4 ms·

(founder building a content monetization layer for creators on decentralized protocols here) i’ve been thinking about this for a few years now. my two cents.

by viksit 3y ago

(founder building a content monetization layer for creators on decentralized protocols here) i’ve been thinking about this for a few years now. my two cents. ad models stop scaling with the gorwth of decentralized social protocols because no centralized entity exists to coordinate their delivery. inventory, algorithms, personalization, or even the chrome where these ads are served. the economics are also bad. byte dance makes 50b$ plus every year but their creator fund is 200mm. spotify paid snoop dog 40k for 1B streams. the main way to make money (and my bet) will be enabling creators to connect / monetize / build community directly with their audience rather than get disintermediated by the likes of meta and tiktok. these will likely need to happen on different app views (web/mobile) for different nodes. activity pub has very poor support to coordinate something at scale and build in a consistent way - something i think @atproto does very well. i imagine meta has decided to answer the question of how to serve ads in an increasingly decentralized world and still be in control - but this may be harder than anyone thinks?

landr0id 3y ago
> spotify paid snoop dog 40k for 1B streams. Poor example. If I remember correctly it was a song he had a feature on and there were about a dozen people credited on the track.
- benburton 3y ago
  As someone who works in the music industry, this Snoop Dogg streaming thing is an obvious straw man. I genuinely hope people stop using it as evidence of, well, anything. For that low of a payout on 1 billion streams, you'd have to (as you said) have a lot of people on your split sheet so your royalty percentage is very low or have a terrible deal on percentage with your label, distributor, or both. Snoop Dogg isn't living off Bic lighter endorsements. He definitely makes a lot of money on music.
tyre 3y ago
> The main way to make money (and my bet) will be enabling creators to connect / monetize / build community directly with their audience rather than get disintermediated by the likes of meta and tiktok. Do artists actually want that? It sounds interesting in theory but how much time do they want to spend on their art vs monetizing their fans? Something similar is happening in book publishing where authors are getting deals that have less up front and higher revenue share. On the one hand, if there’s a breakout success then they make more money, but on the other they’re now forced to focus a lot more on monetization than the craft. There are positives to the traditional publisher model. Maybe this is still better, I don’t know, but there are certainly tradeoffs
- Beached 3y ago
  I think they do if it means more, and more reliable funding. see patreon and in video ad content. artists and creators are already having to fund directly,
  - viksit 3y ago
    this. i’ve spoken to 206 creators - comic book artists, movie makers, video artist, digital artists, music makers. on an nps score: - building relationship with their audience - 9/10 - monetizing their audience through the same channel - 7.5-8/10
- krapp 3y ago
  I think for most artists it's less about monetizing their fans and more about being able to make an income doing their art versus being forced to make an income doing something else. Focusing on the craft is what brings monetization. Traditional publisher models if anything tend to encourage the cynical cash-grabbing algorithm chasing grift people worry about, and take too much of the artists' revenue and rights for themselves. Because of course the business of helping artists monetize is to capture as much of that monetization for yourself as possible. Being able to pay artists directly seems like the best possible solution, but that doesn't require a business or middleman like OP. Someone can build a community and link their work to their Patreon or Kofi or something else organically.
  - viksit 3y ago
    the biggest challenge with patreon and kofi is that they control the content, its monetization and its distribution. creators also want a way to have more fun ways for their audience to engage with them around their content that RECOGNIZES the top fans in a reasonable way.
- hightrix 3y ago
  As an art enthusiast, I don’t want this at all. Why? A system like this drastically changes incentives, this tends to negatively affect the consumer. I expect any social media that adopts this paradigm to be immediately overwhelmed by the crypto/nft crowd and that will immediately push away most everyone else. Reddits attempt did exactly this.
motoxpro 3y ago
I think we saw the obvious conclusion to the idea of "finacializing an audience" in 2021-2022. There were SO many of these. Founders realized that the market for creators who want to do this != 100% of creators (i.e. mrbeast, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift all have other, more sustainable, ways to monetize their audience). I felt like the decentralized/crypto space sped run the non-profit world in that you have a lot of people who care about you and would love to "donate" to you, but after a few times they run out of "support a cause I care about" money, meaning you have to continually get new people into the audience, meaning that your life is about fundraising. When you think about it pessimistically it's a weird one to say "I 'own' 100k followers and I am going to try to extract as much money from them as possible" which is the incentive you are creating with that model, which again, most creators out side of crypto/decentraland don't think like that. If you take out the "extract money" bit, then you just have what they already do, which is create things on interesting platforms, which means they don't have a need for a platform that extracts money. P.S. Also, the point about the creator funds and payouts being small completely misses the point about what these platforms do for creators. They provide distribution. What you do this that distribution is up to you. You can sell chocolate, you can make 4 billion dollars on concert tours, you can create a brand called skims that is valued at 4 billions dollars, you can create a VC fund, etc. Gating that just reduces monetization potential, which is why Facebook doesn't have a paywall. Everything else is niche and you can create fine businesses there, i.e. Patreon, but nothing huge.
candiddevmike 3y ago
What happened to making content for shits and giggles without any profit incentive?
- kevingadd 3y ago
  stagnant wages and layoffs
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    AI

by viksit 3y ago

landr0id 3y ago

> spotify paid snoop dog 40k for 1B streams. Poor example. If I remember correctly it was a song he had a feature on and there were about a dozen people credited on the track.

