Re-creating the creator economy

Everyone is a creator! Or so goes the dismissive put down of many a traditional media executive when talking about the creator economy. But regardless of what your perspective on the creator economy might be, there is no denying its meteoric rise. Perhaps what stokes the ire of some elements of traditional media is that the creator economy is evolving from being simply a talent funnel for traditional entertainment companies, into something self-contained and self-sustaining. But, for all of the positive change, there is much that is also problematic about the space. 

Harnessing aspiration at scale

First and foremost, the creator economy is a business model for the platforms and adjacent services, one that is built upon harnessing the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of large-scale creator audiences. While each of those creators individually craves success – however they might measure it – the platforms do not need the creators to find success for their respective business models to work. This is because, they monetise creators by harnessing aspiration at scale. If there are enough creators – and the pool is growing fast – a multitude of small-scale audiences are enough to drive the platforms’ strategic objectives of driving audience engagement, which, in turn, drives revenue.  What complicates matters further is the fact that creators are developing platform dependence – merely renting space on the platforms they depend upon, rarely with tenancy rights and often slave to the algorithm. It might be the creator economy, but creators fuel it rather than drive it.

Platforms are using audience as the new form of distribution

What has enabled this conflicted set of priorities to become established is the rise of platforms that use audience as the new form of distribution. Whereas traditional entertainment services, like Netflix and Spotify, license and create content to distribute to audiences, audience platforms, like TikTok and Twitch, pull their content from the audiences themselves. Even though most users consume rather than create, the creators come from their ranks. The old paradigm of license / create-distribute-audience has been replaced by audience-create-audience. If the traditional entertainment business depends on cannon balls, the creator economy trades in bullets.

Audiences are becoming creators, too, with 18% doing some form of content creation and 10% using creation tools in social platforms. Only 33% of consumers only ever purely consume content. Audiences went from lean back in the analogue era, lean in during the streaming era, and now lean through in the creator era. A growing body of creators is learning to harness this growing demand for creation, as evidenced by music creators, like Pink Panthress, Sadie Jean and Russ, canvassing input from their fanbases on TikTok.

The current surge in the creator economy is opening more doors for more creators than ever before while also bringing audiences ever closer to creation, too. But, as the number of creators grows, fandom and consumption fragment. The longer the tail, the harder it is for creators to cut through, find audiences, and build careers. Creators find themselves locked in a perpetual cycle of create / produce / perform / engage, with their host platforms demanding ever higher levels of frequency and volume of output. 

With creators’ constant fear that jumping out of the creator hamster wheel will see them disappear from the algorithm, there is a growing awareness that owning their audiences and having direct communication with them has never been more important. Yet today’s creator economy is not built this way. The rise of companies like Pico, Disciple Media and India’s ChargeBee point to the growing recognition of the ‘off-platform’ opportunity. But the majority of creators have the majority of their audiences on platforms where they are slave to the algorithm.

Owning audience is just one item on a long list of structural challenges (e.g., remuneration, discovery) that the creator economy must address if it is to transition from its current phase of undoubted opportunity, into something that can genuinely reshape and redefine the future of entertainment itself. There is both a duty of care and a window of opportunity that creator-economy companies must seize with both hands, but the second cannot be achieved without the first. That is why it is time to re-create the creator economy.

Whether you are in music, video, games, sports, or even comics, the creator economy is reshaping your business, your audience, your content, and, of course, your creators. Building upon MIDiA’s years of work in the creator economy, we have just published a landmark new report: Re-creating the creator economy. In this report, we present data, analysis and case studies of the creator economy across music, video, social, games, podcasts, sports and more, covering topics such as creator remuneration, women creators, business strategy, distribution and what independence really means.

