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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

#41

Post by lotsofpulp »

pydry wrote: post #36
lotsofpulp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Conversations are futile if we’re not working with the same definitions and context.

You wrote:

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

Defining “distribution channel” as a single company’s website rather than the internet would make “distribution channel” meaningless in the context of this discussion.

It’s trivial to distribute a video with anyone all over the world in this day and age. It’s not trivial to make money from it.

Google might have a monopoly on the mechanism that can be used to make money from videos, but that’s a different discussion than having a monopoly on distributing video.

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

#42

Post by mrtksn »

Rent is problem even for employees of established companies. It effectively creates a slave labour, quite similar to restrictive immigration visas where the employee cannot afford be unemployed.

I'm sur a lot of people are pushed out of character just to be able to pay the rent, hampering both the creativity and he goodwill in the society.

We could have much better creative scene if the incomes were not funnelled to landlords. Creative people are motivated by the drive to create, unfortunately they have to restrict themselves when "large sum to be payed to a property owner or suffer life changing consequences" clause is imposed.

That's why it's often the case where the creative move to a really cheap neighbourhood and years later you have a generation of impactful artists and a neighbourhood that is trendy.

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

#43

Post by woutr_be »

Am I wrong to think about “creators” as just businesses? If you’re not making enough money through your business, then maybe you need to reconsider your business plan.

You know what you get on Youtube, you don’t have a contract saying how much you’ll be making from creating content for them. Maybe I lack empathy here, but it seems most people saw this as an easy money maker, but were wrong.

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

#44

Post by mitchdaily »

axlee wrote: post #37
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.

Sounds like they need a union

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

#45

Post by chii »

axlee wrote: post #37
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.

that's a different problem vs creators not getting much monetization and payment.

businesses that employ people for low wages should, in theory, be out competed by businesses that would be willing to pay a little bit more to get the talent.

So either the business model _requires_ the low wages for it to work, or the workers are not shopping around for a better workplace (or is sacrificing their wages in the hopes of moving up, or some such passion-related reason like game developers).

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

#46

Post by williamdclt »

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…

> For decades actors, musicians and artists have put up with this

Well, it's not that simple is it. For decades actors, musicians and artists have been complaining that they have to live in misery to pursue their art and fighting for better conditions, it's not like they've always been OK with the status quo.

It's a more general question: should art be subject to the market laws, or should society subsidize art production? In the first case (the liberal POV I suppose) it's up to the artist to find ways to make money out of their art, or keep it as a hobby, or give up on it. On the second case (a more socialist POV), we need to challenge how artists are getting a revenue in our society because it's clearly not working.

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

#47

Post by michaelt »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #16
dusted wrote: post #2

It's almost as if.. Doing stuff that you'd otherwise do in your spare-time, is not a real job for 99% of people ? Yeah, I love playing and making games, nobody wants to play them, and nobody wants to watch me do it, because I'm not good enough at it. That's why I have a day job. There's also a limited need for entertainers/creatives (they are needed, but not comparatively very many).. One person can entertain million…

There's an even more limited need for fraud-promoting bankers, crooked and corrupt politicians, people who spend their entire lives gambling on the markets, and organised criminals, but somehow we never seem to lack for all of those. This isn't some kind of rational market forces issue. Artists and intellectuals have real power. But starving them of cash, branding them "entertainers", and converting their jobs into a…

> But starving them of cash, branding them "entertainers", and converting their jobs into a gig economy scramble guarantees they'll be too distracted to realise it.

I'm no fan of the 'gig economy' - but haven't most musicians and writers and singers and sportspeople been getting a shitty deal since time immemorial?

Just in the 1980s that meant putting years of unpaid practice into your craft then not being able to get a book deal / signed with a record label / a gallery to sell your paintings / a try out with the big team.

I feel bad for someone who's struggling to make a living playing guitar on Twitch - but the fact it's hard to make money playing guitar isn't Twitch's fault.

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

#48

Post by chii »

meheleventyone wrote: post #38
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 up…

> 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.

TV has barely any variety of content, compared to youtube. And youtube as an advertising platform is already bigger than TV.

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

#49

Post by ajsnigrutin »

axlee wrote: post #37
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.

But this is not "youtube and patreon", but "employer buzzfeed does not pay their employees enough".

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

#50

Post by mtberatwork »

chii wrote: post #23
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…

> would be non-profit in the sense that the ads profits would be mostly returned to the creators on that platform The basic premise that by making it non-profit, it would garner a higher returns for the content creators is false. The problem really is that there's not enough revenue generated, to pay people producing the content. Even youtube is run at a loss (only offset by the valuable data they collect for google…

> The problem really is that there's not enough revenue generated, to pay people producing the content.

> Even youtube is run at a loss (only offset by the valuable data they collect for google i suppose).

YouTube generates $15B in revenue. [1] I'm sure in the early years when they first acquired YouTube, they ran it at a loss. However, as far as I am aware, Google has never stated whether or not YouTube is profitable. Given the amount of revenue YouTube generates in the present day, I would say it's unlikely they are running YouTube at a loss.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

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