[HN Gopher] The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth
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The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth
Author : laurex
Score : 14 points
Date : 2021-10-12 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| stevenalowe wrote:
| millions of people making hundreds of dollars - you know, like
| the music industry
| missedthecue wrote:
| Income equals expenditure; they are one and the same.
|
| People are paying less and less for music now. A Spotify or
| Apple Music subscription gives you access to 75 million songs
| for $10 a month.
|
| That would cost me $100,000,000 in CDs or cassette tapes.
| winternett wrote:
| I'm not even sure that most are making hundreds... I know a lot
| of musicians, and they can't even afford to rent the usual
| props for music videos any more... :/
| winternett wrote:
| This is a very timely issue that not many are discussing.
|
| Once a creator becomes popular, they often become sponsored, and
| a lot of the gear they use (which also sets them apart from
| regular creators) is given to them through sponsorships. It's not
| an unfair advantage to the sponsored creator, but it does prove
| to be an unfair advantage to their competitors when you consider
| they are displayed on each site. Think about an independent film
| producer competing against a major studio produce a film.. This
| kind of ecosystem completely destroys the value of independent
| artists and favors big industry every time. There are literally
| thousands of talented people creating content totally for free
| over many years because of the myth of an eventual payoff that is
| the very basis of modern-day creator funds.
|
| These platforms don't have separate categories for content
| creators based on their funding and content to fairly display
| everyone as equals, or among people operating on each level of
| ability/funding, why? because platforms favor proven earners and
| big industry -- Thy also don't want unknown creators to
| potentially replace chosen creators as well in a lot of cases.
|
| Money/Profit drives platforms, not content, and not a concern for
| discovering new talent, but platforms want independent content
| contributed without providing opportunity and without paying
| independent creators for it (of course). Platforms create the
| dream of discovery and work hard to lure independent creators
| with the ideal that they can grow on them purely as fish bait to
| cover the fact that most already engineer their featured content
| heavily to be pre-determined and fixed.
|
| Don't get me wrong, occasionally new talent slips through, but
| it's very rare in frequency.
|
| Because top creators make so much, there's an entire network
| built around them, where platforms promote them and where
| algorithms keep them on top of everyone else, by featuring top
| streamers and earners on repeat, and by featuring them on front
| pages, while unknowns stay buried, without even an occasional
| mention on a featured page.
|
| If you look at black hat forums, there are hundreds of people
| paying and faking their way in order to become popular and
| successful, and even some scammers are making more money off of
| fake music and streaming than really talented independent artists
| in music and video production. The current state of social media
| algorithms is not based on discovering talent, it is based on
| making companies money, and in covertly limiting user options for
| choices in featured content to make platform revenue stable.
|
| A better way to look at the process of creating things as an
| independent artist is to focus on building locally, and in not
| trying to emulate nor compete with big industry, because the
| burnout is real, and the chances of growing, lasting, and
| thriving in massive creator-based ecosystem now are very very
| slim. Create your own web site, and own your own platform,
| because if you're an unknown or independent artist, major
| platforms aren't promoting you as well as a more dedicated online
| presence can.
| zavertnik wrote:
| > Once a creator becomes popular, they often become sponsored,
| and a lot of the gear they use (which also sets them apart from
| regular creators) is given to them through sponsorships.
|
| I'd wager in terms of 'gaming gear', this could be true. But I
| don't necessarily believe that these bigger streamers are going
| w/o an equipment bill at some stage of their career.
|
| > This kind of ecosystem completely destroys the value of
| independent artists and favors big industry every time.
|
| The problem I have with this is that this is just a criticism
| of capitalism. Independent artists all share a goal: being
| recognized for their skills, and if they choose to, to make
| money off of it.
|
| > These platforms don't have separate categories for content
| creators based on their funding and content to fairly display
| everyone as equals,
|
| I'd argue that it's completely okay to say that not all
| creators create equally good content.
|
| > or among people operating on each level of ability/funding,
| why?
