[HN Gopher] Today's creator economy was built on subscribers and...
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Today's creator economy was built on subscribers and patrons - what
comes next?
Author : nickfrost
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-03-28 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.dropbox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.dropbox.com)
| gumby wrote:
| Gosh, apparently I'm not a "creator" or a "creative". Sux to be
| me.
|
| I did co-create a kid. Should I be demanding residuals?
|
| Phooey.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| When I read this article, I had my usual immediate reaction to
| the phrase "creator economy:" is that actually a thing? If you
| add up all the net profit made in the so-called creator economy
| does it amount to anything interesting? I suspect it's just one
| drop in a bucket that amounts to a long tail of menial low-paying
| jobs.
| adamrezich wrote:
| you may be correct that the monetary amount is negligible in
| the greater scheme of things but the "creator economy" is most
| certainly important in terms of the larger "attention economy"
| we now find ourselves in today.
| dsir wrote:
| My friend and I have been working rigorously in our free time
| building a platform related to this space. We really feel that
| the community that forms around a creator is a creators biggest
| value capture. Our platform is intended to help centralize that
| community of core fans and give them ways to engage in deeper
| ways with one another. Looking to move out of our alpha stage in
| the near future.
|
| https://aurdia.com/creators/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| woodruffw wrote:
| I would hope that it's sustainable and _cheap_ micropayments: I
| would love to be able to instantly pay anywhere between $0.01 and
| $1 for a piece of content, directly from within my browser,
| without either a bank or some cryptocurrency company trying to
| inject themselves into the process (and, for the latter, burning
| tires while doing it).
|
| I think that's a pipe dream, but I can hope.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| The advent of micropayments won't sustain creators. If you're
| building a business off people paying you <$1 you might as well
| be ad-supported.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't think it'll uniformly sustain creators. There will be
| winners and losers, like every scheme (including
| advertising). But it's not clear to me that it _can 't_ work
| for some people: tens of millions of Americans make small
| impulse purchases daily, with no small thanks to how easy it
| is to do so.
| axus wrote:
| What are the odds of China doing something nice like this with
| their digital yuan?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'd be very interested to hear from people in mainland China
| about this: my understanding is that digital payments are
| almost ubiquitous at this point, and have completely
| displaced cash for almost all small/petty transactions.
| Assuming that the transaction fees are low/nonexistent (which
| they might be, if it's all settled via whatever China uses
| instead of ACH), they might already have something like this.
| mjevans wrote:
| That's the long-tail and how Journalism, and other potential
| drive-by visits, could be supported. Much more like true corner
| busking rather than the hole in the wall cover concerts (mostly
| of videogames, but sometimes literal song covers) streamed / on
| video archive sites today.
| sen wrote:
| That's exactly it, IMO. The ability to donate tiny amounts with
| almost-zero fees, preferably directly through my existing
| banking system (probably using some middleware like Osko which
| works flawlessly and I use almost daily, invisibly via my
| bank).
|
| I don't have the expendable income to support every single
| creator I'd like to via Patreon/etc, and I also don't like
| their livelihoods being dependent on a single company who can
| ruin them based on some arbitrary algorithmic magic box of
| reasons. I'd happily contribute small amounts based on
| individual content that I liked though, and spread my money
| wider that way.
| blakesterz wrote:
| "In recent years, the volume of creators has skyrocketed. In just
| 2020 and 2021, the number leapt by 48% and growth isn't slowing
| down. With a glut of incoming talent, incumbent creatives are
| feeling the squeeze."
|
| That number seemed... odd to me, but I think he's citing this
| from Stripe, which I guess make sense?
|
| https://stripe.com/blog/creator-economy
|
| "In aggregating monetization across these 50 platforms, we've
| found that creators will soon pass more than $10 billion in
| aggregate earnings. While 2020 saw a jump in new creators, it
| wasn't a one-time spike. A year later, creators are still coming
| online at a record clip: the number of creators is up a whopping
| 48% year-over-year. In total, these platforms have onboarded
| 668,000 creators."
