[HN Gopher] YouTube and Patreon Still Aren't Paying the Rent for...
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YouTube and Patreon Still Aren't Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
Author : herbertl
Score : 150 points
Date : 2021-03-22 10:54 UTC (12 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (marker.medium.com)
| sparrish wrote:
| "the problem of how to more evenly distribute income among
| creators to achieve a greater number of living wages."
|
| It's delusional of the author to think that is a goal what
| YouTube is aiming for.
| abraxas wrote:
| Youtubers are from extremistan but dentists are from
| mediocristan[1] The distribution of outcomes in the two job
| categories is a different curve with Youtuber jobs having a very
| strong "winner take all" inclination. The problem with any
| proposed solutions is that they are unable to change these
| curves. Their existence emerges naturally in various domains. I
| don't think anyone ever figured out how to even out an
| extremistan domain to make it resemble a mediocristan
| distribution.
|
| 1. https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Every market where a single provider is able to satisfy
| unlimited and global demand will be a winner takes all
| situation.
|
| One youtuber can entertain millions of people while one dentist
| can only work on a few people per day. You may be the 100,000th
| best dentist but that doesn't matter because everyone above you
| is already booked out.
| npteljes wrote:
| Already booked out, and also locality matters a lot. On the
| internet, a live stream only takes <1s to reach me, while I
| have to find a dentist in my own area.
| abraxas wrote:
| That's just one dimension of it. If I'm a mega live
| streamer I can be servicing millions of viewers all at
| once. As a dentist I'm most likely to be serving 1.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Most creative will never pay their rent from their art. That's
| life. I'm a physicist, but there is no money in physics so I do
| IT.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Rent is problem even for employees of established companies. It
| effectively creates a slave labour, quite similar to restrictive
| immigration visas where the employee cannot afford be unemployed.
|
| I'm sur a lot of people are pushed out of character just to be
| able to pay the rent, hampering both the creativity and he
| goodwill in the society.
|
| We could have much better creative scene if the incomes were not
| funnelled to landlords. Creative people are motivated by the
| drive to create, unfortunately they have to restrict themselves
| when "large sum to be payed to a property owner or suffer life
| changing consequences" clause is imposed.
|
| That's why it's often the case where the creative move to a
| really cheap neighbourhood and years later you have a generation
| of impactful artists and a neighbourhood that is trendy.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| The obvious alternative is to move to somewhere more affordable
| than the potentially mismatched cost-of-living area you are in
| and the income you bring in...
|
| I don't think this argument holds much water because these
| online careers can be done from ANYWHERE and definitely do not
| require you to live in LA, NYC, SF, or even moderate cost of
| living areas like Atlanta, Nashville, Phoenix.
|
| Rent is going to cost SOMETHING everywhere until you own your
| own property (which isn't free either and requires maintenance
| and comes with taxes).
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you don't want to funnel money to a landlord, buy a
| property. I did and now funnel _even more money_ to my mortgage
| company and have to handle and pay for repairs, but none to a
| landlord.
|
| It's almost like having desirable housing is something that a
| lot of people are willing to spend money on.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Almost as if there are two kind of people out there: those
| with fully paid housing those who have to pay. In most places
| being the one or the other creates class changing lifestyle
| difference under the same employment.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| This doesn't even make any sense. Everyone has to pay for
| their housing... you either opt into two different schemes,
| own it or rent it and both come with upsides and downsides.
|
| It is up to the person to decide which works for them and
| in the means that works for them. You can go to many cities
| where it makes outright more sense to just rent (and maybe
| more prudent to do so while you don't have a steady stream
| of income from streaming yet).
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's obviously not true, in every country I lived in
| there was this thing called "inheritance" which a lot of
| times means parents who happen to have done the grinding
| and leave the house to their kids.
|
| Its instant double salary in real terms most of the
| times.
|
| It's very different from being wealthy, it doesn't come
| with the "elite" stuff but its more like "premium
| economy" that creates adults of same productivity class
| with drastically different consumption style and degree
| freedom.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What's the difference if the parents leave a house or
| leave an investment account that's equal in value to the
| house?
|
| That investment account will throw off enough returns to
| pay the rent and then some in most markets, so they're
| still paying rent to a landlord; they just have a lot
| more spending money than someone starting from scratch.
| mrtksn wrote:
| No difference, the idea here is that it creates
| drastically different lifestyles at the same productivity
| when you have free housing that you did not earn
| yourself(in comparison too not having free housing).
|
| The housing becoming half or even more than half of the
| salary creates a class of people who do the same job,
| having the same productivity but reaping completely
| different lives for their hard work in comparison to
| those who have parents that transitioned into landlords.
|
| It is a prime tension between skilled workforce in
| cities. For now, the proposed solution is to prevent
| immigrants competing but that won't cut it. I believe
| that it will create deep changes in the society as they
| find ot that hampering meritocracy to reduce competition
| from foreigners wouldn't sort it out.
|
| Landlords are one unproductive burden to the society, no
| wonder people are leaving SV because of the ridiculous
| housing prices. Money invested in rent is not a good
| investment.
|
| Property is a speculative market that doesn't reflect the
| value provided by the product. Very similar system to the
| medallion system for the taxi drivers.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It seems to me like you're actually frustrated by
| someone's parents "grinding" (as you put it) and as a
| result of that work giving them financial resources that
| someone else doesn't have. Housing seems like a symptom
| at most.
| mrtksn wrote:
| No, not at all, my parents did their part. The
| frustration comes from seeing this money drain that
| creates an inequality where there's no good reason to be
| there. Just to be clear, I don't argue that people
| shouldn't inherit properties, that's just came out
| against the argument that "everyone pays for housing",
| which is clearly not the case.
|
| Most of the time rent is money siphoned to unproductive
| people. I wouldn't care if it was optional like having a
| car or affordable like not effectively moving you between
| income groups.
| sokoloff wrote:
| As I see it, the inequality in this subthread's story is
| from the inheritance, not the housing costs.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Inheritance is another topic, many things will affect
| your quality and life satisfaction and wealth inheritance
| is definitely a prime one however the problem is not
| about having rich and poor people here, the problem is
| having different compensation for the same input(even
| worse, lower compensation for the higher input).
|
| Because of the nature of the housing, that is limited and
| not optional, pretty much everywhere it is optimised to a
| level that drains everyone exposed out, acting as a tax.
| What is the difference between living in a communist
| country that takes half of your salary and gives you free
| housing close enough to your workforce and first having
| the money in your account then sending half of it to
| someone whose function in the society is to collect rent?
| It's not like you have choice? Money going through your
| bank account or not, it doesn't matter. You are
| effectively compensated drastically differently depending
| on your property ownership.
|
| Inequality is no big problem when you have options and
| viable(hard work and compensation beneath that work is
| not viable) path to change your circumstances. In places
| like London, NY, Paris etc. enormous money is siphoned
| into property owners, probably the similar to the size of
| the productive economy and what you have is young people,
| usually the best among their peers, seemingly making a
| lot of money that live in very low quality houses and you
| have property owners that live the sweet life that is
| well beyond their contribution the society.
|
| It has become a structural thing and it's not right.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Indeed, life should not be a grind.
| unity1001 wrote:
| "If you dont want to pay your dues to your feudal lord as a
| serf, become a lord yourself"
|
| That's what you are saying.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I bought a house for my family to live in, or more
| precisely, I put 20% down on a house and borrowed a bunch
| of money from the bank that I'm now paying off quite
| possibly even into retirement.
|
| If that's now frowned upon, I must have missed a memo.
| woutr_be wrote:
| Am I wrong to think about "creators" as just businesses? If
| you're not making enough money through your business, then maybe
| you need to reconsider your business plan.
|
| You know what you get on Youtube, you don't have a contract
| saying how much you'll be making from creating content for them.
| Maybe I lack empathy here, but it seems most people saw this as
| an easy money maker, but were wrong.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| The problem is you are thinking about making money as the goal
| and content creation as the method.
|
| Most of these people are thinking about content creation as the
| goal and making money and an unfortunate side requirement.
| s0rce wrote:
| It seems like a universal basic income would address this
| "unfortunate side requirement" better than somehow making all
| youtubers get paid enough to make rent. This would let people
| take the risk of doing content creation, either they get
| lucky and make a lot of money or they can indefinitely
| subsist on UBI. In the end society wins (in my opinion) by
| getting lots of people doing stuff they are interested in.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| The proposals for UBI have always seemed like a replacement
| of welfare where it's a survivable amount of money but not
| ideal, so you are encouraged to find well paying work but
| can afford to take time off to train or find something new.
|
| The thing is, we don't need to encourage people to become
| content creators because we already have more than enough
| content being created and any more would mostly be a waste.
|
| The good thing about capitalist markets is they are able to
| prioritise things that are in need reasonably well. Once
| that need is met, prices move to stabilise that balance.
|
| I'm all for the ubi to replace welfare but I don't think it
| will do wonders for creative people who will never turn it
| in to a higher paying job.
| [deleted]
| woutr_be wrote:
| > Most of these people are thinking about content creation as
| the goal and making money and an unfortunate side
| requirement.
|
| If you put it that way, then I don't feel any remorse at all
| for people who are complaining that content creation can't
| pay the bills. It's not any different than any other hobby.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Which, unfortunately, is the incorrect way to think if you
| larger goal is to afford rent and food.
|
| When I was finishing high school, I had to choose between
| music or comp-sci for university. Went with comp-sci because
| I didn't think as a trumpet player I would be able to do
| much, besides being one of the 5 (citation needed) teachers
| in my city, or being VERY lucky and survive playing gigs,
| mostly which would be playing music I didn't like.
|
| It worked well for me, as I ended up having a couple bands,
| and also did some freelance gigs. Because it was my hobby - I
| didn't care for money, as I got a job - I could go full Marie
| Kondo and only play what gave me joy.
| sadmann1 wrote:
| Don't know about you lads but furry porn is booming right now.
| Gotta fit the needs of the market instead of your artistic needs
| real-dino wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/vlqqur72jow31.jpg
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| SFW relevant video https://youtu.be/jJ6GPabvSfY
| xfitm3 wrote:
| I don't want creators to get paid, because this perversely
| incentivizes their material. Before youtubers got paid it was a
| labor of love and IMO the quality was far superior. Now you just
| have a bunch of money hungry people trying to "make it".