|
| I think we should divorce this idea that good content comes
| from good funding. Many of these popular streamers are still
| using shitty webcams in their totally normal bedroom, being lit
| entirely by their monitor, using a headset microphone.
|
| When the cost of getting the "premium" look boils down to any
| a7 mirrorless camera with a lens that has a minimum f/ of 2.8,
| we're not talking big bucks here.
|
| > because platforms favor proven earners and big industry --
| Thy also don't want unknown creators to potentially replace
| chosen creators as well in a lot of cases.
|
| I think this is backwards. The platform favors popular
| streamers, who by virtue of being popular, make money.
|
| > Money/Profit drives platforms, not content, and not a concern
| for discovering new talent, but platforms want independent
| content contributed without providing opportunity and without
| paying independent creators for it (of course). Platforms
| create the dream of discovery and work hard to lure independent
| creators with the ideal that they can grow on them purely as
| fish bait to cover the fact that most already engineer their
| featured content heavily to be pre-determined and fixed.
|
| But this dream of discovery isn't dead. It's just not the first
| thing you see when you go to Twitch. I think that makes sense,
| no?
|
| > Don't get me wrong, occasionally new talent slips through,
| but it's very rare in frequency.
|
| This is true, and I totally agree. There are a lot of people
| who will not get the spotlight. There are a lot of people who
| are extremely talented who will not get the spotlight.
|
| This is because it takes more than just a good visual
| aesthetic/quality to get popular on these services. You have to
| be a good marketer, you have to mesh within a community, and
| you have to know how to build an audience vs. knowing how to
| entertain an audience.
|
| This dilemma is no different than all the people who want to be
| actors, singers, writers, ect.
|
| > If you look at black hat forums, there are hundreds of people
| paying and faking their way in order to become popular and
| successful, and even some scammers are making more money off of
| fake music and streaming than really talented independent
| artists in music and video production. The current state of
| social media algorithms is not based on discovering talent, it
| is based on making companies money, and in covertly limiting
| user options for choices in featured content to make platform
| revenue stable.
|
| And we see this fail time and time again, IMO. If you buy 100k
| followers, you're gonna have to buy a ton of likes every time
| you tweet/post to sustain the image of success. I don't think
| people who do this often succeed, but more power to the ones
| who do because I think this is a totally practical and fair way
| to get into an industry.
|
| > A better way to look at the process of creating things as an
| independent artist is to focus on building locally, and in not
| trying to emulate nor compete with big industry, because the
| burnout is real, and the chances of growing, lasting, and
| thriving in massive creator-based ecosystem now are very very
| slim. Create your own web site, and own your own platform,
| because if you're an unknown or independent artist, major
| platforms aren't promoting you as well as a more dedicated
| online presence can.
|
| I hate to say it, but I think deep down, people do not want to
| explore unknown creators. That's why your chances are slim. I
| don't want to watch 10 streams of someone who has not learned
| how to entertain an audience (which is the reason why I'd be
| watching) to maybe come across 1 stream that does entertain me,
| only to find out that this person streams every "once in a
| while".
|
| I think you brought up a lot of valuable thoughts about this
| streaming industry, but I hesitate to agree with a lot of what
| you said simply on the premise that any given job in which you
| have more people wishing to hold a position than positions
| available will inevitably lead to a lot of people being left
| behind, whether it be due to poor luck, underdeveloped
| abilities, ect.
| winternett wrote:
| Capitalism is fine when people aren't funneled into fake
| ideals of creator success... Capitalism assumes that people
| start out on somewhat of a competitive basis, but on major
| platforms that's clearly not the case, things are nowhere
| near equal and fair, and it's all buried deep into algorithms
| and moderation. If 90% or more of the population fails
| totally, there's probably something wrong going on.
|
| If most creators knew the real truths of how these platforms
| worked, they'd probably not waste years of time in creating
| and uploading their content to them for free.
|
| I understand your take, but these platforms are littered with
| false hope, misrepresentations, and even flat out lies about
| who is successful in order to keep people grinding on the
| competition to grow.
