This all sounds highly likely, but it is also a very US/English centric perspective. I'm from Denmark, a country of less than 6 million people. It is not possible for anyone to monetize a single substack account in Danish, let alone push other talent via such channels. The same is true for all other content areas and I would assume that it also holds for any other small language. I wonder how big the total addressable base of speakers of a particular language needs to be for it to be able to sustainably carry infrastructures like the ones you describe here.
I know it was written (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek, but the "doom and gloom" articles are not depressing -- quite the opposite. Yours are trenchant analyses of disruption and, for many of us, disruption is optimistic because that's where rebirth is, where opportunities and innovation sit.
In the big picture I agree there are reasons for creators to be optimistic. But there’s obviously a ton of nuance that would be interesting to unpack in a future post, or series of posts (I’m certain Ted is capable).
Some thoughts:
The overarching trade-off is value for creators vs consumers. And they’re very difficult to reconcile, often moving in quite opposite directions.
Why? Because the internet has made media free. This discussion begins with the ad supported internet. People will always want free. Free will always scale. And scale will always monetize. Value accrues to the majority of consumers and the superstar creators who can capture the mass consumer audience. The majority of creators lose and a minority of consumers are left wanting a better experience.
At the other end of the spectrum is the Bandcamp model, which in a perfect world would mean the richer minority of consumers supporting the larger majority of non-superstar creators. Which obviously doesn’t happen. And the reason is, while it’s great Bandcamp provides economic and editorial autonomy to creators, it essentially demands altruism from very passionate fans. And there just aren’t that many of those people so it can never scale.
On-demand subscription streaming is the synthesis. Technology has created a value prop so incredible for consumers that hundreds of millions (MANY who would be ads only) will pay a recurring fixed cost. This has made things A LOT better for consumers AND creators, but it still doesn’t provide the autonomy most creators would prefer. And even still, Spotify has never been profitable and will increasingly rely on ads in the future. Netflix is introducing ads. Etsy has lowered commissions for creators. Other on-demand streaming subs are money pits (Peacock, Paramount), loss leaders (Prime), or supported by powerful synergies (Disney +, YouTube TV).
It’s awesome that creator friendly platforms are gaining ground. But what types of media can they reasonably support? (film, music, publishing, journalism, visual art, design, visual art?). And for ones like Substack and Patreon that seem to be working, what do the numbers look like in aggregate? And won’t power ultimately accrue to these platforms as they scale just as labels and publishing houses and film studios have in the past?
I love this! To your point about Bandcamp, there is no shortage of artists putting out killer music and doing it all themselves. They record it, put it up on Bandcamp, and are content with moving 1-5K units. Then they do it all over again.
No piling into the van to hit the road, no dealing with gatekeepers, no nothing. And if anything, it allows them to be closer to their fans (similar to what Substack does with writers).
The new model of which Ted speaks is also going to result in a shift in my budget, as I subscribe to more substacks (I have but a few right now) and Patreon. It's an interesting time. Do I cancel cable and divert the money to other channels? I really only watch a handful of the many channels I have available, but many of them come as part of my apartment rent, with a few others added for sports and films. In fact, I pay less for cable than I ever have.
Magazine subscriptions and book purchases once took a bite out of my paycheque. Now that I'm a retired guy, I am a bit more discriminating. But substacks are enticing, and I keep subscribing to new writers. I subscribe to the NY Times and Globe and Mail (I'm in Canada), and scan a variety of online publications that offer long form content. I ignore all social media to enable mental health.
Books are a tougher proposition. They take up a fair amount of space, and I've downsized three times already, resulting in the departure of thousands of titles. I stick to e-books now, and although they are not as much tactile fun as paper editions, they fit my surroundings. But I cannot share them with others, and that's a drag. It will be interesting to see if other writers follow Ted's lead and publish online.
I wonder if the trend that Ted has described will extend to films? The model seems to break down there.
So much change in my lifetime! As in all previous lifetimes, right? We are not unique in that regard, it just feels that way.
