221–230 of 249 posts
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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...
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…
most tech channels had zero background with that. I mean linus tech tipps (one of the biggest), started to make youtube videos with limited resources and basically was asked by his old company to help out, without prior knowledge.
most gaming related channels were not done with prior backgrounds. also a lot of early youtubers had no prior background. I abo'd tons of german channels who make a living with it, which didn't do anything media related before youtube (some of course did to a certain (small) degree, like jp-performance)
youtube is just so big that there a tons of people with tons of background. of course the most successful people are those who know how to sell.
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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…
Yes, artist coops, rather than corporate, Patreon-like fair is what is needed.
That being said, I think a more scalable and better solution is more-so the "lean middleman" model (ie Itch-like). The problem with YouTube and Twitch isn't the core of their position in this system; the problem is that they're too big. They have thousands of employees, they're hosted on big cloud providers, and they're accountable to profit-seeking mega-corps; all of these things drive the revenue that creators see down, and the argument that they're fundamentally necessary in a system like this is tenuous.
Content moderation is definitely the hardest problem to solve at their scale, and its a strong argument for why they have to be so big. I think this is something that needs to be solved in two ways: first, by lowering the number of rules which need to be enforced (ie nudity? maybe that's ok, as long as the channel is properly age-gated and the age of the streamer is confirmed), and second, by increasing the bar to even getting a platform in the first place (ie it should take a week or so, manual approval of recognition of the rules, and some fee that the content producer actually has to pay which supports the platform and increases investment).
Big Tech is insanely conservative when it comes to any changes that would either hurt their sign-up metrics or hurt their ability to sell advertisements. This is where new platforms need to focus, because Big Tech fundamentally and intrinsically cannot compete against you there. What options open up when you throw out the idea that you need to sell advertisements, and you throw out the idea that "growth at any cost" is the goal (big tech loves that for the growth part; no one pays attention to the "any cost" part).
Schools should really start teaching basic principles, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
Empty capitalist rationalizations that only serve to rationalize systemic faults. People dont care about such rationalizations. If things go way down south in a society, extremism and chaos takes over, and all those people who were rationalizing such systemic inequality end up finding themselves in hot water. From the decline of Roman Republic and then fall of the empire to French Revolution, from religious/nationali…
The problem is not capitalism, it’s that most of the entertainers are not popular enough to make any money from their viewers, and many still wouldn’t be able to survive if they received 100% of the money YouTube gets. Then where would the money come from? If not their viewers, and not advertising, then who? The government?
It’s not a US or capitalist problem, it’s a simple cash flow problem. Can you imagine the Soviet Union or China funding them? Even the 10,000th van lifer?
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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.
Well, no, I don't think so, because this isn't like the market for maintaining PHP garbage. :) Creative work -- at least in this context -- isn't fungible. One low-rent PHP contractor is probably interchangeable with another one, but Patreon creators are not: if you're giving Bob $5 a month, it's because you specifically like Bob's stuff. What a Patreon creator with 50 patrons makes has no material effect on what a Patreon creator with 50,000 patrons makes.
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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…
You subsidise the stuff that people do care about but isn’t getting made because it doesn’t make money as easily. Particularly in markets that skew towards very few people being able to afford to participate. Publically funded broadcasting for example has been phenomenally successful.
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Creating video content for others to consume is one of the least likely to succeed avenues for a poor person to stop being poor, even if YouTube handed over every cent of advertising revenue to the video’s creators.
reading between the lines, it seems like the OP's idea is basically a form of UBI that allows creatives to engage in content creation regardless of the market-fit and commercial viability of the content.
UBI would provide peanuts for everyone and devalue the content even more. Everybody and the fleas on the backs of their dogs will be streaming and influencing.
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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.
It seems like a universal basic income would address this "unfortunate side requirement" better than somehow making all youtubers get paid enough to make rent. This would let people take the risk of doing content creation, either they get lucky and make a lot of money or they can indefinitely subsist on UBI. In the end society wins (in my opinion) by getting lots of people doing stuff they are interested in.
The thing is, we don’t need to encourage people to become content creators because we already have more than enough content being created and any more would mostly be a waste.
The good thing about capitalist markets is they are able to prioritise things that are in need reasonably well. Once that need is met, prices move to stabilise that balance.
I’m all for the ubi to replace welfare but I don’t think it will do wonders for creative people who will never turn it in to a higher paying job.
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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…
I watch a lot of what I would call "blue-collar" YouTubers. Woodworkers, machinists, makers, electrical hobbyists, etc. When they talk about their income, all of them say that their Youtube ad revenue pays next to nothing. Some of them make a decent living via Patreon or have other ways that for their followers to support them (e.g., selling project plans). I can say with 100% confidence that none of them went to fil…
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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.
Pornhub isn't anymore since they removed all the unverified accounts' videos.