This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on September 27, 2021 - October 3, 2021

Anyone can be a creator; all you need is an internet connection and the right platform. You can earn money through content creation, for example, through business partnerships, brand sponsorships and community donations. Commonly used platforms are YouTube for videos, Twitch for streaming, Spotify for audio, and Substack or Medium for blogging and writing. 

Over the last three years, the Alphabet-owned video platform has paid creators, artists and media companies a total of more than US$30 billion (RM124.5 billion). Revenues paid by the platform are derived from ads or royalty payments. 

It was disclosed, in a letter from its CEO Susan Wojcicki, that there was a 25% increase in watchtime worldwide in the first quarter of 2020. YouTube Gaming also broke its personal record last year with more than 100 billion hours of gaming content watched.

“From artists performing in their living rooms to churches moving their services online, more than half a million channels live-streamed for the first time in 2020,” the letter adds. Mainstream artists such as Miley Cyrus also made YouTube their virtual venue.

Creators are building the next-generation media companies that affect the economy’s overall success, Wojcicki’s letter continues. 

According to an Oxford Economics report, YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed about US$16 billion to US gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, supporting the equivalent of 345,000 full-time jobs. 

In 2019, the UK saw a contribution of about £1.4 billion to its GDP whereas France saw an estimated €515 million added to its GDP, the report adds.

Patreon is essentially a membership platform where creators can charge for their content, be it music, art, podcasts or even a service. The platform aims to help creators develop a recurring income stream, take back creative control and build a direct connection with their audience. 

Patreon CEO Jack Conte said recently that the next 10 years would be the “decade of the creator”.

In a blog post, Conte says there are now more than 200,000 creators on the platform who have collectively earned US$2 billion directly from their fans. “Creators from all over the world will be earning at least US$1 billion a year on Patreon.”

The video platform TikTok launched its own Creator Fund of US$200 million in the US last year “to help support ambitious creators”. The fund is expected to grow over time.

Lately, however, the platform has been under fire. 

The #BlackTikTokStrike tag, with more than seven million views, was a call-out to the co-opting of dances, memes and slang popularised by Black creators by non-Black creators, as reported by Vox. Essentially, trends that were created by the Black community would not be appropriately credited.

The biggest example would be Charli D’Amelio, the most followed person on the platform now and a global star known for a dance called Renegade. Actually, the dance’s real choreographer is Jalaiah Harmon, who remained largely undiscovered with no acknowledgment until she was profiled by The New York Times.

Even social media platforms such as Twitter are thinking of ways to monetise the content on their sites.

The company has floated teasers in the past about the possibility of new features such as Super Follows. This would allow users to pay creators for additional or exclusive Tweets and newsletters.

“We’re rethinking incentives and exploring solutions to provide monetary incentive models for creators and publishers to be directly supported by their audience,” the company said in a presentation.

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