Find out how YouTube's biggest gamers are cashing in on Minecraft with Melvin Hedlund from Senior Studios

The Business of Creators is a podcast for content creators and everyone interested in the creator economy. On this show Ian Shepherd speaks with the companies supporting creators with exciting new tools and platforms and digs deeper to get the scoop on new ways to create, distribute and monetize content.

Ian is co-founder of Electrify Video Partners,  a company investing $m in established creators to accelerate their growth. Check out electrify.video.

In this latest episode Melvin Hedlund from Senior Studios and Ian talk about the huge impact that Minecraft continues to have on the creator economy. Melvin is just 19, yet in 2022 his company worked on more than 3000 projects in this booming industry with creators such as The Sidemen and Lazarbeam.

Please go check it out and subscribe to the show for more interviews from industry leaders shaping the Creator Economy. 

Transcript

Melvin Hedlund  0:00  
200 billion views on YouTube in 2020 so it's really puts it to perspective how big Minecraft is. Welcome

Ian Shepherd  0:07  
to Season Two of the business of Creators Podcast. If you're a content creator or you want to know more about the Creator economy, then this podcast is definitely for you. Now I have three children, and they all absolutely love playing Minecraft and watching Minecraft videos on YouTube, and so I started going down a rabbit hole, learning more and more about the leading Minecraft channels and the new businesses working with Minecraft creators. And that's when I met Melvin Hedlund at just 19 years old. He is the CEO of senior studios, managing a team of more than 500 freelancers creating Minecraft environments for some of the world's biggest creators, including the sidemen and laser beam in this show, Melvin and I talk about the scale of Minecraft and the process creators and brands can go through to create their own custom experiences in 2022 Melvin's company worked on more than 3000 projects, and I was blown away by the scale of this booming industry. Before we get into the discussion, I want to tell you about electrify. Video, electrify video partners, a business I co founded that invests millions of dollars into YouTube channels. If you want to grow your YouTube channel, or you're wondering how much your channel is worth, check us out at electrify dot video and get in touch, right? Let's get on with the show. Excellent. So today on the podcast, I'm joined by Melvin from senior studios. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Excellent, great. So can you tell everybody listening who are senior studios and what do you do?

Melvin Hedlund  1:31  
Yeah, of course, senior studios are basically a gaming service provider that works within Minecraft. We basically specialize in creating immersive experience for videos, events and bringing brands into Minecraft. And it has basically grown a lot to become the world's biggest Microsoft provider. We, at the moment, work with some of the biggest content creators and networks in Minecraft.

Ian Shepherd  1:50  
Yeah. I mean, I've been reading about some of the creators that you work with. So can you give us some examples of the creators you're working with?

Melvin Hedlund  1:58  
Yeah, work a lot of a lot of creators, but to name a few, it would be side man, lazy beam and Tommy in it, which all three have an interesting story how it came about.

Ian Shepherd  2:07  
Yeah, excellent. I'd love to learn more about those. So please tell us.

Melvin Hedlund  2:11  
Yeah. The way I got in contact with Simon was actually through LinkedIn. So I'd seen on YouTube that circa minimity Were basically showing sneak peeks of a custom among us map and a custom called Qt zombies map that they would record on. So I thought, when Why wouldn't they want to do something in Minecraft as well? So I basically reached out to one of the managers on LinkedIn who is overseeing their production, and they were actually very interested in getting started with Minecraft, but had had trouble getting someone to actually do it for them. So we basically came to be the solution for them, and hosted a high gains videos which received a great feedback from their audience. Sense, it was very nostalgic for them, amazing,

Ian Shepherd  2:54  
very cool. And what about laser beam?

Melvin Hedlund  2:58  
Yeah, this actually also an interesting story, and it came about with the manager. I've been working with manager before, when he was managing another YouTuber, when when he got a new position for to work with laser beam. I basically got the opportunity to also help laser in creative micro videos. And a big lesson I learned from that is that you have to provide value to your client, and they will be willing to recommend you and continue to use your service, even if they move on to sort of another business venture.

Ian Shepherd  3:28  
Yeah, absolutely. And to somebody listening that's not familiar with Minecraft and the maps and how much can a creator earn by working through a process like this?

Melvin Hedlund  3:40  
A creator can really earn a lot and very little. It really depends on a few factors, such as the amount of use to get types of sponsorships they can secure, and if they sell any merchandise or have any other sort of income streams. So a creator can really learn from anything from a few $100 to millions of dollars per year. But I believe the best way to increase your income as a creator is to focus on investing and making the best content possible, because the rest really follows after

Ian Shepherd  4:09  
that. And so what's the process that they would go through to work with you to kind of create these custom maps in Minecraft?