| jfk13 wrote:
| I wonder what proportion of these "creators" will ever make a
| living through it. I bet the distribution of that $10 billion
| is _hugely_ skewed towards a few.
| Retric wrote:
| An even split would almost be worse. Almost 10 billion /
| 668,000 creators is under 15k per person before expenses.
| fullshark wrote:
| Twitch data leaked before and you are correct
| [deleted]
| gregdoesit wrote:
| I unexpectedly found myself in the "successful creator" bucket
| since a few months ago so I might be able to speak to this. I
| write the top paid technology newsletter on Substack, bringing in
| enough to pursue this writing - or, as many call it "creating" -
| full-time.
|
| Despite being considered a successful creator, I don't think that
| "creator" is a real thing - at least not a category anyone can,
| or should aim for.
|
| Being a creator means the content that you create gets
| significant enough attention. What you do with this attention is
| what really matters. To be a successful creator and not burn out,
| you need to build a one-person business that is both profitable,
| and sustainable. Doing this is much harder to do than most people
| realize. It's something that is hard to just "wing it". At the
| same time, winging it is exactly the strategy that most creators
| are following.
|
| The reality is that most creators don't think of what they do
| from a business, or sustainability side. No one is telling people
| who accidentally became successful creators to think of this as a
| business, or side business. I'm not surprised so many creators
| end up burnt out, or surprised that on a crowded market with no
| real differentiation or long-term strategy, they start losing
| attention they once had.
|
| What helped me is how I had been planning to start a company for
| some time. I did the studying and research on what it takes to
| run a business. I'm still doing what I was preparing to do so:
| but instead of running a venture-funded startup, I'm doing a
| bootstrapped, one-person business. One that many people refer to
| as being a creator.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| Thanks for the great articles and of course fixing the EU wage
| gap with techpays.
|
| Keep it up Greg!
| charcircuit wrote:
| >you need to build a one-person business that is both
| profitable, and sustainable.
|
| Most successful creators are not a one person business. Things
| like editing, thumbnail making, writing, can be done by other
| people for you. Doing everything yourself can just eat up all
| of your time.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| When I say one-person business, I mean a business that has
| one full-time employee which is the case for me. Of course
| you need to invest in contractors, tools and other things
| that give your leverage, given your time is limited and you
| want to use it as efficiently as possible.
|
| I work with a copyeditor for my writing. I contract on an
| hourly basis, doing a few hours per week. My editor is far
| more efficient at what they do than if I did it.
|
| If my business grew large enough, this contract role - and
| perhaps other ones - might become full-time roles. But that
| size or workload is far enough away in my case.
| pete_nic wrote:
| The article concludes that building complementary businesses
| comes next. As a part-time creator that is interested in turning
| it into a business, I view any ad generated revenue as cash that
| can be invested into building a complimentary business. These
| massive platforms, YouTube, TikTok, etc. should be viewed as
| customer interaction tools rather than primary revenue drivers.
| Animats wrote:
| Whats next? FOMO as a service.
|
| Here's Bored Ape Yacht Club's pitch deck.[1]
|
| "BAYC is just the beginning. We are building the next frontier".
|
| "The FOMO is real. For every BAYC member there are hundreds dying
| to gain access."