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| There is a limit on how many carries can be full time youtubers.
| It's limited by people's watch time. YouTube has grown a lot but
| that is plateauing.
| alistairSH wrote:
| "Minor League Baseball still not paying rent for most baseball
| players"
|
| "Playing Fridays at the local pub still not paying rent for most
| guitar players"
|
| Etc.
|
| Entertainment of all varieties is all "winner take all"
| occupation - the best make big money, and everybody else makes do
| with table scraps.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The power law rules all things in the entertainment economy.
| someguyorother wrote:
| The power law rules (almost) all things human.
|
| How often words are used in a language, wealth distribution,
| social network followers, you name it.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Full article without the wall: https://outline.com/ktG6Xz
| namelosw wrote:
| Many people worry about automation would take jobs from most
| people, while others believe there would be always new jobs.
|
| They're both not wrong. But the catch is, when the machine is
| taking over the "real jobs", the "new jobs" created are more and
| more let people to entertain each other. Unlike the old-time
| circuses that have to travel along the continent village-to-
| village, these entertainers can easily scale to massive audiences
| with the Internet, leading to information monopolies and the
| winner-takes-all situation.
|
| It would only get worse over time. The current model of
| capitalism would not work at all for a highly-advanced society
| where most "real jobs" have been automated, and most people have
| to join the entertainment industry.
|
| (It's actually just how average artists struggle now and in the
| past, but because they're minorities so people don't care enough.
| IMHO in a highly-advanced society most people would be more or
| less like artists.)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Top athletes and artists or just top kids making much more money
| is part of the system. It was observed as why watch 2nd best
| whatever the criteria of that be.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Raise your hand if you're the least bit surprised by this?
| Content creation is going to give a tiny number of people a high
| income for several years and everyone else almost nothing.
|
| YouTube isn't struggling with how to make these incomes more even
| any more than record labels are trying to make every artist have
| a nice, steady income. It's a hits driven business.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| The lower end of content creation needs to wake up and realise
| there isn't a market for what they have and get a paying job.
| The refusal to give up keeps prices low by creating an
| oversupply.
| js8 wrote:
| You know, in the old days, there were public broadcasters, like
| BBC (I am not English/American, so I don't know what the state of
| these is today). They balanced the commercial aspect of the media
| (somebody has to pay for the waves) with public access.
|
| I think people should consider political initiative to have
| something like Youtube, but in public domain (with the same
| status as public broadcaster). Basically, the service would run
| on ads, but would be non-profit in the sense that the ads profits
| would be mostly returned to the creators on that platform,
| transparently and fairly.
| WJW wrote:
| It's already free to watch even the smallest channel on
| youtube, the income from the largest channels subsidizes the
| servers needed to transcode the millions of videos that will
| only ever get a single view.
|
| The "problem" is that most creators have miniscule audiences.
| The "transparent and fairly" returned ad profits for someone
| with ten viewers is never going to be very large. The power law
| in entertainment has always been large; the big artists make
| tens of millions and everyone else scrapes by. The internet has
| not changed that dynamic.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > the income from the largest channels subsidizes the servers
| needed to transcode the millions of videos that will only
| ever get a single view.
|
| Exactly. I had 3 different channels, in different points in
| my life, but the fact that I could, for free, upload a video
| and have it hosted and then (possibly) watched worldwide on
| almost any device, it's bonkers. If I had to create an app or
| pay for storage/upload/etc, it would be impossible.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I'm guessing sites like YouTube could use their machine
| learning army to make it all a bit more meritocratic. In the
| last there were big logistical challenges and costs to making
| a movie. In YT there are no real costs. I'm not sure the
| power law has to exist on a place like YT.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume YouTube is already rewarding content creators
| based on how much the world's people watch them. If so, can
| it get more meritocratic?
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > make it all a bit more meritocratic
|
| The only way to make it more meritocratic is to completely
| remove algorithms. But that could make it even harder for
| smaller channels to grow.
|
| > In the last there were big logistical challenges and
| costs to making a movie. In YT there are no real costs.
|
| Exactly, anyone who has a good idea and a smartphone can
| record and upload to Youtube. Can it be simpler than that?
| Of course, in some places people don't have
| internet/smartphones, but that's not something that it's up
| for Youtube to fix
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Except that it's not about profits, it's about _culture_ and
| _quality of life._ And pursuit of profit at the expense of
| everything else reliably destroys both.
|
| It's also about closing one of the few paths that the poor
| can use to stop being poor.
| luckylion wrote:
| > And pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else
| reliably destroys both.
|
| So who decides which artists are about "culture and quality
| of life" and should be paid to do whatever they like doing?
| You? Some committee? The population?
|
| Because right now it's the population. You might not agree
| with the choices they make, but that's a different issue.
| dbbk wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm following how what you're saying is
| applicable to people making money making videos on YouTube?
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Creating video content for others to consume is one of the
| least likely to succeed avenues for a poor person to stop
| being poor, even if YouTube handed over every cent of
| advertising revenue to the video's creators.
| chii wrote:
| reading between the lines, it seems like the OP's idea is
| basically a form of UBI that allows creatives to engage
| in content creation regardless of the market-fit and
| commercial viability of the content.
| MaximumYComb wrote:
| While I like the principal of a UBI, people not living in
| poverty, it strikes me that OP's reasoning is one of the
| reasons why I see issues with a UBI. Who is going to want
| to work a factory/service job when you can live
| comfortably pumping out low quality videos that average
| 10 views?
|
| Maybe it would drive income equality and better
| remuneration for those roles. Maybe we'd simply lose a
| lot of productivity. Who knows?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's the point of UBI. Currently, the wages for those
| roles are low because they were born to poorer parents.
| But if given the opportunity not to, then the wages for
| those roles would go up so that there aren't so low
| simply because people lost the ovarian lottery.
| kofejnik wrote:
| no, more like state-subsidised highbrow-culture-focused
| TV channel, which will have to be heavily curated and
| hard to get into, but which will pay reasonable money to
| the lucky ones who managed to get commissioned
|
| UBI would provide peanuts for everyone and devalue the
| content even more. Everybody and the fleas on the backs
| of their dogs will be streaming and influencing.
| chii wrote:
| > would be non-profit in the sense that the ads profits would
| be mostly returned to the creators on that platform
|
| The basic premise that by making it non-profit, it would garner
| a higher returns for the content creators is false. The problem
| really is that there's not enough revenue generated, to pay
| people producing the content.
|
| Even youtube is run at a loss (only offset by the valuable data
| they collect for google i suppose). I think people who want to
| create content, but cannot find the right market to sell that
| content (aka, cannot reach viral levels) may want to consider
| doing it only for their own desires, rather than to aim for
| commercial success.
| mtberatwork wrote:
| > The problem really is that there's not enough revenue
| generated, to pay people producing the content.
|
| > Even youtube is run at a loss (only offset by the valuable
| data they collect for google i suppose).
|
| YouTube generates $15B in revenue. [1] I'm sure in the early
| years when they first acquired YouTube, they ran it at a
| loss. However, as far as I am aware, Google has never stated
| whether or not YouTube is profitable. Given the amount of
| revenue YouTube generates in the present day, I would say
| it's unlikely they are running YouTube at a loss.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-
| google-al...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It is fairly unlikely YouTube makes significant profits.
| It's costs are enormous.
|
| More importantly, even if it were profitable now, it took
| literally hundreds of billions of investment to get there,
| and huge subsidy by Google's server infrastructure. Where
| is this public YouTube going to get an amount of money
| literally bigger than Nasa's funding from?
| chii wrote:
| if youtube was running at a profit, i would have expected
| alphabet's financial reports to jump at pointing it out.
|
| They have never done so, and odds are that it looks really
| bad from a financial reporting perspective, even tho the
| user data it can collect is very valuable (but it cannot
| count as revenue, since there's no marketable value for
| such data atm).
| mtberatwork wrote:
| Well, Google doesn't list out profitability of any of
| their products these days either [1]:
|
| > Alphabet isn't providing profitability numbers,
| limiting its operating income (or loss) reporting to
| Google and "Other Bets,"
|
| ...so it's all mostly posturing at this point. The only
| thing we really know is that YouTube generates billions
| in revenue on a quarterly basis.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/google-still-isnt-
| telling-us...
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > like BBC (I am not English/American, so I don't know what the
| state of these is today)
|
| Still going strong. Still supported by taxes. Still subject to
| political interference.
|
| > transparently and fairly
|
| Do you give the rewards out based on views/listens? Because if
| so then you haven't fixed the system. Because the audience
| doesn't like everyone's work the same. 10% of the creators will
| get 90% of the revenue.
|
| Do you give out the rewards based on effort? If I spend 10 days
| making a tune that no-one wants to listen to, should I get the
| same reward as someone who creates a tune that everyone loves?
| Is that fair?
|
| Is there some middle ground, where say 50% of the revenue is
| allocated on audience size and 50% on effort? If I spend all my
| time making bad music then I should get my rent paid, right?
| That's fair, right?
|
| What system should we use that would be fair and still allow
| unpopular creators to get paid enough to pay their rent?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| That's because the rent is too damn high.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Then why don't the creators move? This is a job that can be
| done from anywhere (with maybe decent internet access) but that
| opens up so many lower COL areas in the US and honestly world
| fitting that bill.
| grug_life wrote:
| There is a reason why the term "starving artist" was coined.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| 99% of creatives have never been able to pay their rent by
| selling what they make.
|
| It's not even about how good they are - some people produce
| amazing stuff but it's not something that enough other people
| want to own (or listen to, or watch, or whatever).
|
| The lucky few whose creative spark happens to coincide with
| market demand get to do that all day long. For the rest of us,
| it's a day job to pay the rent (which might mean creating
| something that the market wants instead of what scratches our
| creative itch) or a life of poverty and creative freedom.
|
| This is not something that a change in the platforms is going to
| "fix".