Ted, this is excellent. I've been arguing for this exact vision of the digital future for too long now, waiting for technology to catch up. (https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Killer-App-Technology-Succeeds-ebook/dp/B01JK9AT6Q/) After pitching music execs and musicians from the analog generation, I'm fairly convinced that the paradigm shift needs to be generational. We seem to be stuck on what we know from the past and unable to envision a future that is different. Change is uncomfortable, but it comes anyway.
One can argue that this all is already happening in Web2.0, but the problem with centralized platforms like YT, Spotify, FB, etc. is that they are winner-take-all models where creators have to rely on the benevolence of the gatekeepers in control. We can structure incentives toward benevolence, which is what the free market does, but the human tendency is short-sighted and so we get exploitation without transparency. And centralized platforms don't do transparency. Influencers and branders on social media have mostly grabbed the value for themselves.
Thus we are still waiting on decentralized blockchain and tokenization technology and innovation. Web3.0 necessarily needs this distributed technology to create free market access and transparency that rewards all participants for value created.
We also need to get out of our format silos because this vision applies to all digital content, not just music or writing or podcasts. Breaking down these walls is necessary because all creative content filtering through one platform creates the data network connections that represent enormous value when cross-pollinated and shared. In other words, we don't want jazz musicians off in a corner by themselves because there's not enough network value there to sustain itself. But people who listen to jazz also read books, appreciate art, take photographs, etc. So we want many decentralized genre and format networks on one platform that coordinates, filters and distributes the incredible global supply of human creativity.
Technology does this very well. What technology does not do well is curate creative content. Humans do that through social networking. So, what the platform cannot do is control that process. The users must control their own roles in the ecosystem.
As a singer / songwriter / content creator / etc., I believe authenticity, quality, and community will drive things forward (in some way) as it's always been.
It's true, royalties can flow out at higher rates for artists than ever before, however, one must establish a market by developing and possessing a product that has a genuineness about it and really resonates with people.
I mean, imagine if Ted, you were to take a look at my emerging song catalog (many more songs coming!!!) and see something in my released song, "Rise Up" that was meaningful in terms of the beauty of what it is, or something about what it says, or the musicianship, or whatever it was...
If you were to see that and say something about it in your substack, that would be amazing for someone like me. First, because I understand you value music and are a championing voice for "the undiscovered artist."
My hopefulness is that artists now have a way to create something beautiful wherever they are while curating a world audience with their works. When ever has this been possible? Maybe this was the best "torch passing" possible? Or that the artist community as a whole truly needed?
An artist knows, what was healing for us (the artist, songwriter, poet, sculptor, painter) becomes healing for the masses. And that is what spreads ultimately.
As a sidenote - so many are so desperately stuck in the old mindset. People have been trained to think and say, "Ok Ted, how much must "I" pay "You" to be featured on your substack?" However you shift the table dramatically when you mention outright in your article something along the lines of: "I could potentially (with the right number of subscribers) afford to pay artists much more than (said publication / media house)" -- A very significant shift in mindset!
In the overall playing field, there will always be takers and payers who only do it for a desired "outcome." At the same time there will be people who do it for the reasons that they lived into. Artists now have a platform to display their work like never before. This has to be good for the world!!
When heart meets creativity and gets multiplied by community with amplified exposure, truly great things become possible. Hell yeah. That's (kinda) like jazz??? :)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? What you're describing doesn't really sound like the democratization of anything. It's the same size pie of consumer money, recut and redistributed among a different set of big players. Unknown creatives will have the same problem they've always had: how to get seen. The likelihood of getting discovered by MrBeast, or Bari Weiss, or Joe Rogan is just as low as getting discovered by an old corporate talent scout.
Just to plant a seed, I’ve been considering the effect of block-chain on the issue of artist control. It could perhaps be even more central to this dynamic than any single thing you’ve mentioned? Your thoughts Ted?
"In fact, there are now seven YouTube channels with more than 100 million subscribers. By comparison, the New York Times only has nine million subscribers."