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1505058932758360064
| k__ wrote:
| While I really hope that Web3 brings alternatives to todays
| online economy, I also hope BAYC and the likes aren't that
| alternative.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't want to see what comes next. It's been a continuous
| negative slide for as long as I've been alive. Goodbye union jobs
| with benefits and pensions (that didn't require college either!).
| Goodbye full time jobs with benefits. Hello gig economy, creator
| economy, social media influencers, etc. Based on that trajectory,
| I expect our kids will be living in a Blade Runner-esque post
| apocalyptic grungy world hustling NFTs to pay for a bowl of
| ramen.
| kqr wrote:
| I agree. I don't think the current trajectory even _can_
| continue -- for the reasons you bring up.
|
| I'm hoping what comes next is a significant step not forward,
| and not back, but to the side: an increase in cooperatives and
| other forms of small-scale communism -- people who get together
| and do things for each other based on what they can and what
| they need.
|
| People working for people. Not for layers of middle managers
| and subcontractors fulfilling meaningless specifications until
| only 5 % of the effort actually makes it to the person who
| needs it, with every layer along the way scraping off a bit of
| their cut.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| I don't think these things are as linked in that way exactly.
|
| The benefits of employers to employees has certainly gone down
| and that's disgusting but the creator economy that's been
| propped up by the internet in a way that was not possible
| beforehand I think is plenty good, and not a viable career/job
| for most people.
|
| I don't think people are going to eschew traditional employment
| en made to try to make it as creators. It's not going to happen
| for most and the pressing needs of survival aren't going to
| allow many to pursue it.
|
| Social media influencers are gross for a lot of reasons but
| people making content for an audience that is willing to pay is
| a good thing. Structuring a company so that 90% of its
| workforce aren't employees to deny having to pay them
| reasonable wages/benefits is a bad thing. I just don't think
| they're directly connected.
| gumby wrote:
| > I don't want to see what comes next. It's been a continuous
| negative slide for as long as I've been alive.
|
| Opera, orchestras, chamber music, the "big band" period, and
| the 1950s-1990s "music industry" were all products of their
| respective times' technological and economic structure, which
| some people learned to exploit and others did not. Those
| exploitation models were just passing artifacts.
|
| You just see a particular point in time, a business model, and
| the life of the then winners and draw a conclusion from that.
|
| I don't know what the future may be but it is most certainly
| not a return to any status quo ante. But I do know that apart
| from a minuscule fraction of people, nobody in "music" (however
| it was described at a given time) ever made much, if any living
| from it.
| karmasimida wrote:
| > Goodbye union jobs with benefits and pensions
|
| If they can be more efficient, maybe they could survive.
| samcal wrote:
| The whole point of a union is to have a way to challenge
| management effectively if their work conditions are worsened
| in the name of "efficiency".
|
| This comment drastically underestimates the amount of capital
| spent on suppressing union activity, it's not as if they're
| operating in a vacuum.
| tootie wrote:
| Creator economy and gig economy are not related. Creator
| economy refers to things like YouTubers being able to create
| content and reach viewers directly. It replaces the need pitch
| a show to a TV network or find a gallery to hang your art. The
| evolution in this article is the shift from ad-based revenue
| model to subscriber-based.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Unless you happened to get hired on by some organization like
| the Catholic church that was willing to pay for art and music,
| there hasn't been job security for creative professions pretty
| much throughout history.
|
| It was musicians who seem to have coined the word "gig" back in
| the 1920s. The usage of the term is a reference to what they
| have always been dealing with.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Just read Snow Crash.
| randito wrote:
| or read Ready Player One. enjoy your stay at the stacks.
| floren wrote:
| Nobody should read Ready Player One.
| djs070 wrote:
| For those of us who haven't, could you explain why?
| wincy wrote:
| I had to quit reading Ready Player One at the point the
| protagonist got into an 80s pop culture trivia
| competition in a VR chat room and he won, and everyone
| started cheering and clapping. Even though this was
| fictional I cringed so hard I just couldn't keep reading.
| tkahnoski wrote:
| If you're ok with the a typical male protagonist nerding
| out over a Flux Capacitor you'll get through just fine.
| If a story that's 50% nostalgic references isn't cool
| it'll be a very slow read...
|
| There's some interesting ideas around the dystopian state
| of the world and whether it is a result of the virtual
| universe or not, but only a few chapters dig into that.