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > It's not even about how good they are - some people produce
| amazing stuff but it's not something that enough other people
| want to own (or listen to, or watch, or whatever).
|
| This isn't even the problem. It's that to be successful you
| need to be more than good at your job you need to be great at
| doing a few other jobs as well. Namely running a business and
| marketing. And lucky in catching the break the propels you
| upwards.
|
| This requirement for discoverability, marketability and
| virality also changes the media significantly. YouTube is rife
| with ten minute videos, clickbait titles and overenthusiastic
| yelling. This is entirely on the platforms, their bid for
| retention to keep people watching one more video and how
| discovery and recommendations work.
|
| If you look at the wider industry of say TV and film you get a
| much wider array of successful content, supporting more people
| with more stability.
|
| I do think there is a version of YouTube that could result in
| "better" content whilst employing more people.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I agree completely, but I wanted to draw a distinction
| between "the lucky few" who naturally make what people want
| to buy, and those who treat it as a job (and are excellent at
| marketing, business, etc).
|
| The idea that to be a successful creator you just need to be
| good at whatever creative activity it is, is pernicious and
| wrong.
|
| To be a successful creator you need to be either incredibly
| lucky, or actually a successful business founder whose
| business model happens to include creating stuff.
| redisman wrote:
| > I do think there is a version of YouTube that could result
| in "better" content whilst employing more people.
|
| Patreon? The only thing is that it still requires a 3rd party
| discovery tool with a huge reach where Youtube comes in
| again.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Patreon is just another revenue stream and doesn't strictly
| tackle the issues I'm talking about directly. Similarly the
| way smaller channels support themselves with sponsorships,
| product placement and merchandise. It seems extremely
| important to have that diversification in light of the way
| ad revenue can be switched off seemingly without recourse.
|
| I'm more interested in how the discovery platform itself
| could be reshaped which is the key to truly supporting a
| wide variety of successful content.
| chii wrote:
| > If you look at the wider industry of say TV and film you
| get a much wider array of successful content, supporting more
| people with more stability.
|
| TV has barely any variety of content, compared to youtube.
| And youtube as an advertising platform is already bigger than
| TV.
| grumple wrote:
| > This isn't even the problem. It's that to be successful you
| need to be more than good at your job you need to be great at
| doing a few other jobs as well. Namely running a business and
| marketing. And lucky in catching the break the propels you
| upwards.
|
| But this is a problem for all fields. If devs want to work
| independently, need to be good at business and marketing as
| well.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Devs are creatives, with exactly the same problems as any
| musician, artist, film-maker, or cosplayer (for example).
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Absolutely, I'm just describing the effects as it pertains
| to video and YouTube. Imagine the difference in content if
| we still allowed for independent content production without
| requiring the additional skills. YouTube has 2 billion
| logged in monthly users that's a reach that should make
| many niches viable. But seemingly not.
| Kalium wrote:
| > This isn't even the problem. It's that to be successful you
| need to be more than good at your job you need to be great at
| doing a few other jobs as well. Namely running a business and
| marketing. And lucky in catching the break the propels you
| upwards.
|
| This sounds like a _great_ description of art as a profession
| for roughly the past five to seven centuries. It sounds like
| really very little has changed, except perhaps more people
| having a chance to compete.
|
| Could a central coordinator devote greater resources to a
| more diverse set of content? It is, as you say, absolutely
| possible. Though there are perhaps a few questions to be
| asked about why such a central coordinating force would make
| better choices, and if the artists would rather give up their
| choices to work on what the coordinator has blessed would
| agree this is better.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| For an example of the latter you have the BBC which is
| deservedly world famous for its choices.
| Kalium wrote:
| The BBC is widely and justly praised! So long as you like
| its choices, everything is great. Central coordinators
| can, as you say, earn widespread praise and acclaim.
|
| What happens if you're an artist that the BBC isn't
| interested in supporting? What happens when the BBC runs
| out of budget for the year?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You can't make it because you don't have the budget. Then
| you start a YouTube channel appealing to the lowest
| common denominator and die a little more inside each day
| as you yell "ring that bell" umpteen times whilst pumping
| out content to avoid losing the favor of the algorithm.
| But you find success so keep doing it whilst hoping you
| remain popular and don't get demonetized. You still don't
| get to make the thing you wanted because you know that
| sort of content is not successful but eh, it's a living.
|
| Or you pitch your idea elsewhere because people have
| realized that the strong model of the BBC that allows it
| to take creative risks can work elsewhere.
| Kalium wrote:
| Really, what I'm looking for is if you've thought about
| the failure modes of centralized management of resources
| and tastemaking. It seems you believe there are no
| different ones. Is that accurate?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| No, why on earth would you take that from a few comments
| here? It seems rather condescending and presumptuous. And
| as the great example of YouTube shows pseudo-
| democratizing those things doesn't actually fix them
| either.
| Kalium wrote:
| In that case, please correct me! I would like to know
| more about your thoughts on the failure modes of
| centralization vs democratization in the arena of
| artistic production and resourcing.
|
| I understand if you consider such questions condescending
| and presumptuous, though.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Given you're presenting a false dichotomy, I've already
| corrected you and I have no need to take a test(!?) from
| you I'm going to venture there is no further useful
| conversation to be had.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > some people produce amazing stuff but it's not something that
| enough other people want to own (or listen to, or watch, or
| whatever).
|
| This is very true. When I go to anime conventions, I see MANY
| people with incredible talents. And sometimes I do want to buy
| a poster or something. But, there's only so much wall on my
| small apartment to hang posters...
| baryphonic wrote:
| I wouldn't even say it's just this. Consistency, high quality
| (in terms of writing, delivery, production value) and a
| boatload of other factors matter, too. As does the _ethos_ of
| "authenticity."
|
| Ben Eater and 3Blue1Brown are I think good examples of this. I
| doubt "the market" was demanding videos about higher level math
| with superb visualizations, or especially implementing a 6502
| on breadboards, but these guys both made it happen. I doubt
| they're raking in the megabux, but they seem to be doing pretty
| well.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| While I wish my own Patreon were better funded and the issues in
| this space are real, this isn't going to be entirely solved by
| working only on the income end of things.
|
| The US needs to reform its housing policies and find a better
| solution for providing healthcare for all citizens. If it were
| easier to find a small place to rent for less than $500 per month
| in the US, if it were easier to live without a car and if the
| average American weren't being bled for healthcare coverage, then
| you could live on $10k or so a year without it being a hardship.
| (Assuming single childless person, basically.)
|
| Some people already pull off stuff like that, but it needs to be
| more widespread. We need to make "the basics" somehow more
| accessible for more people.
|
| The problem isn't "Only a relatively small percentage of people
| make good money this way and those folks tend to get rich." The
| problem is that a high percentage of Americans are finding no
| means to really make ends meet due to a variety of factors that
| interplay in an ugly way.
|
| It's reasonable to say "It's not really the fault of this one
| thing." But _something_ needs to give.
| ytNumbers wrote:
| An example of this is the movie "Pursuit of Happiness". Having
| family/friends to lean on can help in many cases. However, many
| people are simply too overwhelmed by life to work on improving
| their situation or even trying something like...
|
| https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| One of the issues is that our broken policies are helping to
| fuel high rates of homelessness. Once you are homeless, you
| now have a lot of logistical barriers to accomplishing
| anything, plus social stigma piled on top of that and other
| issues (like hygiene issues that tend to make health issues
| worse and harder to resolve in most cases).
|
| There is all kinds of data showing it is cheaper literally
| give people housing than to let them be homeless. I'm not
| even asking the US to outright give poor folks housing. Just
| make it possible to find housing that doesn't cost an arm and
| a leg and where you can make your life work without a car.
|
| I don't think I'm asking all that much, to be honest. This
| shouldn't be that hard. It's not like we need to invent these
| concepts from scratch. There are lots of examples to draw
| from for how to make such policies (plus healthcare) work
| better than what we've got.
| ytNumbers wrote:
| Vastly increasing the housing stock by massively building
| upwards would knock down big city housing costs, but those
| who currently own real estate will fight that and vote out
| anyone promoting such a solution. NIMBY. It's a shame, but
| it is democracy in action. The people who would benefit
| from lower rental costs need to get out and vote in
| politicians who will solve the "rent is too damn high!"
| problem.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's more complicated than that, which is kind of a good
| thing. There are other avenues that have some hope of
| working.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Indeed. Addressing systemic inequality is the key to solution
| of all these problems. Creator economy, new forms of working
| etc cannot solve this by itself. As long as basic commodities
| required for survival are made subject of profit maximization,
| this undesirable situation happens.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Few creators actually manage to make a living wage through
| YouTube and Patreon -- two of the relatively more mature, robust
| platforms, both of which are in need of distributing more income
| to their less popular creators.
|
| You can make that argument about YouTube (and complain about
| Patreon's cut) but on Patreon consumers choose who they want to
| give money to. Are Patreon expected to take off an extra X% and
| subsidise the less popular creators?
| [deleted]
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This is not at all surprising.
|
| Here is a good explanation of a similar situation by Jordan
| Peterson (2min): https://youtu.be/BZMBdRfbk6A?t=322
|
| TL;DW Pareto Distribution.
| cletus wrote:
| So I have to give props to Twitch here. Twitch literally created
| an ecosystem and a culture of supporting creators that 99.9% of
| whom could never be supported by ad revenue alone.
|
| But what I find with all these creative professions is an
| undertone of... desperation. A lot of people seem desperate to be
| famous. It's kind of sad.
|
| Thing is the majority of wannabe Twitch streamers (and this
| includes YouTube) just aren't entertaining.
|
| I think they see the top 0.1% and say "I could do that". What
| they Do note may be easy but getting there wasn't. People don't
| seem to see the years of building an audience and luck among the
| way.
|
| Too many people now just see solar signs. 10 years ago (at least
| on Twitch) it wasn't a profession. People did it as a hobby.
|
| I imagine this is similar to other fields like acting. So few
| people are professional actors. The vast majority are working
| casual jobs for years hoping to get their break and most won't
| ever get that break.
|
| At least With field like dancing there's a barrier to entry.
| Dancers train for years.
|
| A lot of YouTube creators don't have any skills. They just want
| to be famous based in their looks and their lifestyle. That's the
| worst kind of fame seeker (IMHO).