And yes, I do know who Mr. Beast is. Many YouTubers have mentioned meeting him, or getting helpful advice from him. His direct channels are not really my thing, but that's ok.
This is encouraging! I've been working so hard on trying to get a literary agent, to get a book deal, to play the game as it's been played by the old guard. Looks like it's time for a shift! Thank you for this.
Thanks for the great read Ted. Two things real quick...
1) You should check out Lyrical Lemonade on YouTube. Cole Bennett has done exactly what you're talking about and he's had a massive influence on a whole host of careers in rap.
2) Do you think the record label will still have a role to play? It seems in no small part that vinyl has had its resurgence because people have come back around to trusting labels, even if only small ones.
Excellent as always. I ‘migrated’ from Spotify to Tidal last week and now wonder why I didn’t do it sooner; the sound quality is in another league and the idea that the artist you most listened to over the last month gets a direct percentage of your fee feels good and fair.
For me, I’m a painter and sculptor not a musician, it’s interesting to see how these diagnoses and predictions can be applicable to the art industry (hate using that word) which is very different as it deals in real, physical objects. This fact initially saved artists from suffering as much as musicians - we still have a unique object we can sell (eg a painting) and that cannot be digitalised and streamed (and given away).
But over the last decade the same phenomenon Mr Gioia brilliantly describes here and in other posts has taken over art galleries: they gave up on the idea of discovering new talent and now they just do one of two things:
1. If they have the muscle to do so they take on classic artists who made their names back in the day (when a gallery took a risk and took them on), and are an easy sale.
2. Take on young artists who are not taking any risks but do something gimmicky that will attract attention for a time, and then be replaced by the next one.
This art world reality leaves no room for new talent in the plastic arts to find its way, so they often ignore the established art world structures and try to find alternative routes to creating a public for their work.
This all sounds highly likely, but it is also a very US/English centric perspective. I'm from Denmark, a country of less than 6 million people. It is not possible for anyone to monetize a single substack account in Danish, let alone push other talent via such channels. The same is true for all other content areas and I would assume that it also holds for any other small language. I wonder how big the total addressable base of speakers of a particular language needs to be for it to be able to sustainably carry infrastructures like the ones you describe here.
I know it was written (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek, but the "doom and gloom" articles are not depressing -- quite the opposite. Yours are trenchant analyses of disruption and, for many of us, disruption is optimistic because that's where rebirth is, where opportunities and innovation sit.
In the big picture I agree there are reasons for creators to be optimistic. But there’s obviously a ton of nuance that would be interesting to unpack in a future post, or series of posts (I’m certain Ted is capable).
Some thoughts:
The overarching trade-off is value for creators vs consumers. And they’re very difficult to reconcile, often moving in quite opposite directions.
Why? Because the internet has made media free. This discussion begins with the ad supported internet. People will always want free. Free will always scale. And scale will always monetize. Value accrues to the majority of consumers and the superstar creators who can capture the mass consumer audience. The majority of creators lose and a minority of consumers are left wanting a better experience.
At the other end of the spectrum is the Bandcamp model, which in a perfect world would mean the richer minority of consumers supporting the larger majority of non-superstar creators. Which obviously doesn’t happen. And the reason is, while it’s great Bandcamp provides economic and editorial autonomy to creators, it essentially demands altruism from very passionate fans. And there just aren’t that many of those people so it can never scale.
On-demand subscription streaming is the synthesis. Technology has created a value prop so incredible for consumers that hundreds of millions (MANY who would be ads only) will pay a recurring fixed cost. This has made things A LOT better for consumers AND creators, but it still doesn’t provide the autonomy most creators would prefer. And even still, Spotify has never been profitable and will increasingly rely on ads in the future. Netflix is introducing ads. Etsy has lowered commissions for creators. Other on-demand streaming subs are money pits (Peacock, Paramount), loss leaders (Prime), or supported by powerful synergies (Disney +, YouTube TV).
