Re-creating the creator economy
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20,000 foot view: Streaming first democratised the means of consumption, then distribution, and now production. Though the promise of the long tail may not have materialised quite as expected, long-tail and mid-tail creators are now a central component of the digital-entertainment economy. Their role will augment further, propelled by meta trends, such as the emergence of creation as entertainment, the fragmentation of fandom, and the growing prominence of micro scenes.
Key insights
- Social platforms redefining entertainment value chains, using for content creation, distribution, and thus making creators the fuel the digital-entertainment engine
- Creators are by shared characteristics, such as creatively and financially independent, owning own rights and pursuing success
- Audiences are creators too, with doing some of content creation and using tools in social platforms. Only consumers only ever passively consume
- Creators are to define their behaviours based the demands on the platforms, in being ‘always on’, and carries many burdens
- There is platform / creator tension: platforms scale pooled from individual creators, creators want remuneration and recognition
- Platforms must a cultural balancing act between the needs of their audiences of their creators
- Creators have dependence – merely renting space, with tenancy rights, and often the whims of algorithms
- Music creators enough distribution and platform options, what they really need now more ways to find and their audiences
- Sustainable remuneration a recurrent issue, with many video apps and many creators openly critical of the perceived of transparency
- Discoverability is key challenge for podcast creators, a number of platforms making to address this
- Social media has U-turned audiences from observation participation
- Sports stars using creator platforms as a of extending their brand reach discovering new audiences
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Acast, Amp, Amazon, Amazon Music, Amazon, Apple, Bandcamp, Buzzfeed, Buzzfeed Unsolved, ByteDance, Case Closed with Bailey Sarian, CDBaby, Cem Bolukbasi, Chargebee, Charlie Puth, Devon Cole, Disciple Media, Discord, Drive to Survive, Distrokid, Facebook, Fortnite, Haters Back Off, Hulu, Instagram, Kenny Beats, KSI, Lando Norris, Logan Paul, McLaren, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Miranda Sings, NetEase Cloud Music, Netflix, Pico, PinkPanthress, Patreon, Prime Video, ProCreate, RADAR Podcasts, Russ, The Last Dance, Sadie Jean, Shorts, Snapchat, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stem, The Race Media, Tencent Music Entertainment, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Zype