There Is Nothing for You Here

THERE IS NOTHING FOR YOU HERE

“YouTuber” and “Influencer” are now the top, dream careers… Do you remember this? Bit of news? People were absolutely livid about it: “Kids these days just want to get viral off TikToks. When I was a boy all we ever wanted was to work in an obviously unnecessary temporary office job.” Anyway it’s not even really true, that “fact” came from a survey that Lego did of some particularly annoying children.

Anyway. I think that stuff gets people going because a lot of people have some sort of creative, social-media-based, side-hustle, that they would love to metabolise into an income source.

And the tech companies agree, they say “Now is a better time than ever for creators. Anyone can create, everyone has the tools, anyone can build a fanbase of thousands, you don’t need a label or a studio, a publisher, a distributor, the old gatekeepers are gone. You can do it yourself.”

Which is all true, the only bit they fail to mention is that there is no alternative and you cannot make a living doing it.

Even to the biggest musicians in the world streaming royalties are a joke, they’re forced into barely breaking even on tours. Bonafide authors are selling better than ever before, at a loss. I’ve yet to claim the $2 of ad revenue that I’ve built up here. You cannot make a living from creating.

I’m not bitter, I’m not saying “where’s my money.” I think it’s a larger issue, and I think it applies to everyone, because at the very least you have to consume this shit. So actually, it’s very big of me. Er– It’s not that anyone making anything should be compensated for it, obviously if you’re making garbage that no-one ever wants to see, you can’t expect a return on that.

And to get good at making stuff, you really have to devote yourself to it. It takes training and time, and you don’t get paid for that, so you’re gonna have to live kinda poorly. And then actually making something good takes more time, more time than you’d think. I’ve been working on this series on and off since last year and it’s borderline.

But y’know. We’ve had those filters for about a century and they kind of work. The only problem now is that you never become viable. You train up, you make good shit. You can make content that’s valuable to hundreds of thousands of people and still not make a living.

What you can make a living from, is branding. If you have enough social capital to sell merch or crowdfund or endorse a product or act as a draw for what’s left of traditional media. You can make money doing that. And if you’re impossibly lucky, you can support yourself. But your work is still worthless.

Because content has been devalued.

The tech industry’s built on this dominance business model: They make a platform, scoop up users, then make sure they’re the only platform available for those users, by intentionally operating at a loss and driving competition into the ground, hemorrhaging money for as long as possible, buying up the competition, and therefore, be the only option left standing — And they’ve won.

Now the streaming business model is a subset of the dominance business model that is particularly popular in tech right now. We don’t have a ton of time to get into this, it’s a pretty big topic to cover, but basically: The goal for the tech companies is not to make money. It’s to dominate a space, hemorrhaging money and scooping up all the users until they’re the last man standing.

Then, the theory goes, they lower their costs, jack up the prices, and because the users have nowhere else to go they’ll make super-profits. These people are fucking morons. 

So Spotify loses $2.5 million every day, Netflix raised $16 billion in debt. And this isn’t quite as problem-free as you might imagine. As I’ve mentioned before, it puts them in the business of creating a technical and cultural stagnation. And here, it devalues content.

Like, Spotify deliberately set their subscription prices unjustifiably low, in a bid to kill all competition. Now. All of those subscriptions go into a pool, and then Spotify pays royalties out of that, divided up by the percentage each artist got out of the total monthly streams, and then the labels pay the artists their percentage of that percentage. Which obviously, ends up being jack shit… Directly decreasing the value of music.

But it’s not all roses. Spotify’s filled with fraud, you can list a fake song, and then get a botnet of dummy accounts to stream it. And at scale that’s a low-risk way of generating money. Or even actual musicians will make generic ambient music, under different names, to get onto the Spotify cafe playlists, which gets more streams and revenue than their actual work. And Spotify ignores all this, because it makes their numbers look better. But because the revenue is pooled and then paid out, it’s eating away at the percentage that artists are getting.

And they were able to get away with this by saying to the labels, “If you don’t let us do this, everyone will just steal your music. So, we’ll give you a few cents, plus a centralised promotional platform.” And instead of negotiating for music to have value, the labels accepted this, and made deals for favourable playlist placement, promotional space, and chart listings.

And these deals are obviously very unfair, especially to indie artists, who don’t benefit from them at all, and are often actively fucked over by them. 

A recent one was– Drake’s last album was ad-free. Which, because of the way royalties are paid out, means every non-Drake artist paid for that album. A fraction of a fraction of a cent each. Like the plot of Office Space, or Superman III… Unless he wasn’t getting paid from it, and also somehow calculated and supplemented the missing ad revenue, but since that’s not possible, and mentioning that would have made him look really good, I think we have to assume he didn’t.

But the idea is, yes this system is exploitative now, but eventually it’ll level out. At some point, they’ll have to turn a profit. So the content will slow down, and their prices will go up. And, in spite of that, subscriptions will keep rising… Which is a charming idea. 

Netflix has just started trying to do that, and for the first time ever, they’re losing subscribers

[But… The first time Netflix turned a profit was at the start of Coronavirus, when they had to completely stop production. And now they’re spending less, producing less, they’re saying after this year they’ll stop borrowing. But here’s a crazy coincidence: they’re experiencing unprecedented decline in their subscriber gain.]

Instead of “eventually levelling out,” what really happens is these companies tank an industry and then die out.