If you are not yet a MIDiA client and would like to find out how to access this report then email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Audiomack and the coming monetization / remuneration tipping point

The music business is approaching a monetization / remuneration tipping point. Long- and mid-tail creators are fast realising that, even with the most revolutionary of changes to royalty structures, streaming is never going to deliver enough income. Streaming is a highly effective monetization tool for larger rights holders and creators but has a remuneration problem for the long- and mid-tail. Such is always the case of platform businesses (which harvest micro activity to deliver macro platform-level revenue). What is different in music is that creators are sold the dream that a) they can ‘make it’ (however they may interpret that), and b) the platforms are designed to democratise the means of distribution, and thus level the playing field. With the number of releasing artists growing by a third in 2020 alone, the remuneration problem is getting worse, not better, due to the simple arithmetic of the royalty pot growing more slowly than artists. The solution? Models that let artists build fanbases and remuneration, not audiences and monetization. Audiomack just took a step down this road. Here’s how, and why it is a smart move.

An elegantly simple, yet multi-faceted strategy

The simplicity of what Audiomack announced (‘support buttons’) belies its cleverness. The basics are, as Music Business Worldwide explained:

Fans fund artists directly by purchasing ‘support badges’ for individual song and album releases. Once a fan buys a badge, Audiomack says that their contribution “is forever memorialised” on their Audiomack profile and the artist’s individual song or album page.

This does three things simultaneously:

1. Drives artist remuneration
2. Monetizes fandom
3. Empowers fan identity

Audiomack is small, but when small can also be beautiful 

With 3% US weekly active user (WAU) penetration compared to Spotify’s 27%, Audiomack is a small but important player in the streaming world. Yet scale is beginning to look less important to many creators. Streaming services are fantastic at building audiences, but they are far less able to build fanbases, and even worse at letting artists engage with those fanbases (YouTube and Soundcloud notably excepted). Big streaming numbers might look good, but risk being little more than vanity metrics unless they are huge – especially when they do not give enough value directly back to the creator.

In many respects this is just like the old radio days. An artist might feel good about getting radio spins and that exposure may in turn have led to other things, but the actual spins themselves delivered little or nothing in terms of actual income. So, creators are compelled by inference to think of streaming as cool marketing that drives everything else. Yet, if it is just marketing, then a) what if there are other less stressful marketing alternatives, and b) should they not be putting more effort into feeding the places that drive meaningful income? If streaming drives audiences and marketing, long- and mid-tail creators need to focus their efforts on places that drive fanbases and remuneration instead. As we have previously argued, ‘middle class’ creators need niche, not scale.

Audiomack hits the middle ground by combining the benefit of streaming’s scale with a focused and super-engaged user base (Audiomack usage spikes among many important music segments, such as playlist curators, karaoke users and hip hop fans). The likely conversion rate for fans rather than just listeners will likely be higher for Audiomack WAUs than, for example, Spotify WAUs. 

You do not need NFTs to do digital collectibles

But remuneration is just half of what Audiomack is doing here. It is the fandom and fan identity play that is particularly interesting. By allowing fans to collect badges on their profiles, they become a way for those consumers to demonstrate their fandom and express their identity. This also comes at the time when the digital sphere is electrified by NFT buzz. Support badges are an illustration of how NFTs do not even need to be NFTs. Even though Audiomack WAUs are far more likely to know what NFTs and Blockchain actually are, crucially they are much more likely than average consumers to want to buy digital collectibles from their favourite artists, regardless of what the tech might be.

It is always useful to remember not to get too carried away with specific tech but instead focus on the underlying user needs. The value of collectibles of any kind is context: where you have them and who can see them. Yet, currently NFTs lack a universal home and thus their cultural impact is not maximised. Audiomack’s support badges show that digital collectibles do not need to live on the blockchain. For further proof, just take a look at the multi-billion dollar business Tencent Music Entertainment has built selling ‘social entertainment services’ (VIP gifts, badges etc.) to the users of its music apps.

Audiomack’s support buttons are not about to fix the entirety of music creator remuneration, but they do represent an important step on the journey and set a standard others should follow. 

Are rights holders missing the point with Twitch?

