10 ms·

Today’s creator economy was built on subscribers and patrons – what comes next?

78 points by nickfrost 5y ago

qualudeheart 5y ago
I predict shady nft scams left and right.
user_named 5y ago
What's next is successful writers on substack grouping together, to reduce pressure on publishing too frequently, and to be able to keep quality up. That becomes a publication. After that, they will let writers with no or smaller followings contribute their work in exchange for compensation. This is how the next generation or magazines and newspapers will be created.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
disambiguation 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
blakesterz 5y ago
"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 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    An even split would almost be worse. Almost 10 billion / 668,000 creators is under 15k per person before expenses.
  - fullshark 5y ago
    Twitch data leaked before and you are correct
gregdoesit 5y ago
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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >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 5y ago
    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.
giantg2 5y ago
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.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  Just read Snow Crash.
  - randito 5y ago
    or read Ready Player One. enjoy your stay at the stacks.
    - floren 5y ago
      Nobody should read Ready Player One.
      - djs070 5y ago
        For those of us who haven't, could you explain why?
        floren 5y ago
        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.
anon23anon 5y ago
souls. Give me your soul.
floren 5y ago
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.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    [deleted]
- exdsq 5y ago
  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.
8bitsrule 5y ago
>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.
woodruffw 5y ago
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.
- sen 5y ago
  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.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- mjevans 5y ago
  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.
softwarebeware 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
blueridge 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
- jrapdx3 5y ago
  Among other things I've done I've been an artist/printmaker for a few decades. Can't say how many prints I've made. Always great when work sells, but it's not a predictable event at least in my experience. Very few artists sell enough to earn a living let alone become rich or famous. Most need to have "day jobs", teaching is a common occupation. Of course that's been true for a long time. Despite these realities more people regard themselves as "artists" than ever before. Amazes me how many people enroll in art schools at $40K/yr. Student loans have to be paid off later on, from a hard financial viewpoint it doesn't pencil out. Yet year after year no shortage of people sign up, level of talent notwithstanding. You're probably right. What you observe is an expression of form over substance. Maybe it's a "cargo cult" sort of thing where people think wrapping themselves in the trappings of "creatives" is the same as being genuinely creative. The demise of hobbies probably speaks to denigrated value of "work", that is, expending effort to reach goals. I can tell you that printmaking is 5% design, color, etc., and 95% painstaking physical and cognitive labor, in short, it's work. OTOH looking for shortcuts eventually fails, and failure is followed by yet another round of seeking shortcuts. Here's my prediction, sooner or later the "shortcut culture" burns itself out, though I won't place any bets on when that will happen.
pete_nic 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 https://twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1505058932758360064
- k__ 5y ago
  While I really hope that Web3 brings alternatives to todays online economy, I also hope BAYC and the likes aren't that alternative.
gumby 5y ago
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.
jpmoral 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - jpmoral 5y ago
    > 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. But that's always been true, the creator economy didn't create that dynamic. But now, people across the world can support art that wouldn't otherwise exist. In my Muay Thai example, there are no government or large organisations that I know of doing or funding the work to document, preserve, and spread the art in the way it's being done on YouTube and Patreon. There should be, but there isn't. I'm happy I found and am able to support the two people doing the work.
dsir 5y ago
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/ https://aurdia.com/creators/
- Kye 5y ago
  That's a lot of PR-speak that doesn't tell me anything about your platform. More importantly, it doesn't tell me what's different from the hundred other platforms or even the handful that rose to the top. I checked the website and still can't tell what it's supposed to be.
Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
What comes next? Suffering and existential dread.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

78 points by nickfrost 5y ago

I predict shady nft scams left and right.

What's next is successful writers on substack grouping together, to reduce pressure on publishing too frequently, and to be able to keep quality up. That becomes a publication. After that, they will let writers with no or smaller followings contribute their work in exchange for compensation. This is how the next generation or magazines and newspapers will be created.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

disambiguation 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

blakesterz 5y ago

"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 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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  An even split would almost be worse. Almost 10 billion / 668,000 creators is under 15k per person before expenses.
- fullshark 5y ago
  Twitch data leaked before and you are correct

gregdoesit 5y ago

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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
charcircuit 5y ago
>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 5y ago
  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.

giantg2 5y ago

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.

nivenkos 5y ago
Just read Snow Crash.
- randito 5y ago
  or read Ready Player One. enjoy your stay at the stacks.
  - floren 5y ago
    Nobody should read Ready Player One.
    - djs070 5y ago
      For those of us who haven't, could you explain why?
      - floren 5y ago
        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.

anon23anon 5y ago

souls. Give me your soul.

floren 5y ago

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.

kasey_junk 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  [deleted]
exdsq 5y ago
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.

8bitsrule 5y ago

>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.

woodruffw 5y ago

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.

sen 5y ago
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.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
mjevans 5y ago
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.

softwarebeware 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

blueridge 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
jrapdx3 5y ago
Among other things I've done I've been an artist/printmaker for a few decades. Can't say how many prints I've made. Always great when work sells, but it's not a predictable event at least in my experience. Very few artists sell enough to earn a living let alone become rich or famous. Most need to have "day jobs", teaching is a common occupation. Of course that's been true for a long time. Despite these realities more people regard themselves as "artists" than ever before. Amazes me how many people enroll in art schools at $40K/yr. Student loans have to be paid off later on, from a hard financial viewpoint it doesn't pencil out. Yet year after year no shortage of people sign up, level of talent notwithstanding. You're probably right. What you observe is an expression of form over substance. Maybe it's a "cargo cult" sort of thing where people think wrapping themselves in the trappings of "creatives" is the same as being genuinely creative. The demise of hobbies probably speaks to denigrated value of "work", that is, expending effort to reach goals. I can tell you that printmaking is 5% design, color, etc., and 95% painstaking physical and cognitive labor, in short, it's work. OTOH looking for shortcuts eventually fails, and failure is followed by yet another round of seeking shortcuts. Here's my prediction, sooner or later the "shortcut culture" burns itself out, though I won't place any bets on when that will happen.

pete_nic 5y ago

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 5y ago

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 https://twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1505058932758360064

k__ 5y ago
While I really hope that Web3 brings alternatives to todays online economy, I also hope BAYC and the likes aren't that alternative.

gumby 5y ago

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.

jpmoral 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- jpmoral 5y ago
  > 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. But that's always been true, the creator economy didn't create that dynamic. But now, people across the world can support art that wouldn't otherwise exist. In my Muay Thai example, there are no government or large organisations that I know of doing or funding the work to document, preserve, and spread the art in the way it's being done on YouTube and Patreon. There should be, but there isn't. I'm happy I found and am able to support the two people doing the work.

dsir 5y ago

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/ https://aurdia.com/creators/

Kye 5y ago
That's a lot of PR-speak that doesn't tell me anything about your platform. More importantly, it doesn't tell me what's different from the hundred other platforms or even the handful that rose to the top. I checked the website and still can't tell what it's supposed to be.

Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago

What comes next? Suffering and existential dread.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]