In the Age of the profusion of contents, the creator economy must be reinvented

It’s been a decade since social media explode. Everybody consumes content and everybody creates content. For more and more people, creating is not just a hobby, it has become a real economy. This is what the creator economy is about: financing content on the internet.

200M creators in the world today

According to Linktree, there are 200 million creators, or in other words: 200M individuals who use their influence, creativity, or skills to aggregate and monetize their audience.

Other reports talk about 50 million people considering themselves creators. Those different reports prove how difficult it is for us to define who exactly is a creator or a consumer today, as they are often both…

There are different types of platforms:

• where content is created for the consumers (such as Netflix)
• where content is created by the consumers (such as TikTok or Youtube). This second type offers an infinite number of contents, as nobody needs permission to publish.

Before the Internet, only certified creators could present their work. Today, everybody can become a creator, sometimes even without knowing it!

And this number of creators is growing every day, especially since the Covid crisis when lots of people had nothing but time to create. In 2022, 1/4 of the 15–25yo population says wanting to become a creator.

Therefore, the competition is huge…

100k music tracks are uploaded every day

An abundance of creators = an abundance of contents

The number of creators is growing very fast, and so is the number of contents.

All over the world in 2022:

• YouTube has 38 million active channels
• We can find 2.4 million podcasts
• Apple Music announced having more than 100M tracks on their catalog (+130% in less than 2 years)
• 100k music tracks are uploaded every day on streaming services (+70% in 18 months!)

The figures are vertiginous.

An ocean of creations where standing out is very complicated

The more creators, the more contents, the more fragmented consumption, and the more fragmented communities.

To organize this plentiful offer, algorithms have to select and create an unfortunate chasm between the few who perform very well and earn a lot, and all the others.

This leads to a perpetual race for the top, even for the ones who are already there because their place is always uncertain, as it depends on the frequency and regularity of their publications.

Because of the algorithms based on success, creators now understand better than ever the importance of engaging their own community and keeping it active.

The creators are separated into two groups:

• Top Creators (1%): earning enough money to produce their creations, work with a team, live, and even more. They often diversify different types of productions on different platforms, some free to gain an audience and some under a paywall to earn.
• Long-tail Creators (99%): earning few with a high churning rate. Often having another job besides their artistic work. Because of the constant selection, it’s very difficult for them to climb to the top but when they succeed, they scale fast.

Few examples of the gap between them this year:

• 50% of revenue was made by the top 1% of creators on Twitch
• 90% of revenue was made by the top 3% of creators on Youtube
• 3% of revenue was made by the top 1.2% of creators on Spotify

The revenue-sharing system is surely a real step toward the democratization of creation. The revenue-sharing on Youtube is so strong that creators often try to invite there their audience from Instagram or TikTok.

Yet, the creator economy is facing a real transformation of value challenge.

This economy must evolve

The creator economy’s meteoric rise is amazing. The value created by those million artists is hard to imagine, it’s tremendous. For now, this economy is estimated at 100 billion in the US.

The volume of created value is so great with so many opportunities: this economy needs to adapt to its dimensions.

For the next few years, the creator economy has many challenges to protect and guide creators: discoverability, audiences, and remuneration. All the creators and artists must be supported in a sustainable economy. We need to help people grow their own businesses and pursue their passion.

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