Corpse Husband, The Faceless YouTuber & Musician with 6M+ Subscribers

Welcome to the Creator’s Digest. This is a weekly newsletter where I do deep dives into a single creator.

Today’s edition features Corpse Husband, a faceless YouTuber and Musician who has risen the ranks of YouTube by playing the very popular game Among Us and uploading the clips to YouTube.

So who is Corpse Husband?

Little is known about Corpse. His real name is not known along with his face.

From Wikipedia, we know that he was born in 1997 and lives in San Diego, California. He’s known for his very deep voice and popular streams and game play with big YouTubers and streamers. His deep voice has become a staple of his and it is because he is chronically ill. Corpse has a myriad of health issues (he mentioned them in an interview with Anthony Padilla):

• Fibromyalgia (widespread musculoskeletal pain);

• Sleep Apnea (abnormal breathing during sleep) and chronic insomnia;

• GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), also known as acid reflux;

• Some kind of eye disease causing eye inflammation, therefore he has to wear an eyepatch.

He’s also said that his voice is deep due to some of these issues, but that did not stop him from creating content.

On multiple livestreams, Corpse has said he is half-Mexican and half-Irish and also has severe anxiety which means he barely leaves his San Diego apartment. When he does leave, he leaves in a hood or a mask. That said, the illustrations or drawings of him are accurate (according to Corpse) and they look pretty close to his real face, but he has never shown that on camera before. Even during streams, you can only hear his voice rather than see his facial expressions reacting to anything.

He’s best known for his low voice and he rose a lot in popularity when playing Among Us with Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC for short) back in late October. The game had many big streamers including Dr. Lupo, Valkyrae, Pokimane and a few others which made it one of the biggest streams and cross-overs ever.

After that stream, Corpse climbed in subscribers and as of today, December 13th, has yet to do a face reveal.

How did Corpse get started?

Corpse’s first upload was actually 5 years ago and his channel started by him telling scary stories. A few of them were stories read on the internet and then he started reading fan submissions. Combined with his low deep voice and great readings and visuals, the channel started gaining some steam. He eventually started making the videos better by adding suspenseful music and just upping the production value of his scary stories. Here’s his first video from 2015. At the time he was 17 with the deep iconic voice. Just imagine a 17 year old with such a deep voice.

He has many more scary story videos on his channel as it sort of became his staple.

From there, he branched a little bit and decided to become a musician. He’s said he’s always been interested in music as a kid (he’s 23 as of this writing, so basically still a kid). But he put out a few songs and they did very well. Here’s one of my favorites from Corpse called Agoraphobia.

Warning/disclaimer: the content of his music is definitely a bit adult and involves very dark themes, I would not listen to it if you’re not at least 16 years old. There is also some colorful language in the music.

Why is Corpse so popular?

As mentioned, Corpse read dark short scary stories and then turned to music but it wasn’t till Among Us that his channel started to see rocket fuel growth. His deep voice is unmistakable and after starting to stream to with big streamers, his own channels have seen skyrocketing growth. He has three channels: his main channel Corpse Husband, a gaming channel Corpse Husband gaming and one for his music just called Corpse.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the main channel that is approaching 6M+ subscribers (the other two channels are well past 1M+ subscribers too). Let’s take a look at the growth of the main channel since first upload in 2015.

Right around late October is when Corpse saw a great trajectory of growth and that is when he was recruited to play Among Us with big streamers on the platform and Congresswoman AOC as well. That hockey stick growth can be attributed to that and over that week, he gained 1M+ subscribers which was astronomical growth compared to the prior 6 months.

In marketing, this is called cross-over promotion. Your main audience still watches, but you get access to a new audience who now likes you based on first impression. A great example of this used to be celebrity endorsements. For example, when LeBron promotes vitamin water, you have a separate audience who may not know what Vitamin Water is but do know who LeBron is and thus celebrity product endorsements were a thing. Marketing companies were seeing some growth when the people that would watch anything with LeBron now are googling where they can buy Vitamin Water.

In gaming, this cross-over promotion helps all parties and they’re not pushing product, they’re pushing their own brands. In Corpse’s case, it’s people that hear him, vibe with him and subscribe to his channel. It’s the same as previous marketing tactics before and why collabs do so well. In the context of Among Us, a massively popular multiplayer game, people are not only watching for entertainment but also have a very easy way of learning about new creators.

A Case Study on Gaming Collaborators

Let’s take a look at this stream with Corpse, Toast, Dream, Scarra, Fuslie and heavyweights in the YouTube gaming space like Pokimane, PewDiePie, JacksepticEye and more.

Let’s take a look at the emergency meeting room and see the names of everyone. If you know big streamers, you’ll probably recognize some familiar faces like PewDiePie and Pokimane, but right here on the screen, the majority. of people don’t know everyone.

But here they are playing a game, Among Us all together.

So regardless of who wins, who is the imposter, if you’re entertained by any of these creators, you’re more likely to subscribe to their content to see more of their gameplay. Among Us isn’t like other games where you watch to learn how to get better at the game. There is some skill involved but the game is similar to Mafia in person and is a game of deception. There’s knowing the basic gameplay and then the rest of it is up to one’s ability to deceive, lie and survive. With that, it’s hard to get better at the game by just watching popular players play. But the entertainment value is what gets eyeballs and especially when we’re all at home looking for more content after finishing binging Queen’s Gambit (or whatever your favorite Netflix show is).

Corpse Growth and Next Steps

Corpse Husband has seen great growth over the last few months, it’s interesting to look at daily growth as well as he’s sustained this growth over the last 6 months by uploading consistently.

With anything, the recipe for growth is consistency with hard work equals results/success. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating content or working on a workout routine, slow steady progress is better than spikes.

For Corpse, he’s gained about 40K subscribers daily for the last few weeks which is steady growth over time and just a matter of his “stickiness”. That’s a term known for most creators who have fans who will stay with the creator and watch their content on a regular basis. Many creators have a lot of “stickiness” and that is crucial to building an audience.

Taking a quick look at the averages, he’s gained over 1M+ subscribers over the last month and has a daily average of 42K subscribers on a daily basis. That growth is great for a user and shows that Corpse has a lot of room to grow and will only keep growing as he continues to play Among Us with friends and create more content.

One of my favorite videos from Corpse is this video where he fails a very simple Among Us task, Card Swipe, over 30 times and everyone can’t help laughing at how someone who’s played the game ALOT and completed this task a ton can fail at it so much all in one game.

Conclusion

Corpse Husband is a fascinating case study in how you can still reach growth milestones without showing your face or being on video. With the rise of audio only gameplay like Among Us and many different social audio apps, 2020 has seen creators adopt it as well.

It means you don’t need a fancy camera and big setup to gain an audience or a following. Furthermore, it means that it is democratizing access for creators. Many people think that becoming a YouTuber or streamer means having a nice webcam setup, but Corpse (and Dream and a few others) are the exact opposite of that.

It also means that you can maintain utmost privacy of self while still making money as a creator. That in and of itself broadens access to a whole new wave of creators who may have self-confidence issues about how they look or how they’ll be perceived or don’t have access to the tools or nice equipment that they see their favorite creators use. And for some creators, that can mean the difference between creating or just consuming.

Personally, I like Corpse Husband’s content a lot from videos to music and I’m excited to see what he creates next.

This is the fifth edition of the Creator’s Digest.

I’ll dive deep into a single creator on a weekly basis and look at things like their schedule, business model, and provide some links on their content.

This is an ever-changing experiment and my first take at long-form writing, so please if you have any feedback, feel free to DM me on any platform @shardulgo.