| redisman wrote:
| Is Twitch any better than Youtube for the creators though? It
| has the same distribution of top 100 performers who make
| amazing- to decent- day job salaries and then the other 99.5%
| are left fighting for scraps. I've watched a few guys do it for
| years without seeing any growth and grow more disillusioned by
| the month until it's just a self fulfilling prophecy that no
| one wants to watch them wallow at this point. They were in the
| top players of their games too (maybe 95th percentile) but just
| didn't have the entertainment part down.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| My impression at least is that the tail is a bit longer and
| descends less steeply on Twitch. It seems possible to have a
| solid middle class income through Twitch as long as you keep
| on the treadmill. But it also seems awfully precarious. It
| also seems to be becoming more intertwined with YouTube and
| using the latter for discovery of the former so who knows
| which way it's going.
| [deleted]
| undefined1 wrote:
| Schools should really start teaching basic principles, such as
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
| unity1001 wrote:
| Empty capitalist rationalizations that only serve to
| rationalize systemic faults.
|
| People dont care about such rationalizations. If things go way
| down south in a society, extremism and chaos takes over, and
| all those people who were rationalizing such systemic
| inequality end up finding themselves in hot water. From the
| decline of Roman Republic and then fall of the empire to French
| Revolution, from religious/nationalist extremism taking over
| countries and persecuting such opulent classes to whatever
| societal collapse you pick from history.
|
| In contrast to the people in earlier millennia, we now are able
| to identify problems. And we can fix them. That is what we
| should be doing - not rationalizing the systemic fault by
| inventing justifications that advertise the existing systemic
| fault as 'natural'.
| seieste wrote:
| The fact that youtubers with a small following and a lack of
| monetization don't make any money is not the result of
| capitalism. Do you believe that a different economic system
| would actually fund the long tail of entertainers?
|
| The problem is not capitalism, it's that most of the
| entertainers are not popular enough to make any money from
| their viewers, and many still wouldn't be able to survive if
| they received 100% of the money YouTube gets. Then where
| would the money come from? If not their viewers, and not
| advertising, then who? The government?
|
| It's not a US or capitalist problem, it's a simple cash flow
| problem. Can you imagine the Soviet Union or China funding
| them? Even the 10,000th van lifer?
| darepublic wrote:
| We need a minimum living wage for YouTube creators? Or it should
| be completely demonetized /s. Another mindless incarnation of the
| outrage template
| pietrovismara wrote:
| Just a minimum living wage for everyone, so that people don't
| have to invent for themselves a failed career in entertainment,
| in order to escape unemployment/wage slavery.
| darepublic wrote:
| Sure UBI is a valid idea. Trying to create such a system by
| forcing YouTube to implement it is not productive imo
| pietrovismara wrote:
| Never said so. Even tho, if big corps paid their fair share
| in taxes, instead of using foreign tax havens, it would be
| way easier to find the resources for a UBI.
| baryphonic wrote:
| In other news, I have yet to make a single dollar from GitHub
| sponsorships, and I have several tens of stars and forks on my
| project. Who is going to look after me and my rent? /s
|
| In seriousness, you gotta build or make what people want. The
| vast majority of YouTubers, like open source devs, are making
| things that mostly they themselves care about. Of the remainder,
| most are making things some people appreciate, and might even pay
| attention to for a while, but when push comes to shove wouldn't
| pay for.
|
| A few things are just genuinely so good that people will pay.
| searchableguy wrote:
| > In other news, I have yet to make a single dollar from GitHub
| sponsorships, and I have several tens of stars and forks on my
| project. Who is going to look after me and my rent? /s
|
| Heck, repos that are widely used rarely get actual money.
| Making money shouldn't be conflated with fulfilling a demand.
| Plenty of things fulfill a demand or create value but fail to
| monetize.
|
| If paying becomes truly optional (no social pressure or pay
| wall), most people would rather not pay.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| > Who is going to look after me and my rent?
|
| At least politicians know the answer.
| [deleted]
| blackoil wrote:
| What is the CPM for other media like TV and movies? If Youtube's
| isn't substantially low, it should be expected as millions of
| people are experimenting as a creator, and power law rules.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money
| on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big
| creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users
| are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of
| YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is
| the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on
| YouTube at all puts you well far ahead of the majority of users
| and the pay for creativity has never been about how much effort
| you put in.
|
| People should stop trying to view YouTube as a viable career.
| Most YouTube careers were made out of people doing it in their
| spare time and finding out people actually want to watch. That's
| the only way it works. Do your day job and work on your YouTube
| career in your spare time. Maybe one day you'll find success.
|
| The way most entertainers get known is just through sheer luck or
| connections. This is nothing new. For decades actors, musicians
| and artists have put up with this. They will follow their dreams
| while keeping a regular job. Then one day they might get the
| breakthrough they need. It's never been easier to be a creator
| today, but the chances are still slim that you'll ever start
| making serious money out of it. The benefit is that you can
| easily find a niche to fill, and while you might not making a
| living wage, you will make some good side money drawing something
| like vegetables with boobs or something.
| axlee wrote:
| I can see your argument.
|
| On the other hand, the article mentions people who work for
| companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely
| successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night
| on top of their media jobs. That sounds unacceptable to me: I
| am pretty sure the company employing them can afford them a
| living wage, and it looks a lot like exploitation.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Buzzfeed and et. al are deeply dishonest companies running on
| borrowed time.
| mitchdaily wrote:
| Sounds like they need a union
| chii wrote:
| that's a different problem vs creators not getting much
| monetization and payment.
|
| businesses that employ people for low wages should, in
| theory, be out competed by businesses that would be willing
| to pay a little bit more to get the talent.
|
| So either the business model _requires_ the low wages for it
| to work, or the workers are not shopping around for a better
| workplace (or is sacrificing their wages in the hopes of
| moving up, or some such passion-related reason like game
| developers).
| rileymat2 wrote:
| > or the workers are not shopping around for a better
| workplace
|
| Perhaps they are not shopping around because of
| monopolistic/anti competitive actions from google search
| causing competing video services to be unviable.
|
| I believe there is an ongoing legal case around this.
|
| Edit: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles
| /google...
|
| It is kind of funny getting the amp link in this
| discussion...
| wutbrodo wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. The discussion is the pay
| that buzzfeed pays their content creators. If the market
| for platforms was wide open, that wouldn't change much
| about this situation, since there would still be an
| oversupply of content creators that want a salary (as
| opposed to creators willing to personally take on the
| investment and risk, which is what the article but not
| the thread is abjout).
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But this is not "youtube and patreon", but "employer buzzfeed
| does not pay their employees enough".
| FalconSensei wrote:
| On the other hand, people who work entry-level jobs also work
| multiple job sometimes
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| If they're not getting paid enough they should stop doing it.
| If enough of them stop doing it, then the rest will start to
| get paid more.
| gambiting wrote:
| It's the exact same argument I keep making about tipping -
| if only everyone everywhere stopped tipping overnight, this
| stupid system would disappear. Underpaid waiters and
| drivers would find other jobs because suddenly without tips
| they wouldn't be able to support themselves.
|
| I am also surprised that no one has seen the wisdom of my
| words yet :P
| skrebbel wrote:
| The situation you advocate for is common practice in many
| countries.
|
| I'm likely missing nuances, but to me it seems that the
| key culprit is minimum wage laws in many US states having
| an exception for restaurant personnel. If a minimum wage
| was unconditional and high enough to live from, you
| wouldn't need tips to survive.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The US has a big cultural expectation of tipping, so even
| though the entire west coast, NYC, Chicago, and
| Washington DC have gotten rid of lower tipped minimum
| wages and effectively increased wages for waitstaff,
| almost all people still tip in all of those places. Even
| more, over the years, the standard tip amount has moved
| from 10% to 15% to now what seems like wide support for
| 20%. Not to mention that large portions of the population
| now tip for non waited transactions too.
|
| It gets even crazier when you go out with people and they
| look at you like you're cheap for calculating tip on pre
| tax amounts. There's a lot of pride in the US for
| tipping, as if it's a status symbol.
| matz1 wrote:
| Nothing stopping you to not tipping. You don't need to
| wait for everyone to stop tipping for you to not tip
| right now.
| chongli wrote:
| These are collective action problems [1]. Many of the
| biggest problems facing humanity are collective action
| problems. We'd have done a far better job fighting COVID,
| for example, if we could get every person in the world on
| the same page. Likewise for climate change.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| In general I agree with your statement. But the grim
| reality is that good jobs are hard to get. It's not always
| possible to find better opportunity. And you may not have
| the resources necessary to find something better (e.g. I
| can't afford to go in a better job opportunity'a interview,
| because I can't get time off my current job, and I need
| this job to survive.
|
| About 10 years ago I was living in San Francisco on less
| than $25k/year. Half my money went to rent, the other half
| went to food and the occasional movie. I couldn't cook
| much, as I didn't have a kitchen. I was able to increase my
| income because I'm educated, know some of the right things,
| and I got lucky as hell. But I was surrounded by people
| living on less who were flat out stuck. They all asked me
| why I was living there, and the answer was because I had
| started a business while homeless and got lucky enough that
| it was taking off. But I was super lucky to have that
| opportunity at all.
| Strom wrote:
| This is such a bizarre take. You're living in San
| Francisco, one of the most prestigious cities in the
| world, and yet you're describing your situation as if
| you're living in Sangvor, Tajikistan.
|
| No one in San Francisco is stuck. [1] By skipping a few
| of those movie tickets and buying months in advance you
| could get a plane ticket out of there. In plenty of
| places in the US there isn't even an airport, not to
| mention outside the US.
|
| > _I couldn't cook much, as I didn't have a kitchen._
|
| You don't need a kitchen. You can just have an electric
| stove in your bedroom. [2]
|
| You're right in saying that you were super lucky. Lucky
| to live in San Francisco.
|
| --
|
| [1] Except for the mentally ill and people with other
| similarly valid severe disabilities.
|
| [2] https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/07/19/us/0722-hk
| econ-pr...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You're right of course, most can leave. But in leaving
| you are leaving perhaps your best market (depends on what
| you do, but as an example, let's say you DJ). And also,
| by extension, you're sort of suggesting everyone making
| less than 6 figures leave.