Twitch has apologised to its users for the growing volume of rights holder takedown notices for music used in Twitch videos. Twitch is in an awkward transitionary phase with music rights holders, not dissimilar to where YouTube was when it was acquired by Google. 14 years on from that acquisition, YouTube’s relationship with rights holders is in a better place but short of where it should be. Article 17, weaving its way between the competing lobbying efforts of rights holders and tech platforms, is just the latest mile marker on a long and winding rocky road. Twitch, like YouTube, does not fit the licensing norms of most streaming services, resulting in repeated stand offs. But just like the music industry still hasn’t grasped the full potential of YouTube, it may be making a similar mistake with Twitch.

Firstly, for sake of clarity, MIDiA firmly believes that copyrighted work should be used correctly and remunerated. We are not, in any way, suggesting that a platform should be able to use music without permission. However, the current licensing structures are:

1. Not flexible and agile enough to truly capitalise on user-generated content (UGC) music (a market which will be worth $4 billion by year end – download our major new FREE report on UGC music here)
2. YouTube and Twitch represent an opportunity to create new growth drivers, especially for artists, that can help fix the ‘broken record’

A lack of sync in sync

Let’s address the first point, well, first. Platform-native creators on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok create content so frequently they make the music industry’s volume and velocity problem look like child’s play. Usually, creators who want music in their videos have a choice: 1) get sync licenses, 2) get library music, 3) use music without permission and get taken down or demonetised. 

The problem with option one is that sync clearance is a lengthy process that can take weeks and cost a lot. Not a great fit for creators who create and upload videos the same day. Companies like Lickd are trying to fix this with catalogues of pre-cleared music, but the industry as a whole is moving too slowly. For the record, MIDiA’s preferred solution is for platforms securing large ‘sandboxes’ of pre-cleared tracks for creators and developers to work with. An early example of this is the NFL making all of its soundtracks available for creators on a Synchtank powered site.Unless music rights holders want to cede the growth in the music UGC space (which will be worth $5.9 billion by end 2022) to library music companies, they need to put alternative approaches at the core of their licensing strategy, not simply pursue them as interesting ‘edge’ experiments.

Going beyond the stream

However, the biggest music industry opportunity is not licensing music. It is monetising fandom. The #brokenrecord debate has shone a light on how streaming’s scale benefits do not trickle down at a sufficient rate to creators. Artists compete for tiny bits of highly valuable ‘real estate’ – playlists, artist profiles etc – but most often do not get enough to earn a living. While efforts like user-centric licensing and better songwriter rates will help, they will not change the underlying fundamentals of streaming economics. The counter argument is that scale will change everything, but:

• Average revenue per user (ARPU) is falling. Spotify’s premium ARPU fell 34% between Q1 2016 and Q3 2020, a 34% decline
• Streaming growth is slowing in developed markets
• Consumption is slowing – last quarter Spotify reported an increase in consumption hours to pre-COVID levels but as there were 49 million new monthly active users (MAUs) compared to pre-COVID this implies a reduction in hours per user
• Emerging markets are growing but a) ARPU is lower and b) domestic repertoire will drive most of the long-term consumption – so this means only a small uplift for Western creators

Before live stopped, streaming existed in a mutually beneficial ecosystem, giving artists more fans for concerts and merch. Now that live is out of the equation, streaming isn’t enough. 

This is where platforms like YouTube and Twitch can come in. They enable creators to build loyal fanbases of which they can monetise the loyal core to build sustainable careers. The idea of ‘1,000 True Fans’ was first put forward years ago by Kevin Kelly but now the dynamics of social platforms have made this a realistic possibility for any creator. Nevertheless, music artists are still way off the pace. 

Micro-communities

Twitch and YouTube enable creators to build (often small) loyal fanbases that can generate them income that far exceeds what artists get from streaming. MIDiA terms this dynamic ‘micro-communities’ and we think it will be one of the trends that will shape the music business in 2021 and beyond. As part of our creator tools research we will be exploring how platforms like Splice and Landr will be able to build their own artist-fan communities that can be as valuable to artists as Bandcamp is to many already. 

Streaming created a superstar economy where even within the non-superstars, superstars exist. For example, Tunecore states it has ‘thousands’ of artists that make more than $100,000 a year. A simple bit of arithmetic shows that this means the remainder make less than $100.