It’s awesome that creator friendly platforms are gaining ground. But what types of media can they reasonably support? (film, music, publishing, journalism, visual art, design, visual art?). And for ones like Substack and Patreon that seem to be working, what do the numbers look like in aggregate? And won’t power ultimately accrue to these platforms as they scale just as labels and publishing houses and film studios have in the past?
Begin Web3 conversation here....
I love this! To your point about Bandcamp, there is no shortage of artists putting out killer music and doing it all themselves. They record it, put it up on Bandcamp, and are content with moving 1-5K units. Then they do it all over again.
No piling into the van to hit the road, no dealing with gatekeepers, no nothing. And if anything, it allows them to be closer to their fans (similar to what Substack does with writers).
This is very encouraging.
The new model of which Ted speaks is also going to result in a shift in my budget, as I subscribe to more substacks (I have but a few right now) and Patreon. It's an interesting time. Do I cancel cable and divert the money to other channels? I really only watch a handful of the many channels I have available, but many of them come as part of my apartment rent, with a few others added for sports and films. In fact, I pay less for cable than I ever have.
Magazine subscriptions and book purchases once took a bite out of my paycheque. Now that I'm a retired guy, I am a bit more discriminating. But substacks are enticing, and I keep subscribing to new writers. I subscribe to the NY Times and Globe and Mail (I'm in Canada), and scan a variety of online publications that offer long form content. I ignore all social media to enable mental health.
Books are a tougher proposition. They take up a fair amount of space, and I've downsized three times already, resulting in the departure of thousands of titles. I stick to e-books now, and although they are not as much tactile fun as paper editions, they fit my surroundings. But I cannot share them with others, and that's a drag. It will be interesting to see if other writers follow Ted's lead and publish online.
I wonder if the trend that Ted has described will extend to films? The model seems to break down there.
So much change in my lifetime! As in all previous lifetimes, right? We are not unique in that regard, it just feels that way.
Ted, this is excellent. I've been arguing for this exact vision of the digital future for too long now, waiting for technology to catch up. (https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Killer-App-Technology-Succeeds-ebook/dp/B01JK9AT6Q/) After pitching music execs and musicians from the analog generation, I'm fairly convinced that the paradigm shift needs to be generational. We seem to be stuck on what we know from the past and unable to envision a future that is different. Change is uncomfortable, but it comes anyway.
One can argue that this all is already happening in Web2.0, but the problem with centralized platforms like YT, Spotify, FB, etc. is that they are winner-take-all models where creators have to rely on the benevolence of the gatekeepers in control. We can structure incentives toward benevolence, which is what the free market does, but the human tendency is short-sighted and so we get exploitation without transparency. And centralized platforms don't do transparency. Influencers and branders on social media have mostly grabbed the value for themselves.
Thus we are still waiting on decentralized blockchain and tokenization technology and innovation. Web3.0 necessarily needs this distributed technology to create free market access and transparency that rewards all participants for value created.
We also need to get out of our format silos because this vision applies to all digital content, not just music or writing or podcasts. Breaking down these walls is necessary because all creative content filtering through one platform creates the data network connections that represent enormous value when cross-pollinated and shared. In other words, we don't want jazz musicians off in a corner by themselves because there's not enough network value there to sustain itself. But people who listen to jazz also read books, appreciate art, take photographs, etc. So we want many decentralized genre and format networks on one platform that coordinates, filters and distributes the incredible global supply of human creativity.
Technology does this very well. What technology does not do well is curate creative content. Humans do that through social networking. So, what the platform cannot do is control that process. The users must control their own roles in the ecosystem.
VIA.
www.tukaglobal.com
As a singer / songwriter / content creator / etc., I believe authenticity, quality, and community will drive things forward (in some way) as it's always been.
It's true, royalties can flow out at higher rates for artists than ever before, however, one must establish a market by developing and possessing a product that has a genuineness about it and really resonates with people.