| floren wrote:
| It is poorly-written, derivative, and juvenile. The
| protagonist wins ownership of the Internet (and gets the
| girl) by playing video games well and knowing the most
| 80s "geek" trivia. I think the comparisons to
| GamemasterAnthony's birthday ("every character from every
| game, comic, cartoon, TV show, movie, and book reality
| come in with everything for a HUGE party") are rather
| apt... lots of the book is just the protagonist going to
| a virtual environment and noting that an R2D2 model has
| been instantiated there or whatever.
|
| Basically, if you've read Snow Crash you'll be
| disappointed, and if you haven't read Snow Crash, you
| should just read it instead.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| As a 30s something person, the movie had me rolling my
| eyes. It was designed for the now in vogue Gen Z crowd. A
| group that apparently don't remember the 80s and 90s when
| computing was more unstable, there was a lot less
| software and that you had to internalize that the lower
| layers were more fragile and built on a bed of sand.
|
| These people live their lives entirely in the application
| layer and come up with all these fantasies of Virtual
| Reality and all the magical stuff it entails. I hate it
| and everything that comes with this new world and I want
| to re-live the simpler times of the 90s and the 00s.
|
| I fear that time is long gone though. Just that feeling
| of millennials now beginning to be brushed aside in favor
| of the next generation's worldview is jarring because now
| I have to live in it or disconnect and try to retain the
| memories of the past. I guess every generation goes
| through it.
|
| I miss the world of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That
| took place during the beginnings of Obama's "Hope and
| Change". Things were on the upswing. Climate change was
| not in your face as much as it is now. No coming world
| war and economic collapse. Just a bunch of hipsters and a
| guy trying to overcome the baggage of his dream girl the
| old fashioned way: by battling her seven evil exes via
| old style 2d video game fighting.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Man, I hate to encourage the "elitist asshole" title
| given to me in real life for crapping on Ready Player
| One, but this micro-review nails it.
| Animats wrote:
| _Basically, if you 've read Snow Crash you'll be
| disappointed, and if you haven't read Snow Crash, you
| should just read it instead._
|
| I tend to agree. Although, in Snow Crash, not much
| happens in the metaverse. Most of the action is in the
| real world.
|
| I was hoping for a Snow Crash movie. That project has
| been in and out of development hell for years. (It would
| have to be heavily censored. "Mr Lee's Hong Kong" would
| annoy China, "White Columns" would annoy the woke people,
| and evangelical Christians being a front for a cult
| created to support a scam would annoy the Trump voters.)
| gumby wrote:
| > Although, in Snow Crash, not much happens in the
| metaverse. Most of the action is in the real world.
|
| Which is one of its insightful points.
|
| "White Columns" would not only not offend anyone woke,
| but satisfy their assumptions.
| anon23anon wrote:
| souls. Give me your soul.
| blueridge wrote:
| I think people have been totally brainwashed by the idea of
| finding success within the creator economy.
|
| For instance, hobbies are no longer things one does because they
| bring joy--they're now activities that people haven't figured out
| how to monetize. Before you've purchased a pound of clay and a
| pottery wheel--before you've even made your first mug--you're
| buying a domain, designing a logo, and thinking about whether to
| sell your ceramics on Etsy or Shopify. And maybe you'll start a
| Patreon to document the learning process. I think for people who
| have been formed by the creator economy, people who have grown up
| in this space, the impulse to create and SELL seems almost
| pathological.
|
| Then, there are the people who are afflicted with what I'm
| calling curatorial neuroticism. These are people who view
| curation as creation--they curate and share at a frantic pace.
| They gather, organize, present, and archive information
| obsessively. There's no stopping them. They spend more time
| writing in their seventh iteration of their Zettelkasten than
| they do interacting with people. If only I could get organized,
| if I could only "cultivate my second brain", I will unlock my
| creative potential, I'll figure out how to make money on Substack
| with a highly curated newsletter, or something.
|
| What I sense in the curatorial creation is not really a
| "product", but a need to be seen. People share what they share--
| all of the lists, and links, and archives--so that they are
| viewed as having a certain literary taste, or wanting to be seen
| as having read these books, watched these movies, and so on.
|
| Anyway, a quote from: Leisure, The Basis of Culture:
|
| "I have never bothered or asked", Goethe said to Friedrich Sort
| in 1830, "in what way was I useful to society as a whole; I
| contended myself with expressing what I recognized as good and
| true. That has certainly been useful in a wide circle; but that
| was not the aim; it was the necessary result."
