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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

#71

Post by daniel_reetz »

reedf1 wrote: post #27

The truth that no one wants to acknowledge is that successful content creators are usually brilliantly multi-talented and hard-working. I'm never surprised to find the ones I like have had whole careers in media (or media-adjacent) fields. I like food youtubers - Binging with Babish was formerly a video fx artist, Adam Ragusea was formerly a journalism professor and musician and Alex (French Guy Cooking) was an elect…

This is true, and although they don't tell you this, they also have a team. Sometimes it is just an intern or camera person but some creators have surprisingly large teams.

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

#72

Post by hrktb »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #56
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 how much do you personally pay for the artists' products per month, compared to how much you pay your bank? How many people actually pay anything for some specific artists' stuff, compared to some specific bank? Everybody needs a bank, and there are very few banks, with very few people who really earn a lot. Gambling is gambling.. most lose there. And the rest mentioned are a result of governents/police/court sys…

> But how much do you personally pay for the artists' products per month

All in all, entertainment budget is a good amount actually.

For the sake of the argument, it’s easier to set the time frame 30 years back, and talk about CDs and books we were buying. Record companies made decent money, publishers as well. People massively payed for physical distribution, there was only crappy workarounds.

But most of that money didn’t go to artists, most of them were still working side jobs, while middlemen thrived. How different is it now ? I actually think it’s slightly better these days, but the biggest slice of the pie still go to middlemen who protect their position to keep the markets captive.

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

#73

Post by PurpleFoxy »

mbg721 wrote: post #70
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not getting paid enough they should stop doing it. If enough of them stop doing it, then the rest will start to get paid more.

The implication of that is that Big Tech has been selling snake-oil, and the idealism attached to the Internet was misplaced.

Have they? I haven’t seen a single promotion on YouTube telling me I could make a living being a content creator.

I think people hype them selves up about it when they see the top 0.5% on YouTube and think they can be the same. Nowhere have I seen YouTube lie or mislead about this.

The problem is there are simply too many content creators. We don’t need “generic lets play guy 373628”. There is more than enough content pumping in to the system right now.

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

#74

Post by lotsofpulp »

bitexploder wrote: post #40
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…

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.

I assume YouTube is already rewarding content creators based on how much the world’s people watch them. If so, can it get more meritocratic?

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

#75

Post by PurpleFoxy »

rmah wrote: post #65
axlee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This has also always been commonplace in the media industry for creatives. Simply put, the supply of labor far far FAR outstrips the demand. It's a highly risky career path, but many take the chance because they want to. No amount of complaining or legislation will ever "fix" it.

Also known as “compensating differential”. People _want_ to be a musician or content creator so they are willing to do the job even without being paid much. Which pushes the value down for the job.

If you paid people YouTube rates to maintain php garbage they would just say no which keeps the prices up at a decent level.

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

#76

Post by clouddrover »

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…

> The way most entertainers get known is just through sheer luck or connections.

Derek Muller has a couple of videos talking about the success of his Veritasium YouTube channel (and work, luck, and success generally):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I

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

#77

Post by unix_fan »

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…

People seem to believe the magical internet economy will make you rich. There's a big content creator in my country who's barely earning 5000 dollars from it.

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

#78

Post by PurpleFoxy »

abraxas wrote: post #35

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 extre…

Every market where a single provider is able to satisfy unlimited and global demand will be a winner takes all situation.

One youtuber can entertain millions of people while one dentist can only work on a few people per day. You may be the 100,000th best dentist but that doesn’t matter because everyone above you is already booked out.

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

#79

Post by PurpleFoxy »

sokoloff wrote: post #9

Raise your hand if you’re the least bit surprised by this? Content creation is going to give a tiny number of people a high income for several years and everyone else almost nothing. YouTube isn’t struggling with how to make these incomes more even any more than record labels are trying to make every artist have a nice, steady income. It’s a hits driven business.

The lower end of content creation needs to wake up and realise there isn’t a market for what they have and get a paying job. The refusal to give up keeps prices low by creating an oversupply.

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

#80

Post by PurpleFoxy »

woutr_be wrote: post #43

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.

The problem is you are thinking about making money as the goal and content creation as the method.

Most of these people are thinking about content creation as the goal and making money and an unfortunate side requirement.

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