benburton 3y ago
As someone who works in the music industry, this Snoop Dogg streaming thing is an obvious straw man. I genuinely hope people stop using it as evidence of, well, anything. For that low of a payout on 1 billion streams, you'd have to (as you said) have a lot of people on your split sheet so your royalty percentage is very low or have a terrible deal on percentage with your label, distributor, or both. Snoop Dogg isn't living off Bic lighter endorsements. He definitely makes a lot of money on music.

tyre 3y ago

> The main way to make money (and my bet) will be enabling creators to connect / monetize / build community directly with their audience rather than get disintermediated by the likes of meta and tiktok. Do artists actually want that? It sounds interesting in theory but how much time do they want to spend on their art vs monetizing their fans? Something similar is happening in book publishing where authors are getting deals that have less up front and higher revenue share. On the one hand, if there’s a breakout success then they make more money, but on the other they’re now forced to focus a lot more on monetization than the craft. There are positives to the traditional publisher model. Maybe this is still better, I don’t know, but there are certainly tradeoffs

Beached 3y ago
I think they do if it means more, and more reliable funding. see patreon and in video ad content. artists and creators are already having to fund directly,
- viksit 3y ago
  this. i’ve spoken to 206 creators - comic book artists, movie makers, video artist, digital artists, music makers. on an nps score: - building relationship with their audience - 9/10 - monetizing their audience through the same channel - 7.5-8/10
krapp 3y ago
I think for most artists it's less about monetizing their fans and more about being able to make an income doing their art versus being forced to make an income doing something else. Focusing on the craft is what brings monetization. Traditional publisher models if anything tend to encourage the cynical cash-grabbing algorithm chasing grift people worry about, and take too much of the artists' revenue and rights for themselves. Because of course the business of helping artists monetize is to capture as much of that monetization for yourself as possible. Being able to pay artists directly seems like the best possible solution, but that doesn't require a business or middleman like OP. Someone can build a community and link their work to their Patreon or Kofi or something else organically.
- viksit 3y ago
  the biggest challenge with patreon and kofi is that they control the content, its monetization and its distribution. creators also want a way to have more fun ways for their audience to engage with them around their content that RECOGNIZES the top fans in a reasonable way.
hightrix 3y ago
As an art enthusiast, I don’t want this at all. Why? A system like this drastically changes incentives, this tends to negatively affect the consumer. I expect any social media that adopts this paradigm to be immediately overwhelmed by the crypto/nft crowd and that will immediately push away most everyone else. Reddits attempt did exactly this.

motoxpro 3y ago

I think we saw the obvious conclusion to the idea of "finacializing an audience" in 2021-2022. There were SO many of these. Founders realized that the market for creators who want to do this != 100% of creators (i.e. mrbeast, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift all have other, more sustainable, ways to monetize their audience). I felt like the decentralized/crypto space sped run the non-profit world in that you have a lot of people who care about you and would love to "donate" to you, but after a few times they run out of "support a cause I care about" money, meaning you have to continually get new people into the audience, meaning that your life is about fundraising. When you think about it pessimistically it's a weird one to say "I 'own' 100k followers and I am going to try to extract as much money from them as possible" which is the incentive you are creating with that model, which again, most creators out side of crypto/decentraland don't think like that. If you take out the "extract money" bit, then you just have what they already do, which is create things on interesting platforms, which means they don't have a need for a platform that extracts money. P.S. Also, the point about the creator funds and payouts being small completely misses the point about what these platforms do for creators. They provide distribution. What you do this that distribution is up to you. You can sell chocolate, you can make 4 billion dollars on concert tours, you can create a brand called skims that is valued at 4 billions dollars, you can create a VC fund, etc. Gating that just reduces monetization potential, which is why Facebook doesn't have a paywall. Everything else is niche and you can create fine businesses there, i.e. Patreon, but nothing huge.

candiddevmike 3y ago

What happened to making content for shits and giggles without any profit incentive?

kevingadd 3y ago
stagnant wages and layoffs
- throwaway290 3y ago
  AI