Top athletes and artists or just top kids making much more money is part of the system. It was observed as why watch 2nd best whatever the criteria of that be.
YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
151–160 of 249 posts
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#152In other news, I have yet to make a single dollar from GitHub sponsorships, and I have several tens of stars and forks on my project. Who is going to look after me and my rent? /s In seriousness, you gotta build or make what people want. The vast majority of YouTubers, like open source devs, are making things that mostly they themselves care about. Of the remainder, most are making things some people appreciate, and…
> In other news, I have yet to make a single dollar from GitHub sponsorships, and I have several tens of stars and forks on my project. Who is going to look after me and my rent? /s
Heck, repos that are widely used rarely get actual money. Making money shouldn't be conflated with fulfilling a demand. Plenty of things fulfill a demand or create value but fail to monetize.
If paying becomes truly optional (no social pressure or pay wall), most people would rather not pay.
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#153While I wish my own Patreon were better funded and the issues in this space are real, this isn't going to be entirely solved by working only on the income end of things.
The US needs to reform its housing policies and find a better solution for providing healthcare for all citizens. If it were easier to find a small place to rent for less than $500 per month in the US, if it were easier to live without a car and if the average American weren't being bled for healthcare coverage, then you could live on $10k or so a year without it being a hardship. (Assuming single childless person, basically.)
Some people already pull off stuff like that, but it needs to be more widespread. We need to make "the basics" somehow more accessible for more people.
The problem isn't "Only a relatively small percentage of people make good money this way and those folks tend to get rich." The problem is that a high percentage of Americans are finding no means to really make ends meet due to a variety of factors that interplay in an ugly way.
It's reasonable to say "It's not really the fault of this one thing." But something needs to give.
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#154Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#155Why 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 agree, people should think about it as a lottery ticket. How many people spend $10Ks over the years trying to become good at soccer/basketball/baseball/golf/etc. so they can go pro? We know that it is a 1 in a million shot but results in a multi-billion dollar industry. Creators have to decide on their goals. I design board games on the side. I don't expect it to ever break even, let alone replace my salary but I d…
A lottery ticket? It's not that at all.
Sadly (or is it?), it's like the real world. Marketing, image, having a product people want is still important.
That's not luck, that's paying attention to the market and adjusting accordingly.
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#156I think this is an interesting discussion in a world where raising the minimum wage and "living wage" are somewhat hot political topics.
Why is Youtube allowed to have a business model where they can arbitrarily decide not to pay you for content generation?
Can you imagine a world in which Uber could just decide not to pay you for deliveries until you meet a certain threshold? And then after they've been paying you for a while, they arbitrarily decide to stop paying you for deliveries.
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Youtube IS a path to stardom, and a much easier one than anything preceding it, however people chasing stardom rarely care about money until they grow up and realize they don't know how to do anything else. It's not like the term starving artist is new.
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#158Why 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…
There's a strong argument that, when you've got companies like Google/YouTube, Spotify, Amazon/Twitch, Patreon, etc at the top capable of paying their executives and engineers and other employees six to seven figure salaries, on the backs of their creatives who barely scrape by, there's an inequality there which isn't ethical.
Twitch and YouTube, I think, are interesting ones in the sense that their system costs are probably enormous, primarily due to the 99% of content "creators" on their system which are actually just people like me, uploading videos which five people watch. A tragedy of the commons sort of thing, whereby they still pay to serve my videos, and that all cuts into the pie which is probably better given to professional content creators.
But, I think that ultimately all of these platforms would be better ran and managed by the content creators themselves, or at least middlemen who have less of a multi-billion dollar profit incentive. There are a few interesting products heading this way;
* Tidal (in music) was a big one, but we'll see what happens now that Square has majority ownership.
* Itch.io [1] in gaming. They run what appears to be an extremely barebones operation focusing on delivering extreme value for creators and consumers alike.
* Floatplane [2] in video. A service started by the team behind Linus Tech Tips, several high-profile (generally tech-focused) content creators now host their content there.
We're also seeing this theme of "screw the middleman" among big media companies, opting to get rid of Netflix or Hulu in favor of their own in-house streaming platform, or Epic's fight against the App Store. It's literally the same impetus; these middlemen take way too much money and ultimately form lowest-common-denominator revenue models which don't benefit most content creators, from large to small.
I think this is a trend that will continue to gain traction; I am not bullish on big-tech mega-platforms over the long term. To a degree it sucks for consumers, but ultimately a system which demands content creators scrape by while making big tech rich isn't tenable, and consumers need to recognize that. Big Tech has had years to try and build something equitable; they haven't. Its their fault, not the fault of the content creators.
I tend to predict that Twitch is the next one which will see major disruption. The market even among big tech alternatives is basically zero, and Twitch has huge issues which reach beyond just monetization and into legal governance of streamer channels which is legitimately pissing off content creators and viewers alike. They're "stuck" with Twitch, but Twitch isn't actually that big; its just niche (hop on Chaturbate any evening, take one look at the average view-count for their streamers, and recalibrate your perception on Twitch's slice of the entire online streaming pie).
[1] https://itch.io/
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#159Earlier 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. This sounds like a great description of art as a profession for roughly the past five to seven centuries. It sounds like really very little has changed, except perhap…
For an example of the latter you have the BBC which is deservedly world famous for its choices.
Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general I agree with your statement. But the grim reality is that good jobs are hard to get. It’s not always possible to find better opportunity. And you may not have the resources necessary to find something better (e.g. I can’t afford to go in a better job opportunity‘a interview, because I can’t get time off my current job, and I need this job to survive. About 10 years ago I was living in San Francisco on less…
This is such a bizarre take. You're living in San Francisco, one of the most prestigious cities in the world, and yet you're describing your situation as if you're living in Sangvor, Tajikistan. No one in San Francisco is stuck. [1] By skipping a few of those movie tickets and buying months in advance you could get a plane ticket out of there. In plenty of places in the US there isn't even an airport, not to mention…
You're right of course, most can leave. But in leaving you are leaving perhaps your best market (depends on what you do, but as an example, let's say you DJ). And also, by extension, you're sort of suggesting everyone making less than 6 figures leave.
I'm putting words in your mouth, I know, and I apologize. But it's the gentrification I am bringing up.
So many construction workers that repair roofs, install drywall, etc. in Silicon Valley live several hours away in Los Banos and have that crazy commute to get to where they can find employment.
Crazy world we live in.