The Shift from Consumption to Co-Creation is Reshaping the Entertainment Industry
I’m writing about a series on major shifts happening in the entertainment industry, impacting film, TV, and gaming strategy. I’ll link between them as I post them, so you can view the full collection when it’s done.
Part One: The Shift from Local to Global Distribution is Reshaping the Entertainment Industry
Part Three: The Shift of Attention from Video to Gaming is Reshaping the Entertainment Industry
We talked about where and how things are distributed, and format. The final shift is in how audiences consumer content, moving from passive consumption to active co-creation. We’re moving from a world in which creators develop their content in isolation, to communities of co-creation. The artist might be the figure head, but they not only involve their fans, but require them to create new work.
It’s a lot, I know. But think about it!
There’s a long history of fans creating content to supplement or extend their favorite pieces of entertainment. From Trent Reznor open-sourcing his songs as remix-able GarageBand files, to 50 Shades of Grey — which started out as online fan fiction for the Twilight series. To my recent favorite example, the Infinity Saga, a fan edit of all the Marvel movies through Avengers: Endgame. The creator meticulously re-edited the films so the scenes appear in chronological order. Something that really should just be a playlist option on Disney+…
The point is, fans have always wanted to engage creatively with their favorite artists and creative works. Creativity inspires creativity, but until relatively recently, they haven’t had a way to contribute on equal footing. That’s started to change with platforms like Wattpad, the social writing community where 50 Shades first grew to prominence. Wattpad now has a Studio division, and actively helps Hollywood connect with its creators.
And we’ve seen similar dynamics emerge on TikTok, where the Disney film Ratatouille, and now the Netflix show Tiger King, have been crowd-sourced into musicals, with fans voting up the best versions of songs composed and performed by the community. The Tik-Topera seems like a transitional format. It’s notable that both Disney and Netflix have blessed their creation…but neither will be hosting them on their platforms. That tells you that they see it as marketing, and not core to their future. I think that’s a mistake.
But maybe big IP owners will start to come around. On Sunday, the crowdsourced Bridgerton musical won a Grammy, which should serve as a wakeup call that fan communities are producing work that demands attention.
Creators who are native to these platforms understand this dynamic differently.
If gaming is the new Hollywood, the stars aren’t game designers, they’re Twitch streamers. Streamers are the ones monetizing at the highest rate, and building loyal fanbases as they do it. And their creative output is inseparable from their fans — not only do they monetize directly through subscriptions and sponsorships, they also are incredibly responsive to their audience. The real-time chat is baked into Twitch as a platform, and successful streamers *need* to be responsive to their audience if they want to succeed. Frankly, it’s something that most traditional celebrities couldn’t handle.
Next-generation storytelling is going to be collaborative. Whether it starts from a canonical text that gets remixed by the community, or as a grassroots effort that gets pulled up and shaped by an artist, the line between creator and community will continue to blur. As excited as I am about immersive technologies, I think collaborative co-creation might be even bigger.
When we think back to the first quarter of the twentieth century, one of the biggest shifts, in retrospect, will be that we started consuming all of our media on computers — on devices that were capable of creating and remixing the same content we were consuming.
The line between consumer and creator has never been shorter, and we’re only at the beginning.
So what can we learn from creators on Twitch and TikTok?
First, think about your audience as a community. They’re not there waiting to receive a perfectly crafted piece of art, and interacting with them shouldn’t be handed off to your marketing team — it should be a core component of your creative process.
Second, everyone in your community is a creator, too. They may not have the polish or the resources that you do, but they have all the same passion, and the tools they have access to are getting better and better every year.
Third, it’s time to reimagine your creative process to incorporate the community that surrounds you. Tight feedback loops of sharing and responding will only make your work better, and reenforce the relationship between you and your fans.