|
| Take YouTube for example, where it is REALLY difficult to
| find independent content, and where only the most popular
| content is featured. It's no wonder why people are frequently
| gaming the system, and overspending to compete... Pyramid
| schemes are alive and well with monopolistic social media.
|
| If youtube was more fair, they'd have sever ways to find
| content, not just one search for everything on the platform.
|
| To assume people just don't succeed because they are not good
| enough in the modern world of capitalism is turning a blind
| eye to obvious potential for corruption and bias within
| monopolies.
|
| If creator success is a myth because of any factor on large
| scale platforms, it's better to identify that as truth and to
| apply time and efforts as a creator to better means.
|
| I also wouldn't have much to protest if the same monopolies
| weren't fighting so hard against net neutrality so that they
| can impose even more of a strangle hold on consumer choices
| and pipelines for equal success, but here we are in time...
| SMVS wrote:
| You know whose wealth we could all benefit from a bit of sharing
| in? Billionaires. Theirs is the only wealth worth sharing
| sharemywin wrote:
| The algorithms seem to favor popularity instead of discovering
| new options.
|
| Anything where you have followers/reviews will favor established
| players.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Put differently, algorithms favor satisfying viewer over
| discovering new options.
|
| This favors the established players, but this is because the
| average viewer is more likely to be satisfied with the most
| popular option than a random option.
| derbOac wrote:
| I don't know. There's been randomized controlled experiments
| showing that providing information on popularity distorts
| choice to favor those who are already popular, so it's not
| just that people refer the more popular options.
|
| What you say is true, but it's complicated because most
| viewers are not the average viewer, by definition, so
| providing them with the average viewer preference could lead
| to most viewers being less satisfied.
|
| I do think there's some kind of feedback loop that plays into
| this system. I don't think it's unique to social networks or
| new but I do think the process of matching any kind of
| consumer with content will run into this. It's more of a
| regression to the mean problem in prediction (which is maybe
| what you're saying I suppose).
|
| I have this weird experience when I try to go to YouTube in a
| temporary container in Firefox without realizing it, and I'm
| served what the average visitor would see. It's so different
| from my usual homepage it's like a different world.
|
| Even so, I seem to run into these local minima in
| recommendations where I end up getting recommended the same
| stuff over and over and over again. Eventually I'll learn
| about some content from someplace else and it breaks out of
| that local minima and starts spinning new recommendations,
| but it's like I _know_ there 's other stuff out there I'd
| like, but it's not getting to me because the recommendation
| system only has information on things it's collected
| information on, which means things that have been viewed,
| which means more popular content.
|
| That's not even getting into issues like bands and artists
| being "rediscovered" decades after they were producing most
| of their music.
|
| Sometimes I feel as if these discussions devolve into this
| tug between "less popular is less popular because it's lower
| quality" versus "less popular is less popular because it
| doesn't get visibility" when the truth is in between. I
| suspect there's a lot of content out there that could get
| more exposure but doesn't because there's no match with the
| right audience, but if you're not really appealing to many
| people you'll never get anywhere. But then again, people
| change, and what's popular changes, and changes differently
| among different people...
|
| I think it's a _really_ complicated issue involving feedback
| loops, discovery, information, and so forth. It 's not just
| like finding some static gold needle in the haystack, it's
| like if the perception of what a gold needle is changes from
| person to person, and from time to time for the same person,
| and seeing another needle also changes that perception.
|
| How this maps onto the distribution of reimbursement? Not
| sure, but I suspect there's a disconnect between some ideal
| optimum situation and what's out there.
| vannevar wrote:
| This is true of human nature as well, not just the search
| algorithms. As long as people have even a slight preference for
| the more popular option, you have the basic ingredient for a
| rich-get-richer market with power law distribution of sales.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| as the article points to by namedropping Shirky, this is the
| natural result of offering choice among many diverse options,
| which tends to create power law distributions, the idea that the
| free-wheeling nature of platforms produces equal outcomes was
| always, based on the nature of social networks, impossible.
|
| The Verge had a good and sobering article about what that means
| in practice:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17569520/twitch-streamers...
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