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YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

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Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#31

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #26
WJW wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already free to watch even the smallest channel on youtube, the income from the largest channels subsidizes the servers needed to transcode the millions of videos that will only ever get a single view. The "problem" is that most creators have miniscule audiences. The "transparent and fairly" returned ad profits for someone with ten viewers is never going to be very large. The power law in entertainment has alway…

Except that it's not about profits, it's about culture and quality of life. And pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else reliably destroys both. It's also about closing one of the few paths that the poor can use to stop being poor.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#32

Post by pydry »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #18
pydry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or as if monopolizing a distribution channel allows you to charge rents way in excess of your costs.

Who are you accusing of doing that? YouTube?

Do you know of any other video platforms with 2.3 billion active users?

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#33

Post by lotsofpulp »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #26
WJW wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already free to watch even the smallest channel on youtube, the income from the largest channels subsidizes the servers needed to transcode the millions of videos that will only ever get a single view. The "problem" is that most creators have miniscule audiences. The "transparent and fairly" returned ad profits for someone with ten viewers is never going to be very large. The power law in entertainment has alway…

Except that it's not about profits, it's about culture and quality of life. And pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else reliably destroys both. It's also about closing one of the few paths that the poor can use to stop being poor.

Creating video content for others to consume is one of the least likely to succeed avenues for a poor person to stop being poor, even if YouTube handed over every cent of advertising revenue to the video’s creators.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#35

Post by abraxas »

Youtubers are from extremistan but dentists are from mediocristan[1] The distribution of outcomes in the two job categories is a different curve with Youtuber jobs having a very strong “winner take all” inclination. The problem with any proposed solutions is that they are unable to change these curves. Their existence emerges naturally in various domains. I don’t think anyone ever figured out how to even out an extremistan domain to make it resemble a mediocristan distribution.

1. https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#36

Post by pydry »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #22
pydry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or as if monopolizing a distribution channel allows you to charge rents way in excess of your costs.

Then it’s a good thing no one has monopolized distributing videos across the internet.

The 2nd biggest video sharing website has 10x lower reach and no ad network.

I'm curious to know what counts as a monopoly if not that.

The network effect has been good to google.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#37

Post by axlee »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #25

Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on YouTube at all puts you well far…

I can see your argument.

On the other hand, the article mentions people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night on top of their media jobs. That sounds unacceptable to me: I am pretty sure the company employing them can afford them a living wage, and it looks a lot like exploitation.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#38

Post by meheleventyone »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #12

99% of creatives have never been able to pay their rent by selling what they make. It's not even about how good they are - some people produce amazing stuff but it's not something that enough other people want to own (or listen to, or watch, or whatever). The lucky few whose creative spark happens to coincide with market demand get to do that all day long. For the rest of us, it's a day job to pay the rent (which mig…

> It's not even about how good they are - some people produce amazing stuff but it's not something that enough other people want to own (or listen to, or watch, or whatever).

This isn't even the problem. It's that to be successful you need to be more than good at your job you need to be great at doing a few other jobs as well. Namely running a business and marketing. And lucky in catching the break the propels you upwards.

This requirement for discoverability, marketability and virality also changes the media significantly. YouTube is rife with ten minute videos, clickbait titles and overenthusiastic yelling. This is entirely on the platforms, their bid for retention to keep people watching one more video and how discovery and recommendations work.

If you look at the wider industry of say TV and film you get a much wider array of successful content, supporting more people with more stability.

I do think there is a version of YouTube that could result in "better" content whilst employing more people.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#40

Post by bitexploder »

WJW wrote: post #14
js8 wrote: post #10

You know, in the old days, there were public broadcasters, like BBC (I am not English/American, so I don't know what the state of these is today). They balanced the commercial aspect of the media (somebody has to pay for the waves) with public access. I think people should consider political initiative to have something like Youtube, but in public domain (with the same status as public broadcaster). Basically, the se…

It's already free to watch even the smallest channel on youtube, the income from the largest channels subsidizes the servers needed to transcode the millions of videos that will only ever get a single view. The "problem" is that most creators have miniscule audiences. The "transparent and fairly" returned ad profits for someone with ten viewers is never going to be very large. The power law in entertainment has alway…

I’m guessing sites like YouTube could use their machine learning army to make it all a bit more meritocratic. In the last there were big logistical challenges and costs to making a movie. In YT there are no real costs. I’m not sure the power law has to exist on a place like YT.
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