A social entertainment platform has the ambition of eliminating “burnout” among the world’s most popular content creators – helping them to produce quality broadcasts and reach millions of fans without the pressures imposed on them by current market-leading websites.

You42 bills itself as a space where games, music, video, news and sports come together. The company wants to provide an exciting place for influencers – as well as record labels, authors, studios and artists – to connect with fans and maximize revenue from their creations through an intuitive cryptocurrency ecosystem.

According to its white paper, the entertainment industry is “fractured” and unfairly skewed in favor of large production houses with massive budgets. Not only does this affect the expression of the artists these outfits represent, with their work being continually changed because it doesn’t meet commercial requirements, but it can also mean that cutting-edge and culturally important content fails to make its way into the public arena.

The consequences of “burnout”

You42 argues that, to an extent, more modern-day platforms such as YouTube and Twitch have created headaches for talent in different ways. On these websites, the company says content creators are often under pressure to continually pump out new material – even if it’s of a poor standard – in order to make sure that their rankings are preserved and their advertising revenue remains constant.

Although this doesn’t serve the best interests of audiences, the company says it can also have calamitous and even career-ending consequences for the stars. Several prominent Twitch streamers and YouTubers have spoken out about the stress they’ve endured while trying to keep on top of punishing broadcasting schedules. In some cases, this has resulted in mental illness.

PewDiePie, a Swedish personality with more than 63.5 million subscribers on YouTube, recently uploaded a video in which he said: “The problem with being a YouTuber is that you constantly have to outdo yourself to keep people interested in what you are doing... If you make videos every single day, it’s really tough to make people keep being interested.

“A few years ago, all I used to do was YouTube. It was seven days a week (now I do six days a week). I would wake up, go to my room and make videos and that was it. I didn’t have any hobbies, I didn’t have any other interests, I wouldn’t hang out with friends. Looking back, that was an extremely unhealthy thing to do.”

The You42 solution

The platform wants to help content creators reach new consumers directly and enable better connections to be built. Unlike other services, artists would be able to connect with fans across multiple forms of mixed media – establishing greater levels of fan loyalty as a result.

You42 says creators will be offered “dynamic commerce capabilities” enabling them to sell content through their own page – effectively creating a “personalized marketplace” that meets their meets. They would generate an income through the U42 token – a cryptocurrency that has been specially created for the platform.

Users and creators would also be able to use the platform’s internal currency, UCoin – which can be earned for certain activities or purchased via U42 tokens – to access premium content or tip content creators for work they appreciate.

You42.com is being built in HTML5, with the company hoping this will ensure that users get an excellent viewing experience irrespective of whether they are visiting on a desktop, tablet or smartphone.

A presale of U42 tokens began on April 23, and this is going to be followed by a public sale beginning on July 2. The company says that its platform is going to be live and accessible at the close of the initial coin offering – and a beta version is already live.