Melvin Hedlund  4:19  
The first thing that happens, usually that the Creator contact us about something they want made. And sometimes the Creator can have a fully fetched document and know exactly what they want. Or sometimes the Creator just come to us with a general idea, and we then have to get a creative writer from our team to write up a concept for the video. And this concept usually includes this after we include in the individual such as builds, custom mobs, special effects, and anything else they would want or would be good for the video. And once the concept is sort of done, we send it over to the YouTuber to discuss the final details. And once the sort of concept is confirmed and ready to begin on, we. Uh, send it over to our team to discuss a price and time frame for completing the video, in the case that the Creator hasn't mentioned a specific deadline. But we then sort of send our price and time frame to the Creator to get started on working on the project. As soon as that it is confirmed, and while we work on the project, we sort of keep the client or creator regularly updated with progress in from screenshot videos, and so we basically keep them in the loop always throughout the process, so we can sort of get the final product to be the best it can be. Yeah,

Ian Shepherd  5:35  
and how long does it take to make one of these things?

Melvin Hedlund  5:38  
It also really depends on what the Creator is asking for. But I really with custom builds and mods, usually takes anywhere from a week to three weeks. I would say

Ian Shepherd  5:49  
nice. And typically would a creator do like, one of these a week, or one of these a month, or what's kind of like the cadence that they're releasing these videos,

Melvin Hedlund  5:59  
sort of the users we work with tend to sort of do a few videos a week where they are more higher quality, I would say, compared to, for example, other youtubers that, for example, do daily videos which are, of course, still good, but they the sort of content within the video is A lot less for the user to do daily.

Ian Shepherd  6:23  
Yeah. And I mean, how much does it cost for a creator to do something like this? I appreciate, obviously, the complexity of the project. But you know, for anybody in Minecraft, creators out there that want to learn more about it, what sort of price are they looking at

Melvin Hedlund  6:41  
the sort of price that we charge for a full on video, where it is with custom builds, custom characters, mods and all that usually goes for above $1,000 but we also sort of work with creators that just need, for example, a build, and that is obviously, obviously, then a lot cheaper.

Ian Shepherd  6:59  
Yeah, and is your business model? Very much. They pay you to create it and it's theirs. Or do you look at revenue shares? How do you kind of look at that?

Melvin Hedlund  7:08  
Yes, we, the way we work with the Creator is that we work on a commission basis. So they come to us, and we give them a quote, and they pay for the product.

Ian Shepherd  7:18  
Got it, got it. But do you share in the upside as well? So if a creator has a, you know, fantastic, you know, map that's sold, you know, many times over, would you share that with them?

Melvin Hedlund  7:30  
No action is on so when they sort of buy the product from us, they own everything to it

Ian Shepherd  7:35  
nice. Okay, cool. And I mean that we've spoken a lot about Minecraft, and specifically the services that you provide, like, for, again, for people listening that perhaps on in the Minecraft space, give us some stats on how big Minecraft is, globally and specifically on YouTube.

Melvin Hedlund  7:55  
Yeah, so micro is basically the best selling video game in history. And if stats from 2021 I believe, said that they had 140 million monthly active users. And I think it was over 200 billion views on YouTube in 2020 so it's really puts it's perspective how big Minecraft is.

Ian Shepherd  8:18  
Yeah, I mean, it's huge, and how do you think that's going to evolve, like, do you think it's just going to continue to grow, or that, you know, other games like Roblox or are going to take its place?

Melvin Hedlund  8:32  
No, I think Microsoft holders hold its crown, and I think it could continue to grow bigger and bigger, and especially as micro sort of evolves and sort of updates and gets new features and stuff. And I think Michael does a really good job at keeping it, keeping it fresh, that allows both new users to join the game and also keep the players from staying engaged with the game. Yeah, and

Ian Shepherd  8:58  
what about things like short, form content. Do you think that that's going to substantially change the way people view the content and interact with these games?

Melvin Hedlund  9:10  
Yeah, I think it definitely will create a lot more craters. And I think it really it lowers the barriers to entry to becoming a creator, because it really pushes a crater to become big very fast. But also think sort of creators need to sort of leverage long form content in the end as well. But I think to start off, at least the effect of shorts will sort of create a lot more younger generations to want to create content because they see the success it has. Yeah,

Ian Shepherd  9:46  
cool, okay, and, I mean, we've spoken a lot about creators. What about brands? I know you work with brands, and you help integrate them into Minecraft. Can you give us some examples? Of, I guess, how brands should be thinking about this and how they can become involved, and then how you support them.