|
| I'm putting words in your mouth, I know, and I apologize.
| But it's the gentrification I am bringing up.
|
| So many construction workers that repair roofs, install
| drywall, etc. in Silicon Valley live several hours away
| in Los Banos and have that crazy commute to get to where
| they can find employment.
|
| Crazy world we live in.
| Strom wrote:
| The housing policy of San Francisco definitely makes
| lives more difficult than it has to be.
|
| My point is more so around realizing the wealth of
| opportunity. Yes not every DJ will make it in San
| Francisco, but as you allude to, in most places in the
| world zero DJs will make it.
|
| I don't claim that life can't be challenging in/around
| San Francisco. I'm claiming that it's less challenging
| than in almost anywhere else in the world.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| And do where? The money I knew how to earn was in San
| Francisco. I didn't know how to earn a living in a much
| cheaper spot. Everything I knew was there. If I scraped
| together enough money for a plane ticket, what would I do
| when I got there?
| Strom wrote:
| There are free government and non-profit social
| counseling services where people help you figure out what
| job you can do. There's also reddit and your
| friends/family for easier non-professional advice.
|
| However, I think it's completely fine that you stayed in
| SF and made progress there.
|
| As for your claim that you could earn some money in SF
| and not elsewhere - that's the core of my argument. My
| point being that San Francisco has more opportunity than
| pretty much anywhere else in the world. That you
| specifically could make money in SF, but not elsewhere.
|
| No doubt that earning much less than plenty of other SF
| residents can have an emotional impact and make it look
| like your life isn't going so great. It's just that when
| you look at the US as a whole, or the world as a whole -
| then SF starts looking like a fountain of opportunity.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| sure, but these are not jobs, they are things anyone can
| do, and might get paid for. If they got rid of the
| payments all together, people would still do it for free.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So volunteer work.
| mbg721 wrote:
| The implication of that is that Big Tech has been selling
| snake-oil, and the idealism attached to the Internet was
| misplaced.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Have they? I haven't seen a single promotion on YouTube
| telling me I could make a living being a content creator.
|
| I think people hype them selves up about it when they see
| the top 0.5% on YouTube and think they can be the same.
| Nowhere have I seen YouTube lie or mislead about this.
|
| The problem is there are simply too many content
| creators. We don't need "generic lets play guy 373628".
| There is more than enough content pumping in to the
| system right now.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I mean, fine, YouTube doesn't get out with a bullhorn and
| yell "Make a Living with Videos!", but their incentives
| make it seem like a path to stardom.
|
| "Too many content creators" isn't a problem. "Too much
| bad content" is.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The solution to "too much bad content" is to ensure that
| the producers of that content get so little reward that
| they decide to stop making that content - which is what's
| happening here.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Which incentives are you referring to here? As far as I
| can tell, all of the small Youtube creators are there
| because they enthusiastically want to make videos; I've
| never seen anyone say they wanted to do something else
| but Youtube tricked them into thinking they could get
| rich and famous.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > Too much bad content" is.
|
| Is it? How else do you grow "good content", short of
| curating it (with all of the topdown biases and blind
| spots that that approach implies?)
|
| On top of that, who decided what "good content" is? I
| occasionally get recommendations from Weird YouTube, and
| sometimes they're absolutely delightful. This sounds a
| lot like "nobody needs more than three broadcast
| channels"
| [deleted]
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Youtube IS a path to stardom, and a much easier one than
| anything preceding it, however people chasing stardom
| rarely care about money until they grow up and realize
| they don't know how to do anything else. It's not like
| the term starving artist is new.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| ... didn't buzzfeed have to lay off a bunch of staff because
| they're losing money?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| That sounds like a criticism of Buzzfeed. Why should YouTube
| and Patreon step in and subsidize those salaries? Why not
| that the employer (Buzzfeed in your example) pay a living
| wage?
| zpeti wrote:
| It's unacceptable that people building their own
| channel/brand/art have to work nights while doing a day job?
|
| This is normal. Life doesn't owe you success. You have the
| suffer and work hard if you want more than a day job. Or move
| to somewhere with low rents and eat rice and beans for a few
| months, that also works.
|
| Success isn't guaranteed and certainly society doesn't owe
| you it.
| rmah wrote:
| This has also always been commonplace in the media industry
| for creatives. Simply put, the supply of labor far far FAR
| outstrips the demand. It's a highly risky career path, but
| many take the chance because they want to. No amount of
| complaining or legislation will ever "fix" it.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Also known as "compensating differential". People _want_ to
| be a musician or content creator so they are willing to do
| the job even without being paid much. Which pushes the
| value down for the job.
|
| If you paid people YouTube rates to maintain php garbage
| they would just say no which keeps the prices up at a
| decent level.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > People _want_ to be a musician or content creator so
| they are willing to do the job even without being paid
| much. Which pushes the value down for the job.
|
| Well, no, I don't think so, because this isn't like the
| market for maintaining PHP garbage. :) Creative work --
| at least in this context -- isn't fungible. One low-rent
| PHP contractor is probably interchangeable with another
| one, but Patreon creators are not: if you're giving Bob
| $5 a month, it's because you specifically like Bob's
| stuff. What a Patreon creator with 50 patrons makes has
| no material effect on what a Patreon creator with 50,000
| patrons makes.
| bob33212 wrote:
| This is why capitalism is successful. You need an honest
| feedback mechanism from labor. If a centralized
| government assigned people jobs of maintaining a shitty
| php monolith at a standard wage those people would
| effectively produce nothing, because it is a shitty job
| and those people would not enjoy it or work hard because
| it is unfair that other people get better jobs. The
| unintended consequence is income inequality but that
| inequality is the only way to get someone to be a garbage
| man instead of a youtube commentator or beer reviewer.
| znpy wrote:
| people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other
| agencies, creating extremely successful web content for
| them, having to work shifts at night on top of their
| media jobs.
|
| In my opinion part of the problem is that these kind of jobs
| are too much glamourized[1].
|
| If a job doesn't pay enough (according to any metric) move on
| to a better paying job. If an industry or a field doesn't pay
| enough, move on to another field/industry.
|
| At one point one must be honest enough to admit "this isn't
| working" or "this barely works, It's not wise to live like
| this".
|
| [1] a similar scenario: van life. there was a fad where a lot
| of people were trying to get a lifestyle income by living in
| a van and blogging about that (instagram, youtube, twitter
| and stuff like that). needless to say, after a while a wave
| of videos about "the truth of vanlife" has come up. Once
| again, people don't realize that for one person managing to
| achieve a huge success, another thousand (or more) will fail,
| possibly with consequences.
| root_axis wrote:
| I think this is a fair criticism of _Buzzfeed_ , after all,
| they have an employee/employer relationship with said
| creators; this is not true of independent creators.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because
| a lot of users are watching them
|
| That's true for anything, even for non-creative work. If you
| create an app, and nobody buys it (or uses it with ads), you
| also don't get money.
| unity1001 wrote:
| When you make things like survival 'privilege not a right' with
| no way out, you end up with societal decline in which extremist
| nationalist and religious groups take over the disenfranchised
| people through their advocacy and their charity, and you
| magically find yourselves in the middle of a dystopian hellhole
| in which people with non-compliant mindsets are persecuted.
| Which has happened in every single age in history when same
| conditions came to being, and the people who could have fixed
| it resorted to comfortable numbness like 'privilege not a
| right'.
|
| And something being in a way for decades does not mean that it
| is right, it is rational and it should be kept as it is. If we
| did that, we wouldnt have been able to become a modern
| civilization.
| [deleted]
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _The way most entertainers get known is just through sheer
| luck or connections._
|
| Derek Muller has a couple of videos talking about the success
| of his Veritasium YouTube channel (and work, luck, and success
| generally):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I
| unix_fan wrote:
| People seem to believe the magical internet economy will make
| you rich. There's a big content creator in my country who's
| barely earning 5000 dollars from it.
| paulcole wrote:
| > People seem to believe the magical internet economy will
| make you rich
|
| This is the entire founding belief of YC (and a huge swath of
| "VC culture" and Hacker News in general).
|
| Look at how many "businesses" promoted here have no
| meaningful revenue and no real ideals for how to monetize.
| floren wrote:
| > Look at how many "businesses" promoted here have no
| meaningful revenue and no real ideals for how to monetize.
|
| They all know how to monetize, it just doesn't sound good
| to say it out loud: get a bunch of users by offering a free
| service on VC money, then sell your userbase to a big
| company.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's not magical, it's simply a market where technology
| allows for extremely low marginal costs so if you can
| launch your business over a high moat (such as overcoming
| network effects with tons of cash), then you can print
| money once you are entrenched.
| criddell wrote:
| > There's a big content creator in my country who's barely
| earning 5000 dollars from it.
|
| I'm surprised that so many people are happy to describe
| themselves as _content creators_. It 's an admission that
| what you create is generic content for some platform to wrap
| in ads. It's a type of self-commoditization.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I don't think YouTubers generally do refer to themselves as
| content creators, as opposed to Creators (a term promoted
| by YouTube but embraced by the community).
| young_unixer wrote:
| At least it's less cringeworthy than "influencer".
| williamdclt wrote:
| > For decades actors, musicians and artists have put up with
| this
|
| Well, it's not that simple is it. For decades actors, musicians
| and artists have been complaining that they have to live in
| misery to pursue their art and fighting for better conditions,
| it's not like they've always been OK with the status quo.
|
| It's a more general question: should art be subject to the
| market laws, or should society subsidize art production? In the
| first case (the liberal POV I suppose) it's up to the artist to
| find ways to make money out of their art, or keep it as a
| hobby, or give up on it. On the second case (a more socialist
| POV), we need to challenge how artists are getting a revenue in
| our society because it's clearly not working.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > because it's clearly not working.
|
| Is it not? How much time or will do people currently have to
| consume art? The internet has dropped the barrier to getting
| an audience to near zero. Yet the vast, vast majority of
| people still want to consume mainstream, curated art. Even
| though it's completely free, people don't sit and browse
| websites for niche artists. Or, if they do, they certainly
| aren't going to pay for it and would prefer the format of
| TikTok/Instagram.