I mean, imagine if Ted, you were to take a look at my emerging song catalog (many more songs coming!!!) and see something in my released song, "Rise Up" that was meaningful in terms of the beauty of what it is, or something about what it says, or the musicianship, or whatever it was...
If you were to see that and say something about it in your substack, that would be amazing for someone like me. First, because I understand you value music and are a championing voice for "the undiscovered artist."
My hopefulness is that artists now have a way to create something beautiful wherever they are while curating a world audience with their works. When ever has this been possible? Maybe this was the best "torch passing" possible? Or that the artist community as a whole truly needed?
An artist knows, what was healing for us (the artist, songwriter, poet, sculptor, painter) becomes healing for the masses. And that is what spreads ultimately.
As a sidenote - so many are so desperately stuck in the old mindset. People have been trained to think and say, "Ok Ted, how much must "I" pay "You" to be featured on your substack?" However you shift the table dramatically when you mention outright in your article something along the lines of: "I could potentially (with the right number of subscribers) afford to pay artists much more than (said publication / media house)" -- A very significant shift in mindset!
In the overall playing field, there will always be takers and payers who only do it for a desired "outcome." At the same time there will be people who do it for the reasons that they lived into. Artists now have a platform to display their work like never before. This has to be good for the world!!
When heart meets creativity and gets multiplied by community with amplified exposure, truly great things become possible. Hell yeah. That's (kinda) like jazz??? :)
Jacques Attali predicted the broad strokes of all of this in his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music published in 1977.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? What you're describing doesn't really sound like the democratization of anything. It's the same size pie of consumer money, recut and redistributed among a different set of big players. Unknown creatives will have the same problem they've always had: how to get seen. The likelihood of getting discovered by MrBeast, or Bari Weiss, or Joe Rogan is just as low as getting discovered by an old corporate talent scout.
Just to plant a seed, I’ve been considering the effect of block-chain on the issue of artist control. It could perhaps be even more central to this dynamic than any single thing you’ve mentioned? Your thoughts Ted?
Hot damn, Ted - this article made my night!
Ted, I love these two sentences: \
"In fact, there are now seven YouTube channels with more than 100 million subscribers. By comparison, the New York Times only has nine million subscribers."
And yes, I do know who Mr. Beast is. Many YouTubers have mentioned meeting him, or getting helpful advice from him. His direct channels are not really my thing, but that's ok.
This is encouraging! I've been working so hard on trying to get a literary agent, to get a book deal, to play the game as it's been played by the old guard. Looks like it's time for a shift! Thank you for this.
Thanks for the great read Ted. Two things real quick...
1) You should check out Lyrical Lemonade on YouTube. Cole Bennett has done exactly what you're talking about and he's had a massive influence on a whole host of careers in rap.
2) Do you think the record label will still have a role to play? It seems in no small part that vinyl has had its resurgence because people have come back around to trusting labels, even if only small ones.
Great article, and thanks to Beato for leading me to your work. Love it!!!
Excellent as always. I ‘migrated’ from Spotify to Tidal last week and now wonder why I didn’t do it sooner; the sound quality is in another league and the idea that the artist you most listened to over the last month gets a direct percentage of your fee feels good and fair.
For me, I’m a painter and sculptor not a musician, it’s interesting to see how these diagnoses and predictions can be applicable to the art industry (hate using that word) which is very different as it deals in real, physical objects. This fact initially saved artists from suffering as much as musicians - we still have a unique object we can sell (eg a painting) and that cannot be digitalised and streamed (and given away).
But over the last decade the same phenomenon Mr Gioia brilliantly describes here and in other posts has taken over art galleries: they gave up on the idea of discovering new talent and now they just do one of two things:
1. If they have the muscle to do so they take on classic artists who made their names back in the day (when a gallery took a risk and took them on), and are an easy sale.
2. Take on young artists who are not taking any risks but do something gimmicky that will attract attention for a time, and then be replaced by the next one.
This art world reality leaves no room for new talent in the plastic arts to find its way, so they often ignore the established art world structures and try to find alternative routes to creating a public for their work.
Apologies for the long post.