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I find this pretty terrifying because it's undermining the very
| basis of leisure time and changing many ideas about hobbies
| into a bland performative regurgitation of the parts that sell.
| It also feels like things are getting weirdly homogenised.
| floren wrote:
| I just want to read about/see things created by people who like
| what they are doing and who _aren 't_ chasing
| fans/subscribers/patrons. The most interesting stuff on the
| Internet, to me, is when a person puts up a crappy HTML page with
| 5 years worth of notes about using a particular hiking backpack.
| The presence of a single affiliate marketing link makes anyone's
| opinion instantly suspect. A link to a Patreon page invalidates
| the very "authentic" feeling they were striving for.
| tootie wrote:
| That's really harsh and will prevent anyone from ever
| committing to what they're doing. There's loads of independent
| creators who are doing sincere, authentic work but they can't
| do it for free. And if you're consuming creator content on a
| platform like YouTube, they're getting ad dollars just by dint
| of being on the platform without saying a word. I don't think
| there's anything wrong with asking for support to do something
| that others are deriving value from. It's like people will
| gladly pay $15/mo for Netflix with the expectation that it's
| commercial content, but get mad when someone who makes great
| content with no upfront price suggests their work is worth
| something.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Do you feel the same way about the music, shows and movies you
| watch or listen to? I certainly like the occasional homemade
| passion project and community theater but I'd really hate it if
| that was the totality of the entertainment offerings available.
| fullshark wrote:
| Well there is entertainment that exists in order to get you
| spend money on the product itself. Don't mind that, as
| presumably the goal is to produce great entertainment. But
| there is entertainment designed to get your spend money on
| something else (product placement, kids movies that are
| actually toy advertisements, talk shows that are actually
| advertisements for whatever the guest is promoting, etc).
| Those I find quite annoying. The only exception I can think
| of is the TV show Shark Tank, which has interesting
| investment dicussions surrounded by countless advertisements
| for products within the entertainment itself.
|
| So a blog post where the guy teases his next entry -> don't
| mind. A blog post where the guy constantly intersperses
| affiliate links with ad copy -> irritating.
| [deleted]
| exdsq wrote:
| Feels like everyone nowadays plays video games to try and
| become rich/famous rather than just for fun too. Try play Apex
| Legends or Warzone and everyone has 'TTV' in their gamertag
| trying to push people towards their streams. Even my mum asks
| me if I'm going to monetise my hobbies of hydroponics. "Hustle
| culture" has taken over and I hate it so much.
| floren wrote:
| "You're so creative, you should sell this stuff on Etsy!"
|
| "Wow, this pie is incredible, you should open a bakery!"
|
| I think Californians might be worse about it than most, too.
| Maybe it's all the pressure of keeping up with insane cost of
| living, plus the feeling that there's just so much stupid
| money sloshing around that _surely_ you should be able to
| scoop some of it up...
| exdsq wrote:
| Yep - I live in Palo Alto and mentioned I was training for
| a half Ironman. Someone asked if I was blogging my journey
| and what my ad strategy was to bring in revenue.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Next comes a universal digital ledger. You will no longer collect
| or spend in a meaningful sense. "intelligent algorithms" will
| determine how to allocate resources at scale.
|
| This is already happening to some extent given most people live
| paycheck to paycheck and "intelligent algorithms" can be replaced
| with "investor class".