| Kalium wrote:
| Who would be in charge of choosing which artists and which
| art gets subsidized by society? How do we decide when we've
| subsidized artists enough and should move on to all the other
| things society might want to do?
|
| I'm not being flippant. This is a serious question that needs
| to be addressed in any would-be public art program. Sooner or
| later you run into limits.
| pharke wrote:
| > It's a more general question: should art be subject to the
| market laws, or should society subsidize art production?
|
| Thought you were going somewhere completely different based
| off of the first sentence. Yes artists have been exploited
| for decades, but they aren't being exploited by their
| audiences aka their market. Fans of music, video,
| performance, etc. are willing to pay quite fair prices (even
| exorbitant ones) to consume or own the media that they love.
| The lion's share of that money never reaches the artist that
| produced it. Vast empires of wealth have been built on the
| backs of superstar artists and the problem as always is rent
| seeking which is the enemy of socialists and capitalists
| alike. We absolutely should _not_ subsidize art production, I
| can guarantee you that money would also be siphoned off under
| the current status quo. We 're already very close to a
| solution to this problem with the massive drop in cost of
| producing any kind of art that is amenable to digital
| production and distribution. It just needs to continue to tip
| in the direction of artists being their own producers or
| being able to hire the people who do the actual work directly
| rather than going through an established company built on
| exploitative practices. The next piece of the puzzle is going
| to be a better system for paying to consume the produced art
| without relying on the toxic ad ecosystem. We need to starve
| the greedy giants of the last century out of existence, their
| only benefit was in connecting people to art when that used
| to be difficult. Connecting is easy now, paying someone for
| their work should be too.
| rmah wrote:
| The answer to your question is: art should be subject to
| market laws and there should be minimal public funding except
| in very special cases. And IMO, there is no change needed how
| artists are getting paid because it's clearly working very
| well.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Why would you subsidize art that virtually nobody cares
| about? You might as well subsidize every hobby in existence.
|
| I'm pretty sure even most socialists would agree with this -
| even those who want to abolish money. If your art isn't
| valuable to society, you'll get treated like someone who digs
| holes and then fills them all day.
|
| Now, art which is widely appreciated but still has trouble
| getting funded might be another matter (because they're e.g.
| directed at a demographic that doesn't have much money), but
| most of the people who can't live off their art definitely
| don't fall into this category - they simply aren't popular.
| scsilver wrote:
| Becaus the art itself is secondary to the quality of life a
| virbrant arts community gives to a city/town. Even an
| untallented art and ary collectives create a richer
| community. We dont need parks either, they are quality of
| life investments.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Why wouldn't the same apply to literally any hobby
| community? Or do you think that people who go bowling
| should be paid a living wage for it too?
|
| The created art is simply how the vast, vast majority of
| people in a city will interact with a local community of
| artists and thus how their quality of life is increased
| by their existence. A group of e.g. untalented musicians
| will simply have a terrible quality of live/cost ratio.
| We don't fund parks simply because they're a quality of
| life investment - but because they're a _good_
| investment.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You subsidise the stuff that people do care about but isn't
| getting made because it doesn't make money as easily.
| Particularly in markets that skew towards very few people
| being able to afford to participate.
|
| Publically funded broadcasting for example has been
| phenomenally successful.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| I don't think this disagrees with me at all? I even
| explicitly mention that example of popular art that still
| can't fund it self. That's not what they and the article
| are talking about though.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > On the second case (a more socialist POV), we need to
| challenge how artists are getting a revenue in our society
| because it's clearly not working.
|
| This can be exploited. Imagine if I wrote a program that
| simply outputs a string of 1000 random notes and durations
| and published this as a song every day, with a random UUID
| for the title. This is technically art, but is it the same as
| your favorite musician?
|
| Now if someone is buying each of those songs for a million
| dollars each, that's between the artist and person making the
| purchase.
|
| Should society subsidize that though? How do you draw the
| line?
| williamdclt wrote:
| I'm just vaguely talking about 2 very high-level
| perspectives and you look for loopholes like I came up with
| a whole set of rules!
|
| I'm not suggesting that artists should be paid
| unconditionally per piece, obviously that'd be ridiculous.
| I'm not suggesting _anything_. I'm just saying that maybe
| (maybe not) society as a whole finds enough value in art
| that it wants to make sure that artists can survive. Maybe
| "the market" is the whole answer, maybe we want the market
| to have no part in artists' income, maybe it's just one
| part of the answer (lots of countries like Italy and France
| heavily subsidize culture & art).
|
| > How do you draw the line?
|
| By drawing a line? We manage to draw lines on unemployment
| pensions, retirement pensions, research subsidies, children
| benefits, universal healthcare... It's nothing magical, we
| draw lines by writing laws that seem to account for
| different cases, and we know it's not perfect and that
| there's loopholes in laws, that some people get too much
| and some others too little, but we iterate and adapt.
|
| But in summary, I don't know! I'm not a politician, an
| economist, an artist or even a particularly keen art
| consumer. I just don't believe "the market" is the One True
| Answer.
| mc32 wrote:
| Ryan's toy reviews I think is the prototypical example of
| finding a niche and exploiting it.
|
| It doesn't require elaborate demos or expensive equipment or
| deep domain knowledge.
|
| It's youthful exuberance, some theatrics and the right
| personality.
| wincy wrote:
| If deep domain knowledge paid off on Youtube people like Ben
| Eater would be a millionaire from Youtube at this point[0],
| his videos are so cool and great at explaining computing. Or
| Clickspring, the guy who made the Antikythera Mechanism [1].
| But honestly even for me being a software engineer and
| someone who considers himself interested in this sort of
| stuff, I look at these pages sometimes out of wonder but I
| often end up watching comedy videos and stuff like that on
| Youtube. The algorithm recommends it, and I watch.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc [1] https://www.yout
| ube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I suspect he's doing fine. Millionaire? Well, of course
| not, but he is sort of niche.
|
| But he also sells kits and I suspect that's been very
| useful to his paying for his ISP. I know I bought his 6502
| kit. ;-)
|
| I think the smart "content creators" figure out a way to
| sell plans, etc. in order to take in a little on the side.
| (Patreon, in my mind, is the worst way to do that.)
| wincy wrote:
| I mean if he works for a FAANG there's a good chance he
| is a millionaire, but not from his YouTube.
| johnnujler wrote:
| "Exploiting" is the keyword here. You need to exploit the
| niche. A better example would be someone like 3Blue1Brown.
| You have to keep at it long enough and keep improving. Go
| check Grant's first video and the latest video, the
| difference is just night and day. On the contrary, although
| decent in terms of the content, Ben hasn't improved in ways
| measureable. When you use these mediums, you are trying to
| communicate while being engaging. If Ben indeed is
| providing engaging content that is deep and valuable, and
| you're not just extrapolating from n=1(because you learn
| something from those videos), it should've worked out for
| him , no?
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree, people should think about it as a lottery ticket. How
| many people spend $10Ks over the years trying to become good at
| soccer/basketball/baseball/golf/etc. so they can go pro? We
| know that it is a 1 in a million shot but results in a multi-
| billion dollar industry. Creators have to decide on their
| goals. I design board games on the side. I don't expect it to
| ever break even, let alone replace my salary but I do it
| because I _enjoy_ it for it 's own sake.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I would say I'm an alright tennis player, have been playing
| since I was younger, lessons, coaches, the whole thing. Never
| even got close to playing at a D1 school though.
|
| Mostly out of curiosity, I looked into what it looks like to
| go pro now. Basically you go into a machine as a young kid,
| and if you show promise, you get focus from the coaching
| staff at the academies. Everyone else is basically just a
| warm body whose parents are paying a ton of money for their
| teen to be a hitting partner for the academy's golden goose.
|
| THEN if you make the show, you're fighting for rankings
| through some absolutely abysmal satellite tournaments that
| you're essentially losing money to go play in. Losing in the
| first round of a major makes you more money than winning one
| of these things.
|
| The delta between the 20th ranked player in the world versus
| the top 150th insane, too, with one worth millions and one
| worth maybe a small six figure salary, with a notable portion
| of it going toward travel/training expenses.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Yep. I had a neighbor growing up that got all the coaching,
| was a great player and did well as a doubles player- but he
| had exactly one good run in a major tournament at singles-
| quarterfinals at Wimbledon.
|
| He didn't have that next level of extreme athleticism- he
| could make every shot and was very proficient and earned a
| good living on tour, but if he hadn't come from good money
| he never would have been there in the first place, because
| he didn't have the native talent, never getting into the
| 60s in ATP rankings.
|
| Doing great as a coach though.
| clifdweller wrote:
| that's one of the failings of the youtube system it relies
| on the creators to self evaluate their success whereas in
| sports its pretty obvious when you hit the wall. a few will
| push through by paying lots of money for private coaching
| but most are naturally weeded out. content creators though
| have that constant carrot of if they try a bit harder or
| make more varied videos the algorithm may bless them with
| millions of viewers.
| handmodel wrote:
| Meritocracies always produce the biggest difference in
| outcomes of results.
| evo wrote:
| While I agree that an individual should look at it as a
| lottery ticket, as a society we should be careful about macro
| trends towards new lotteries.
|
| Many big tech companies arise from disintermediation plays--
| finding some market that has high overhead and figuring out a
| way to transact it more cheaply. This is great: it lowers
| barriers to entry and liberates a new surplus, but it's not
| clear who then captures this new surplus, the market
| participants or the marketplace?
|
| I would posit that the lottery system is a mechanism to
| enable the excess surplus to be siphoned away from the market
| participants towards the marketplace. Humans are _terrible_
| at estimating the expected value of low-probability high-
| impact events, and dangling a few rags-to-riches stories lets
| your participants imagine they're going to make it. In
| reality, it bifurcates the market and drops the median
| outcome (presumably, this surplus is captured by the
| transaction fees of the marketplace).
|
| As an example where this _could_ play out, I might look at
| restaurants--if delivery apps and shadow kitchens lower the
| clearing costs for me to find a dinner, does that then mean
| the "best" restaurant in town can now scale up, to the
| detriment of the second or third best? (On the other hand,
| the physical limitations make this story a harder sell than
| purely digital goods.)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| A lottery ticket? It's not that at all.
