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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

#91

Post by grumple »

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…

> 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.

But this is a problem for all fields. If devs want to work independently, need to be good at business and marketing as well.

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

#92

Post by woutr_be »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #80
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.

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

If you put it that way, then I don't feel any remorse at all for people who are complaining that content creation can't pay the bills. It's not any different than any other hobby.

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

#93

Post by lotsofpulp »

pydry wrote: post #87
lotsofpulp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can entertain the idea that YouTube currently has a monopoly (or “owns the market”) on the service of connecting advertisers to small time content creators. Whether or not it harms society is something I have not concluded. I am aware there are negatives for medium size content creators who lack negotiating power, but also huge upsides to individual content creators who almost always cause YouTube to lose money. An…

>huge upsides to individual content creators who almost always cause YouTube to lose money. Not seeing the upside nor the evidence of YouTube losing significant amounts of money. >And I’m not sure what any alternative is Applying antitrust laws. We can thank the explosion of Internet startups and innovation to their judicious application to Microsoft in the late 90s (it tied their hands significantly).

>Not seeing the upside

Individual content creators get access to the entire world without worrying about any technical issues, and getting access to advertisers (however small it may be).

>the evidence of YouTube losing significant amounts of money.

I don't know the specifics, but I do know that hosting video is in the wheelhouse of many well endowed companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. They all (presumably) have the capability to build a Youtube competitor over the last 15 years, but the fact that they have not indicates that it is not worth it.

Which leads me to think that this business model of Youtube's where anyone can upload anything they want at any time regardless of how garbage it is and it has to be able to be served to the whole world relatively immediately, is only viable with an enormous ad company (Google) backing it.

But as a stand alone service, it would never be a viable business. The proof is that a non Youtube has never existed before and it still doesn't exist. Nobody is stopping someone from putting up data centers everywhere and offering this service that Youtube does, and not even the companies that can afford it are bothering to touch it.

The Microsoft internet browser situation is not comparable, in my opinion.

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

#94

Post by ImprobableTruth »

scsilver wrote: post #90
ImprobableTruth wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you subsidize art that virtually nobody cares about? You might as well subsidize every hobby in existence. I'm pretty sure even most socialists would agree with this - even those who want to abolish money. If your art isn't valuable to society, you'll get treated like someone who digs holes and then fills them all day. Now, art which is widely appreciated but still has trouble getting funded might be anothe…

Becaus the art itself is secondary to the quality of life a virbrant arts community gives to a city/town. Even an untallented art and ary collectives create a richer community. We dont need parks either, they are quality of life investments.

Why wouldn't the same apply to literally any hobby community? Or do you think that people who go bowling should be paid a living wage for it too?

The created art is simply how the vast, vast majority of people in a city will interact with a local community of artists and thus how their quality of life is increased by their existence. A group of e.g. untalented musicians will simply have a terrible quality of live/cost ratio. We don't fund parks simply because they're a quality of life investment - but because they're a _good_ investment.

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

#95

Post by mbg721 »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #73
mbg721 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conten…

I mean, fine, YouTube doesn't get out with a bullhorn and yell "Make a Living with Videos!", but their incentives make it seem like a path to stardom.

"Too many content creators" isn't a problem. "Too much bad content" is.

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

#96

Post by rasz »

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.

2nd biggest after YT is pronhub, and peolpe make some serious money there.

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

#97

Post by meheleventyone »

grumple wrote: post #91
meheleventyone wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. But this is a problem for all fields. If devs want to work independently, need to be good at business and marketing as well.

Absolutely, I'm just describing the effects as it pertains to video and YouTube. Imagine the difference in content if we still allowed for independent content production without requiring the additional skills. YouTube has 2 billion logged in monthly users that's a reach that should make many niches viable. But seemingly not.

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

#98

Post by Dirlewanger »

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.

Buzzfeed and et. al are deeply dishonest companies running on borrowed time.

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

#99

Post by npteljes »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #78
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.

Already booked out, and also locality matters a lot. On the internet, a live stream only takes <1s to reach me, while I have to find a dentist in my own area.

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

#100

Post by ChrisKnott »

pydry wrote: post #32
ChrisKnott wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you accusing of doing that? YouTube?

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

Do YouTube charge rents way in excess of their costs?
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