| charcircuit wrote:
| Services like YouTube premium and Spotify already exist. They
| pay out based off who you watch / listen to you the most. The
| algorithms don't need to be that complicated.
| disambiguation wrote:
| That's what we currently have, the title asks "what's next?"
|
| Today's economy uses supply and demand and free markets to
| determine prices and allocate resources "efficiently". You
| trade labor for capital, then choose how to spend it. The
| premise is that individual choice is fair and efficient and
| maximizes wealth creation the best compared to other models.
|
| YT and Spotify however challenge the free choice model. They
| claim they can know you better than you know yourself, and do
| it at scale. They know what music you want. They know what
| content you want. If their algorithm fails, you will leave
| their platform for one that does it better. But once you
| subscribe, free choice exits the equation. Content is the
| resource and it is being allocated by algorithms. You choose
| to give up choice.
|
| So, music and videos and other elastic supply is one thing.
| But what if algorithms can generally solve supply and demand?
| Can a central algorithm organize society more efficiently
| than humans can imagine or achieve through market forces?
|
| If so, then it is also inevitable, because either through
| authoritarian edict, corporate capitalism, or national
| Darwinism it will out-compete everything else.
|
| At which point, money is no longer a useful thing. Money is a
| vehicle for human choice. The algorithm has no use for such a
| device. It will simply mail you a voucher for your house,
| car, groceries, etc. you'll be getting this year.
|
| A maximally efficient algorithm would determine what job you
| have, where you live, who you associate with, what your daily
| routine is, etc.
|
| If there is a "next", it's one where a master algorithm
| organizes our lives in totality.
| jpmoral wrote:
| I don't understand all the hand-wringing in the comments that
| creative people being paid somehow makes them a sell-out or will
| otherwise ruin the hobby/field/employment landscape/whatever
| else.
|
| Are there people churning out crap hoping to make a quick buck?
| Yes. Are there corporations trying to exploit creators and fans?
| Yes. Are there other problems I'm not even aware of? In all
| probability, yes.
|
| But I also see a lot of good things happening. Examples from my
| own interests:
|
| Table-top RPGs: before, you only got to play whatever was
| available at your local store (if you even had one) which was
| probably whatever the big companies put out (D&D) or your own
| crappy homebrew system. Maybe you hear about something amazing
| someone else has done and if you're lucky you get a
| photocopy/scan of their notes and try to figure things out from
| that. Today, you can discover heaps of amazing games and support
| their creators through Kickstarter, YouTube, Patreon, etc.
|
| Muay Thai: I support someone on Patreon and YouTube who puts out
| tons of content. Hours and hours of her own training footage
| (with fighters past and present, many of them legends) with
| commentary. Full videos of all her fights (270 and counting),
| again with commentary. Commentary on legendary fights. Interviews
| with MT legends. A long-form podcast. Long-form articles. These
| cover not just technique but also culture and history. All done
| for love of the art but also costing money. I don't know how else
| all this can be made available to a wide audience and be
| preserved for future generations.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Conflicts of interest.
|
| The need to make money modifies the artistic process. Some
| expressions will be modified or straight up suppressed if they
| are perceived as unprofitable or offensive.
|
| Advertising is the simplest example. All it takes for a website
| to censor itself is for someone to complain to Google that some
| page is offensive, causing them to suspend their revenue
| stream.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| >What comes next?
|
| Pretty much what happened to 95% of rock'n'roll bands, I'd guess.
| Either the big guys smell an opportunity and 'let' you have
| enough to keep working ... or you become a one-hit wonder.
|
| Honestly, there aren't that many truly creative people. One giant
| is followed by a thousand wannabes. The gifted need to find new,
| uninfected ways to nourish _and protect_ themselves ... with a
| minimum loss of creative time ... or else. One dedicated server,
| a couple of maintainers and an accountant would keep them away
| from all the sharks. Then it 's up to word-of-mouth.
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