YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

ytNumbers wrote: post #176

DoreenMichele wrote: post #153

While 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 t…

An example of this is the movie "Pursuit of Happiness". Having family/friends to lean on can help in many cases. However, many people are simply too overwhelmed by life to work on improving their situation or even trying something like... https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

One of the issues is that our broken policies are helping to fuel high rates of homelessness. Once you are homeless, you now have a lot of logistical barriers to accomplishing anything, plus social stigma piled on top of that and other issues (like hygiene issues that tend to make health issues worse and harder to resolve in most cases).

There is all kinds of data showing it is cheaper literally give people housing than to let them be homeless. I'm not even asking the US to outright give poor folks housing. Just make it possible to find housing that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and where you can make your life work without a car.

I don't think I'm asking all that much, to be honest. This shouldn't be that hard. It's not like we need to invent these concepts from scratch. There are lots of examples to draw from for how to make such policies (plus healthcare) work better than what we've got.

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

#192

Post by tenebrisalietum » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #46

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 produ…

> 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.

This can be exploited. Imagine if I wrote a program that simply outputs a string of 1000 random notes and durations and published this as a song every day, with a random UUID for the title. This is technically art, but is it the same as your favorite musician?

Now if someone is buying each of those songs for a million dollars each, that's between the artist and person making the purchase.

Should society subsidize that though? How do you draw the line?

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

#193

Post by FalconSensei » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

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…

> the income from the largest channels subsidizes the servers needed to transcode the millions of videos that will only ever get a single view.

Exactly. I had 3 different channels, in different points in my life, but the fact that I could, for free, upload a video and have it hosted and then (possibly) watched worldwide on almost any device, it's bonkers. If I had to create an app or pay for storage/upload/etc, it would be impossible.

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

#194

Post by beaconstudios » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

tessierashpool wrote: post #189

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…

Most YouTube careers were made out of people doing it in their spare time and finding out people actually want to watch. That's the only way it works. That just isn't true at all, and hasn't been true for at least a decade. Professional YouTubers typically have a background in film, with training in acting, lighting, and editing. Source: I worked for a variety of YouTube-related startups in Los Angeles. This sentimen…

there's a world of difference between high-production YouTube and individual creator YouTube. The parent comment seemed to be addressing the type of people who want to be the next PewDiePie, not those who want to compete with Will Smith or Jack Black.

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

#195

Post by mrkstu » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #166

snarf21 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would say I'm an alright tennis player, have been playing since I was younger, lessons, coaches, the whole thing. Never even got close to playing at a D1 school though. Mostly out of curiosity, I looked into what it looks like to go pro now. Basically you go into a machine as a young kid, and if you show promise, you get focus from the coaching staff at the academies. Everyone else is basically just a warm body who…

Yep. I had a neighbor growing up that got all the coaching, was a great player and did well as a doubles player- but he had exactly one good run in a major tournament at singles- quarterfinals at Wimbledon.

He didn't have that next level of extreme athleticism- he could make every shot and was very proficient and earned a good living on tour, but if he hadn't come from good money he never would have been there in the first place, because he didn't have the native talent, never getting into the 60s in ATP rankings.

Doing great as a coach though.

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

#196

Post by young_unixer » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #135

criddell wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a big content creator in my country who's barely earning 5000 dollars from it. I'm surprised that so many people are happy to describe themselves as content creators . It's an admission that what you create is generic content for some platform to wrap in ads. It's a type of self-commoditization.

I don't think YouTubers generally do refer to themselves as content creators, as opposed to Creators (a term promoted by YouTube but embraced by the community).

At least it's less cringeworthy than "influencer".

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

#197

Post by meheleventyone » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #183

meheleventyone wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, why on earth would you take that from a few comments here? It seems rather condescending and presumptuous. And as the great example of YouTube shows pseudo-democratizing those things doesn't actually fix them either.

In that case, please correct me! I would like to know more about your thoughts on the failure modes of centralization vs democratization in the arena of artistic production and resourcing. I understand if you consider such questions condescending and presumptuous, though.

Given you're presenting a false dichotomy, I've already corrected you and I have no need to take a test(!?) from you I'm going to venture there is no further useful conversation to be had.

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

#198

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #186

darkwizard42 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't even make any sense. Everyone has to pay for their housing... you either opt into two different schemes, own it or rent it and both come with upsides and downsides. It is up to the person to decide which works for them and in the means that works for them. You can go to many cities where it makes outright more sense to just rent (and maybe more prudent to do so while you don't have a steady stream of inc…

That's obviously not true, in every country I lived in there was this thing called "inheritance" which a lot of times means parents who happen to have done the grinding and leave the house to their kids. Its instant double salary in real terms most of the times. It's very different from being wealthy, it doesn't come with the "elite" stuff but its more like "premium economy" that creates adults of same productivity c…

What's the difference if the parents leave a house or leave an investment account that's equal in value to the house?

That investment account will throw off enough returns to pay the rent and then some in most markets, so they're still paying rent to a landlord; they just have a lot more spending money than someone starting from scratch.

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

#199

Post by wincy » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #164

wincy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If deep domain knowledge paid off on Youtube people like Ben Eater would be a millionaire from Youtube at this point[0], his videos are so cool and great at explaining computing. Or Clickspring, the guy who made the Antikythera Mechanism [1]. But honestly even for me being a software engineer and someone who considers himself interested in this sort of stuff, I look at these pages sometimes out of wonder but I often…

I suspect he's doing fine. Millionaire? Well, of course not, but he is sort of niche. But he also sells kits and I suspect that's been very useful to his paying for his ISP. I know I bought his 6502 kit. ;-) I think the smart "content creators" figure out a way to sell plans, etc. in order to take in a little on the side. (Patreon, in my mind, is the worst way to do that.)

I mean if he works for a FAANG there’s a good chance he is a millionaire, but not from his YouTube.

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

#200

Post by azinman2 » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

daniel_reetz wrote: post #71

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.

And what I don't understand is how they can afford these teams off YouTube wages. My only guess is they've figured out how to make non-platform money off their brand (like musicians playing concerts), but for many of them it's quite non-obvious. You can only sell so many t-shirts...