Melvin Hedlund  10:06  
Yeah. So as I said before, micro is sort of the place where the eyeballs are at, and it is a great way for brands to run campaigns towards the gamers and the younger generation. And we have done a few projects with the brands as for example, we work with after GX built a server, developed and hosted a forum, and it was sort of the first big brand we worked with that came from outside the microspace. So we really learned a lot from it as well, and also took that experience to work with the future brands we're working with now, to sort of bring them the best solutions, how they can get as much attention and engage with the gamers for their brand. And

Ian Shepherd  10:48  
is it very much brands see this as just marketing, or is there some sort of like revenue associated with it as well? Yeah,

Melvin Hedlund  10:54  
I think the biggest part is sort of marketing towards the brand, but the brands can also sort of seen as an income source. But I think the biggest part is seeing it as a marketing move

Ian Shepherd  11:06  
cool and tell us more about, like, senior studios, like I've seen how quickly the business has grown. I think is it, you've got more than 500 people working with you now. Um, what's, what's the background to the business? Where did it start from?

Melvin Hedlund  11:19  
Yeah, it sort of started when I was just 14, and I basically was forced to create a team, because when I was just a builder myself, I basically got too many commissions that I couldn't attend myself. So that sort of led to be creating a team and invited more builders to sort of handle the commissions I can attend on so that basically led to the team we have today, because we grew as a build team, but after a couple months, we sort of started offering more services, and have since basically expanded to offer everything that anyone would ever need within Minecraft.

Ian Shepherd  11:58  
Wow, that's amazing. And over what period of time?

Melvin Hedlund  12:02  
So it has been now five years since I started the team. That's

Ian Shepherd  12:07  
amazing. It's just phenomenal how quickly the business has grown and what's the future look like? What are you focusing on? I guess, for 2023 and

Melvin Hedlund  12:20  
beyond? Yeah, I'm really excited for the future, actually. And since I see that, even though we are sort of the biggest micro service provider in the in the world, we I still feel like there is so much more that we can do. And I believe that we are sort of now entering a new phase in the business where we will focus more on working with more creators and brands in 2023

Ian Shepherd  12:44  
and do you think you would explore beyond Minecraft on into other games, or you just wouldn't entertain that it's sort of solely focused on Minecraft.

Melvin Hedlund  12:52  
Yeah, my big goal is actually to be sort of the world biggest gaming service provider. So I want to be the go to Company for anything related to gaming, and in order to become that, I would need to step into other games as well. And actually think the next big step for us to do would be to enter Roblox as our next game to sort of provide our value in the community.

Ian Shepherd  13:14  
Wow. And what do you think about like the broader creator economy? What can they learn from, I guess, a business like yours that partners with creators to sell virtual products and games.

Melvin Hedlund  13:32  
I think the piece biggest reason what people can learn from our success is that we focus on providing as much value as possible, and we have basically find a niche where our product is needed and it really hasn't good impact and good reasons to use our products and services. And I really think that it's a rule to follow for everything you do that you focus on offering the best and the rest will naturally follow.

Ian Shepherd  13:59  
Great words there, and what about for sort of 2023 do you have any predictions for what you kind of expect in the broader creative economy, whether it's different platforms or different creators? I

Melvin Hedlund  14:12  
think the biggest thing that would happen in in terms of Minecraft, is that more and more brands will enter and sort of sort of see it as the starting phase of how it looked when brands entered Roblox and Fortnite. So I really think that brands will see micro as an opportunity to enter as well.

Ian Shepherd  14:29  
Great. And just want to wrap it up now, if any creators are listening, or brands are listening and they want to know more about how they can get in contact with you and learn more about Minecraft. How should they find out about you and the business? I

Melvin Hedlund  14:47  
think the best contact place would be our website or LinkedIn. Our website is just called senior studios, so it should be easy to find if you Google it, and my LinkedIn is smell of Ian, excellent. Well, thank

Ian Shepherd  14:59  
you so. Much for joining us today. I mean, it's fascinating to learn the scale of the Minecraft business and how you're supporting creators. And if anybody's listening and they want to get in touch, then I would encourage them to speak to Melvin, it's amazing how much they've achieved and the size of the creators that they're working with right now. So thank you for joining me.

Melvin Hedlund  15:16  
Yeah, thank you.

Ian Shepherd  15:17  
That was the fourth episode in the latest series of the business of Creators Podcast. We've got some great guests coming up, so please hit subscribe to join the conversation, and don't hesitate to send me a DM on Twitter or LinkedIn with feedback about the show you.