most notably how accurate a keyboard and mouse can be compared to a gamepad, specifically in FPS games. There would also be a huge jump in graphical and performance quality, meaning real effort would be needed to balance cross-network play. What are your thoughts on this? Let us know.

Sony just dropped a bombshell on gamers with their new $399 virtual reality headset. The reaction was explosive with people claiming the price was far too high for what the headset is. People were also saying how this headset could be the one to dismantle Facebook’s Oculus and the HTC Vive from being the successful VR platforms. The Oculus Rift will ship on the 28th of March, however if you order now you won’t see your order until July. This wait is tiny when you consider the bugs and software patches which will improve the first shipping of the headset. The Oculus has a market advantage because it will be released first, and it has been in development for a long time because of its Kickstarter origins. Despite this, what the Oculus lacks is the extremely large consumer base. Only 13 million PC’s worldwide could support VR. This also means that 1 in 10 PC owners will potentially buy a VR headset this year. That, when considered, is a small consumer release. That’s a tiny fraction of the Apple Watches sold in 2015. Many industry analysts consider the sales of the Apple Watch to be a failure. To run the Rift smoothly you would need a powerful PC, and the Rift development team have also ruled out MAC being able to support this as Apple do not make good enough computers. The costs of buying a computer, (if it is pre-bought, self build PC’s are much cheaper) you’re looking at up to £1500. However, the PS4 headset will not only be cheaper, but also runs smoothly and effectively on the PS4 which would not require a £1000 PC to run. For the time being and for 2016 releases, the PS4 headset will be the best VR experience which is affordable for the average gamer.

A man responsible for one of the most popular YouTube prank channels “Trollstation” has been jailed for nine months. This is a result of scaring the public with multiple bomb hoaxes and staging mock burglaries. Danh Van Le has been jailed for filming members of the public reacting to various objects with mysterious ticking sounds, including a suitcase. The act had a young boy opening a suitcase and then running away. They claimed it was created to mock the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed, who was notably arrested for creating an alarm clock. A member of the public failed to find this funny, and called the police, resulting in the camera man receiving nine months for placing a hoax bomb with intent at the Inner London crown court. Some people would consider the sentence unfair, one example being that Jackie Chan was not arrested when he took part in a scene on the movie “The Foreigner”. However, panic caused by this was done in a controlled manner, with many warning and precautions of the scenes being taken place. Also, real live people were not affected by the scene. However, Trollstation’s actions effected real people in busy streets, and with the terrorist climate at the moment, one can understand why such harsh measures were taken again Danh Van Le. It isn’t about a small company and a big company doing things and one getting away with it. The situation is completely different, and at the end of the day, the charges brought against Danh were offences he did actually commit, whereas “The Foreigner” was in no breech of the law. What do you think?