|
| Sadly (or is it?), it's like the real world. Marketing,
| image, having a product people want is still important.
|
| That's not luck, that's paying attention to the market and
| adjusting accordingly.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I agree. I don't think YouTube is a lottery ticket. If you
| have a decent idea, understand how people in your niche
| consume content and are willing to put in the work then you
| can do alright. Having a meteoric rise might be lottery,
| but mostly it's recognizing what people want and knowing
| how to "market" it to them.
|
| The hardest part is putting in the work. Being your own
| motivator and then working away at something is very
| difficult in the long run.
|
| I'd also like to add that $10k a year in numerous countries
| is decent income.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| _Most YouTube careers were made out of people doing it in their
| spare time and finding out people actually want to watch. That
| 's the only way it works._
|
| That just isn't true at all, and hasn't been true for at least
| a decade. Professional YouTubers typically have a background in
| film, with training in acting, lighting, and editing.
|
| Source: I worked for a variety of YouTube-related startups in
| Los Angeles. This sentiment is just completely inaccurate.
| merb wrote:
| I'm not sure this is true...
|
| most tech channels had zero background with that. I mean
| linus tech tipps (one of the biggest), started to make
| youtube videos with limited resources and basically was asked
| by his old company to help out, without prior knowledge.
|
| most gaming related channels were not done with prior
| backgrounds. also a lot of early youtubers had no prior
| background. I abo'd tons of german channels who make a living
| with it, which didn't do anything media related before
| youtube (some of course did to a certain (small) degree, like
| jp-performance)
|
| youtube is just so big that there a tons of people with tons
| of background. of course the most successful people are those
| who know how to sell.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| there's a world of difference between high-production YouTube
| and individual creator YouTube. The parent comment seemed to
| be addressing the type of people who want to be the next
| PewDiePie, not those who want to compete with Will Smith or
| Jack Black.
| bityard wrote:
| I watch a lot of what I would call "blue-collar" YouTubers.
| Woodworkers, machinists, makers, electrical hobbyists, etc.
| When they talk about their income, all of them say that their
| Youtube ad revenue pays next to nothing. Some of them make a
| decent living via Patreon or have other ways that for their
| followers to support them (e.g., selling project plans).
|
| I can say with 100% confidence that none of them went to film
| school.
| rainonmoon wrote:
| The parent comments are referring to people who have made
| careers out of YouTube, not people who are paid "next to
| nothing".
| johnnujler wrote:
| As much as extrapolating what characteristics should a job of
| the future satisfy, based on your past experiences/knowledge,
| is a reasonable idea. It is also reasonable to assume that
| certain future jobs won't look like the past jobs, or for that
| matter satisfy the criteria of path dependency as witnessed in
| the past. Leveraging privileges have had surprising outcomes in
| the past(including creating an industry like Hollywood). There
| is no one right way.
| herbertl wrote:
| Hi Philip-J-Fry, thanks for reading and responding! I really
| appreciate it. I actually totally agree with you--my original
| title for this piece was actually, "If You Can't Afford to Do
| It for Free, Don't Be a Creator." (Editors suggested a new
| title so I deferred, but you can see a trace of it at the URL.)
|
| The problem is, more and more people are turning to this as a
| viable source of income. In the piece, I reference the tragic
| death of Mocha, who turned to Bilibili to stream when he had
| nowhere to work (https://www.inkstonenews.com/society/aching-
| hopelessness-nob...).
|
| There's some more evidence--say, people trying to calculate how
| much TikTok engagement they'll need to stream to get Christmas
| gifts
| (https://twitter.com/robyncaplan/status/1328432778942312449).
| That, plus the survey that more children want to become a
| vlogger when they grow up
| (https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-
| would-...), is why I wrote the piece.
|
| Of course, dream jobs change as people grow up and figure out
| feasibility, so I'm not too concerned about that. Plus, I have
| no intention to squish anyone's dreams, but I was hoping for
| this piece to do two things:
|
| 1. Paint a clearer picture of the economics of platforms, and
| that--for most people--it's generally a terrible way to make
| money. 2. Encourage media, platforms, and other creators to
| share more data and facts, instead of another, "This high
| schooler made $1 million in 5 weeks on Snapchat."
| https://people.com/human-interest/snapchat-high-school-senio...
|
| This is an old story. People will know the odds of starting a
| band and becoming a rock star, and still do it. So I just want
| to make sure people go all-in on it with deliberation, and that
| the most marginalized people don't turn to it when they most
| need it.
|
| Williamdclt put it well: "Well, it's not that simple is it. For
| decades actors, musicians and artists have been complaining
| that they have to live in misery to pursue their art and
| fighting for better conditions, it's not like they've always
| been OK with the status quo."
|
| If platforms do have an opportunity to better distribute the
| income for creative work, I think it's worth collective action
| from creators to put pressure on them to do it. If that means
| changing the algorithm to spotlight more people's videos, which
| means the popular videos effectively cross-subsidize them (like
| a record label would back in the day), I would think it's worth
| trying.
|
| I did not expect so many comments on this entry, so I'll do my
| best to contribute--but yours was at the top so I figured I'd
| start here! Thanks again.
| 015a wrote:
| There's a strong argument that, when you've got companies like
| Google/YouTube, Spotify, Amazon/Twitch, Patreon, etc at the top
| capable of paying their executives and engineers and other
| employees six to seven figure salaries, on the backs of their
| creatives who barely scrape by, there's an inequality there
| which isn't ethical.
|
| Twitch and YouTube, I think, are interesting ones in the sense
| that their system costs are probably enormous, primarily due to
| the 99% of content "creators" on their system which are
| actually just people like me, uploading videos which five
| people watch. A tragedy of the commons sort of thing, whereby
| they still pay to serve my videos, and that all cuts into the
| pie which is probably better given to professional content
| creators.
|
| But, I think that ultimately all of these platforms would be
| better ran and managed by the content creators themselves, or
| at least middlemen who have less of a multi-billion dollar
| profit incentive. There are a few interesting products heading
| this way;
|
| * Tidal (in music) was a big one, but we'll see what happens
| now that Square has majority ownership.
|
| * Itch.io [1] in gaming. They run what appears to be an
| extremely barebones operation focusing on delivering extreme
| value for creators and consumers alike.
|
| * Floatplane [2] in video. A service started by the team behind
| Linus Tech Tips, several high-profile (generally tech-focused)
| content creators now host their content there.
|
| We're also seeing this theme of "screw the middleman" among big
| media companies, opting to get rid of Netflix or Hulu in favor
| of their own in-house streaming platform, or Epic's fight
| against the App Store. It's literally the same impetus; these
| middlemen take way too much money and ultimately form lowest-
| common-denominator revenue models which don't benefit most
| content creators, from large to small.
|
| I think this is a trend that will continue to gain traction; I
| am not bullish on big-tech mega-platforms over the long term.
| To a degree it sucks for consumers, but ultimately a system
| which demands content creators scrape by while making big tech
| rich isn't tenable, and consumers need to recognize that. Big
| Tech has had years to try and build something equitable; they
| haven't. Its their fault, not the fault of the content
| creators.
|
| I tend to predict that Twitch is the next one which will see
| major disruption. The market even among big tech alternatives
| is basically zero, and Twitch has huge issues which reach
| beyond just monetization and into legal governance of streamer
| channels which is legitimately pissing off content creators and
| viewers alike. They're "stuck" with Twitch, but Twitch isn't
| actually that big; its just niche (hop on Chaturbate any
| evening, take one look at the average view-count for their
| streamers, and recalibrate your perception on Twitch's slice of
| the entire online streaming pie).
|
| [1] https://itch.io/
|
| [2] https://www.floatplane.com
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, artist coops, rather than corporate, Patreon-like fair
| is what is needed.
| 015a wrote:
| I think artist coops (ie Floatplane-like) is one solution
| that can work.
|
| That being said, I think a more scalable and better
| solution is more-so the "lean middleman" model (ie Itch-
| like). The problem with YouTube and Twitch isn't the core
| of their position in this system; the problem is that
| they're too big. They have thousands of employees, they're
| hosted on big cloud providers, and they're accountable to
| profit-seeking mega-corps; all of these things drive the
| revenue that creators see down, and the argument that
| they're fundamentally necessary in a system like this is
| tenuous.
|
| Content moderation is definitely the hardest problem to
| solve at their scale, and its a strong argument for why
| they have to be so big. I think this is something that
| needs to be solved in two ways: first, by lowering the
| number of rules which need to be enforced (ie nudity? maybe
| that's ok, as long as the channel is properly age-gated and
| the age of the streamer is confirmed), and second, by
| increasing the bar to even getting a platform in the first
| place (ie it should take a week or so, manual approval of
| recognition of the rules, and some fee that the content
| producer actually has to pay which supports the platform
| and increases investment).
|
| Big Tech is insanely conservative when it comes to any
| changes that would either hurt their sign-up metrics or
| hurt their ability to sell advertisements. This is where
| new platforms need to focus, because Big Tech fundamentally
| and intrinsically cannot compete against you there. What
| options open up when you throw out the idea that you need
| to sell advertisements, and you throw out the idea that
| "growth at any cost" is the goal (big tech loves that for
| the growth part; no one pays attention to the "any cost"
| part).
| swsieber wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| Most indie game devs don't make enough from it to pay rent.
|
| Most authors don't make enough to pay rent from writing.
| happybday wrote:
| When we talk about copyrights, there's always an argument
| made in their favour which is basically 'we have to engineer
| incentives in order to get people to make good new stuff'.
| Why does that apply to copyright law but not to regulating
| tech monopolies like Youtube?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think this is an interesting discussion in a world where
| raising the minimum wage and "living wage" are somewhat hot
| political topics.
|
| Why is Youtube allowed to have a business model where they can
| arbitrarily decide not to pay you for content generation?
|
| Can you imagine a world in which Uber could just decide not to
| pay you for deliveries until you meet a certain threshold? And
| then after they've been paying you for a while, they arbitrarily
| decide to stop paying you for deliveries.
| dusted wrote:
| It's almost as if.. Doing stuff that you'd otherwise do in your
| spare-time, is not a real job for 99% of people ?
|
| Yeah, I love playing and making games, nobody wants to play them,
| and nobody wants to watch me do it, because I'm not good enough
| at it. That's why I have a day job.
|
| There's also a limited need for entertainers/creatives (they are
| needed, but not comparatively very many).. One person can
| entertain millions.
| watwut wrote:
| > It's almost as if.. Doing stuff that you'd otherwise do in
| your spare-time, is not a real job for 99% of people ?
|
| Realistically, people run channels this is about would not do
| it in spare-time. Making gameplay video that people actually
| want to watch is not nearly same as playing game for fun. You
| have to be entertaining for others. It is same difference as
| between being comedian for money versus being funny with
| friends.
| roenxi wrote:
| There are about 8,000 one-in-a-million people out there for any
| discipline anyone cares to name. Around 800 of them speak
| English to some degree and are connected to the internet.
|
| There is room on a top-10 list for 10 of them. Number 9 will do
| OK but is starting to move down the Praeto curve. The
| competition to entertain others on the internet is fierce; it
| is difficult for me to see how even someone of that level of
| talent and calibre could survive except for the fact that most
| of their competition simply gives up before they start because
| it looks like a lousy career.
| pydry wrote:
| Or as if monopolizing a distribution channel allows you to
| charge rents way in excess of your costs.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Who are you accusing of doing that? YouTube?
| pydry wrote:
| Do you know of any other video platforms with 2.3 billion
| active users?