Micro-communities represent an opportunity for artists to fill the income gap that streaming leaves without live in the mix. This probably does not reflect a direct revenue opportunity for rights holders – indeed, that would be missing the point. Instead, they can ensure those platforms are supported to empower artist monetisation without speed bumps. Why? Quite simply, rights holders have a model that works for them (streaming), so now they need to support a model that works for their creators so that they can in turn continue to support the streaming model that works for rights holders. 

If the industry does not support this new virtuous circle ecosystem, then it could bring the streaming model crashing down due to creator discontent. 

Just What Is BandLab Up To With Rolling Stone?

News emerged yesterday that Singapore music creator community and collaboration platform BandLab bought a 49% stake in Rolling Stone. For those unfamiliar with BandLab this might have prompted a ‘What? Who? Why?’ moment. BandLab is the creation of Kuok Meng Ru, the son of one of Singapore’s most wealthy and successful businessmen Kuok Khoon Hong who founded and built the world’s largest Palm Oil business. Unsurprisingly the father has backed the son in his venture and so, yes, Rolling Stone has been bought, albeit indirectly, with Palm Oil money. But the question remains, why?

Kuok Meng Ru has a bold vision and ambition for Bandlab, he sees this as an opportunity to create a full stack music company from the ground up, built around the next generation of creators rather than trying to carve a slice out of the incumbent industry. There is no doubt that the music industries are a complex web of inefficiencies and that if they were being redesigned tomorrow that they would be a far more streamlined, effective and transparent proposition. This on the surface makes the music business ripe for disruption. But unlike fully open markets like the smartphone business, the music industries are interwoven with complications such as de facto monopolies, statutory licensing frameworks and global networks of reciprocal agreements. All of which shelter the business from the full impact of disruption. Change happens slowly in the music business.

BandLab Is Built By Music Super Fans For Music Super Fans

None of this means that change is not happening and that the rate of change will not continue to happen. But the odds are heavily stacked against a single entity aiming to unseat the marketplace with an end-to-end creation-to-marketing-to-distribution solution such as BandLab. Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of BandLab. As a life long musician and as a music super fan, it is exactly the sort of platform I would probably build i.e. a musician’s platform for musicians. But the harsh reality is that the majority of consumers (67%) are casual fans and less than 5% create music and upload it to the web. BandLab is a platform full of cool creator tools and community features. It nurtures a creative feedback loop between fans and artists. In fact, it adheres neatly to the principles of Agile Music that I laid out in 2011 and it fits in with the zeitgeist of the death of the creative full stop. But a mainstream proposition it is not. At least not in its current guise.

Kuok Meng Ru wants BandLab to do to music what Flickr did to photo sharing and creativity. But there are many, many more people that create and share photos than create and share music. Soundcloud is arguably the single biggest cloud creator platform, yet the vast majority of its growth happened when it cowed to investor pressure and pursued the listener rather than the creator. As I said last month in a Bloomberg article about BandLab, There’s always going to be far bigger audience of listeners than there is of creators. And unfortunately the vast majority of aspiring creators are not good enough, nor ever will be, to amass sizeable audiences. If BandLab decide to start licensing in established repertoire, or acquiring it unofficially (Soundcloud style), then it can build audience at scale.

Where Next For Rolling Stone?

So, back to the title of this post, just what is BandLab up to with Rolling Stone? Rolling Stone and BandLab plan to open a Singapore subsidiary focused on live events and marketing. For Rolling Stone this means diversifying revenue and growing its South East Asia footprint. For BandLab this means leveraging Rolling Stone’s brand as a short cut to credibility and extending the promotional capabilities of its creator platform. Who will do best out of this deal is hard to say. It’s a tough time to be a news publisher and so when big money comes calling it is hard to say no. But whether this is the right deal for Rolling Stone is another question entirely. My money is on Rolling Stone being sold on in reduced circumstances some time within the next 3 years (5 at the outside) when BandLab either gets bought or refocuses its ambitions.