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| Do YouTube charge rents way in excess of their costs?
| viro wrote:
| No they don't charge rent.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Then it's a good thing no one has monopolized distributing
| videos across the internet.
| pydry wrote:
| The 2nd biggest video sharing website has 10x lower reach
| and no ad network.
|
| I'm curious to know what counts as a monopoly if not that.
|
| The network effect has been good to google.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Conversations are futile if we're not working with the
| same definitions and context.
|
| You wrote:
|
| > Or as if monopolizing a distribution channel allows you
| to charge rents way in excess of your costs.
|
| Defining "distribution channel" as a single company's
| website rather than the internet would make "distribution
| channel" meaningless in the context of this discussion.
|
| It's trivial to distribute a video with anyone all over
| the world in this day and age. It's not trivial to make
| money from it.
|
| Google might have a monopoly on the mechanism that can be
| used to make money from videos, but that's a different
| discussion than having a monopoly on distributing video.
| pydry wrote:
| If you're distributing ad supported video content where
| else do you go?
|
| Vimeo is the second biggest video sharing platform. They
| have 200 million eyeballs they can push to your content
| as opposed to 2.3 billion and no ad network.
|
| I don't think it's an enormous stretch to say that
| youtube own this market.
|
| >that's a different discussion than having a monopoly on
| distributing video.
|
| I neither stated nor implied that they did.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I can entertain the idea that YouTube currently has a
| monopoly (or "owns the market") on the service of
| connecting advertisers to small time content creators.
|
| Whether or not it harms society is something I have not
| concluded. I am aware there are negatives for medium size
| content creators who lack negotiating power, but also
| huge upsides to individual content creators who almost
| always cause YouTube to lose money. And I'm not sure what
| any alternative is, other than a taxpayer funded version
| of a YouTube, but that also opens a can of worms.
|
| > I neither stated nor implied that they did.
|
| Sorry, I interpreted "monopolizing a distribution
| channel" in the context of YouTube compensating content
| creators to mean YouTube monopolizing distribution of
| videos by content creators.
| pydry wrote:
| >huge upsides to individual content creators who almost
| always cause YouTube to lose money.
|
| Not seeing the upside nor the evidence of YouTube losing
| significant amounts of money.
|
| >And I'm not sure what any alternative is
|
| Applying antitrust laws.
|
| We can thank the explosion of Internet startups and
| innovation to their judicious application to Microsoft in
| the late 90s (it tied their hands significantly).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Not seeing the upside
|
| Individual content creators get access to the entire
| world without worrying about any technical issues, and
| getting access to advertisers (however small it may be).
|
| >the evidence of YouTube losing significant amounts of
| money.
|
| I don't know the specifics, but I do know that hosting
| video is in the wheelhouse of many well endowed companies
| like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. They all
| (presumably) have the capability to build a Youtube
| competitor over the last 15 years, but the fact that they
| have not indicates that it is not worth it.
|
| Which leads me to think that this business model of
| Youtube's where anyone can upload anything they want at
| any time regardless of how garbage it is and it has to be
| able to be served to the whole world relatively
| immediately, is only viable with an enormous ad company
| (Google) backing it.
|
| But as a stand alone service, it would never be a viable
| business. The proof is that a non Youtube has never
| existed before and it still doesn't exist. Nobody is
| stopping someone from putting up data centers everywhere
| and offering this service that Youtube does, and not even
| the companies that can afford it are bothering to touch
| it.
|
| The Microsoft internet browser situation is not
| comparable, in my opinion.
| rasz wrote:
| 2nd biggest after YT is pronhub, and peolpe make some
| serious money there.
| fakedang wrote:
| It looks like somebody was typing with one hand.
|
| Pornhub isn't anymore since they removed all the
| unverified accounts' videos.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There's an even more limited need for fraud-promoting bankers,
| crooked and corrupt politicians, people who spend their entire
| lives gambling on the markets, and organised criminals, but
| somehow we never seem to lack for all of those.
|
| This isn't some kind of rational market forces issue. Artists
| and intellectuals have real power. But starving them of cash,
| branding them "entertainers", and converting their jobs into a
| gig economy scramble guarantees they'll be too distracted to
| realise it.
|
| Not unlike other jobs.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> But starving them of cash, branding them "entertainers",
| and converting their jobs into a gig economy scramble
| guarantees they'll be too distracted to realise it._
|
| I'm no fan of the 'gig economy' - but haven't most musicians
| and writers and singers and sportspeople been getting a
| shitty deal since time immemorial?
|
| Just in the 1980s that meant putting years of unpaid practice
| into your craft then not being able to get a book deal /
| signed with a record label / a gallery to sell your paintings
| / a try out with the big team.
|
| I feel bad for someone who's struggling to make a living
| playing guitar on Twitch - but the fact it's hard to make
| money playing guitar isn't Twitch's fault.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But how much do you personally pay for the artists' products
| per month, compared to how much you pay your bank? How many
| people actually pay anything for some specific artists'
| stuff, compared to some specific bank?
|
| Everybody needs a bank, and there are very few banks, with
| very few people who really earn a lot. Gambling is gambling..
| most lose there. And the rest mentioned are a result of
| governents/police/court system not working.
|
| It's easy to say Bobby the youtuber deserves more money...
| actually paying him from your pocket is a totally different
| thing.
| hrktb wrote:
| > But how much do you personally pay for the artists'
| products per month
|
| All in all, entertainment budget is a good amount actually.
|
| For the sake of the argument, it's easier to set the time
| frame 30 years back, and talk about CDs and books we were
| buying. Record companies made decent money, publishers as
| well. People massively payed for physical distribution,
| there was only crappy workarounds.
|
| But most of that money didn't go to artists, most of them
| were still working side jobs, while middlemen thrived. How
| different is it now ? I actually think it's slightly better
| these days, but the biggest slice of the pie still go to
| middlemen who protect their position to keep the markets
| captive.
| samvher wrote:
| I do think it's a market forces issue. But it's an issue
| where forces don't align with societal value (which I think
| is an extremely common problem in the modern economy). Back
| when musicians/publishers had real leverage over who could
| access their music/content by means of their control over the
| media holding these, it was in some ways easier for them to
| make money. It's the gatekeepers that manage to extract rents
| from the system, and it's hard for any single
| artist/intellectual to do anything about that, and if
| multiple try to do something about it together there's always
| going to be an incentive to defect or not join that effort in
| the first place.
| reedf1 wrote:
| The truth that no one wants to acknowledge is that successful
| content creators are usually brilliantly multi-talented and hard-
| working. I'm never surprised to find the ones I like have had
| whole careers in media (or media-adjacent) fields.
|
| I like food youtubers - Binging with Babish was formerly a video
| fx artist, Adam Ragusea was formerly a journalism professor and
| musician and Alex (French Guy Cooking) was an electrical
| engineer, filmmaker, and marketing manager. These people are
| basically one-man production armies, the food part is basically
| secondary. They have a killer mix of good-ideas and charisma,
| production quality (cinematography and sound design), marketing
| and community savviness, and ridiculous hard work.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| This is true, and although they don't tell you this, they also
| have a team. Sometimes it is just an intern or camera person
| but some creators have surprisingly large teams.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| This is especially true for the creators who came from media
| or marketing (like NYC CNC) because they know the value of a
| team in the media world.
| azinman2 wrote:
| And what I don't understand is how they can afford these
| teams off YouTube wages. My only guess is they've figured out
| how to make non-platform money off their brand (like
| musicians playing concerts), but for many of them it's quite
| non-obvious. You can only sell so many t-shirts...
| sombremesa wrote:
| "Youtube wages" can be ~$5k/1MM views just from Youtube
| ads, without even getting into monetization via third party
| sponsorships or merchandise.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 1-6 wrote:
| Yet some people still don't give up on their career in left-
| handed puppetry.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > Without major platform overhauls, the creator's gold rush will
| come to an end
|
| It seems natural for a 'gold rush' to come to an end.
|
| I don't agree with platforms taking an excessive cut of the value
| of content that's produced.
|
| I also don't consider the value of the content to be dollars. If
| we have sufficient UBI, then the value in any content produced is
| that people watched it with interest and learned or was
| entertained by it. That's the metric we should optimize for, in
| the long run.
| tiku wrote:
| Perhaps this is a good use case for NFT's, added signatures make
| it easy to find and reward the owner.
| contravariant wrote:
| That's somewhat pointless if you wanted to reward the creator.
| jnwatson wrote:
| This is the best example of "if all you have is a hammer" I've
| heard in a long time.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| How, exactly, does that do anything about the underlying fact
| that there's a limited amount of attention to spread around on
| the populace of creatives?
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Probably isn't, but I'm sure someone, someday, will figure out
| a use for NFTs beyond riding the next bubble.
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