They’ve been throwing money at the wall to try and ruin all competition. But what’s actually happened is their competition has changed. They’re now competing against loss-leaders for companies that are much bigger. Companies that don’t care if they lose money on streaming, because it’s promotion for their brand. Netflix or Spotify aren’t going to beat Amazon or Apple. They’ve just driven culture into the ground for no fucking reason at all.

Not that everything’s bad now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that movies used to be better. I want to be clear on that, mostly for optics reasons, because that is what I believe– But just… The general trend is towards the narrowing parameters of commercialism.

“But Caleb, surely there’s all these independent content creators now. I’m watching this on YouTube and this is the best thing I’ve ever seen.” Oh thanks, that’s such a great point, let me address that…

Since I’ve been doing these videos, people want to know: how much do I make? Which is interesting. People don’t normally ask you that about most jobs. But I think ‘YouTuber’ is seen as attainable, easy money. Right now you’re thinking “I could do this” and you’re right about that. But this is worth fuck all.

Online advertising is measured in “cost per mille,” which is short for cost per thousand. And it’s all over the place depending on what you’re doing, this will be worth maybe $3 USD, because not a lot of advertising is gonna go nicely with this. But if I were doing like, crypto investment advice, it’d be worth maybe $10-11, because demographically the people who watch that kind of thing are fucking rubes.

But the all-time average is $5. $5 for 1000 views. Cool. That’s $5000 for a million, or some bits of a cent per person. Then half of that goes to YouTube or Amazon for streamers, which isn’t so bad, as long as you’re getting hundreds of thousands of views every week and you never stop and you never get copyright claimed, and you never get demonetized, and no-one’s heard of uBlock Origin… You’re potentially sitting above the poverty line. You still haven’t reached a minimum wage, but it’s good to have goals.

You have to get viewing figures comparable to actual entire network TV show to make enough money for 1 person. If I were getting a million views a month on this channel, I’d be lucky to get more than $10,000 a year in ad revenue.

But it’s not like Google are particularly scamming creators there, online advertising is just genuinely that worthless.

And one of the content creators affected by this, had a bit of his parents’ money, so he decided to solve the exploitation of creators in the online media landscape, by combining social media with a payment processor.

Patreon, where your audience pays you directly by subscription. And they take a more sensible cut, usually around 14-30%.

Of course the problem with Patreon is it adds work. In addition to whatever you’re trying to fund, you now have to make side-content. And the general trend is that setting up a Patreon marks a move from doing something on the side, to making it work as a full time thing.

Now, out of all the creators earning on that platform, less than 1% make a livable wage. And that’s not including people not earning on the platform… The vast majority who make $0. They’re generally absent from all statistics, because maybe they just fully set up their account as a joke or something.

But Patreon itself is doing well, they’re currently valued at $4 billion. And pandemic unemployment greatly increased their creator base, as people ran out of options. And they’ve done a good job of marketing themselves: “Look at these 5 people who are successful! (darkly) But don’t look at the 99% who fail out of it…”

But across the board in new media, you will not profit unless you super-profit. And to be in with a shot you have to be producing content full-time. YouTube basically requires a video a day, Twitch streaming is every day. You don’t need to make something good, you need to make something now. You have to make massive amounts of low-effort content constantly, or you’re not in with a shot.

Or, you could make this which is of no value to anyone and has no financial future.

But it’s typical for this full-time, losing money, throwing content into the void, to go on for years before you see any return. A successful Kickstarter requires at least 3 years of full-time brand-building up front. The only hope for a fully independent artist on Spotify is that somehow, you have a statistically impossible viral hit. 

And who can even afford to attempt that. It’s like quitting your job to become a full-time lottery ticket purchaser, only riskier.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not insanely bitter — am I? Oh, no yeah hang on– yeah I am. I am insanely bitter.

But the tech platforms aren’t the only option, there’s still traditional media. Dying traditional media. Where it’s standard to do multiple unpaid internships. The basic logic there is it’s easier to turn a profit if they use slave labour.

People who don’t have a mass of generational wealth find these internships exploitative and difficult, they’re often unable to support themselves through it so they have to leave the creative industries entirely. Those who do last, often don’t see it pay off with any meaningful connections, creative freedom, or careers.

Conversely, people who do have a bunch of money going in find these internships to be empowering creative opportunities which pay off big-time.

And this is the root of it I think. The marketplace has been destroyed by unregulated tech companies, and growing inequality destroyed the workforce. You can’t make money from making stuff, so you have to have the money to throw it away. 

Which means no one can afford to create. While the richest kids in the world become New York improv comics. Imagine the shame of that. Bred for power and the best you can do is not even a doing a joke.

We’ve forgotten that creativity has value. Genuine, measurable, long-term, economic value, and something more… We’ve let the tech platforms become the alternative to the arts. So now, instead of actual art made by professional artists, you get kind-of okay content made by your kind-of friends.

Now part of that is the literal public funding slipping away, and consolidating around existing large companies, instead of kickstarting a new generation.

If you’re an American and your watching this going “he’s a fucking idiot this is the stupidest socialist wank I’ve ever heard.” Don’t worry, I’m not saying that public funding is the solution.

But, it’s been done and it has its place. The BBC, NZ on air, Soviet cinema, all notably made really good stuff that you just couldn’t make in the market. Sure, what gets made is arbitrarily picked by people in power, but it at least allows the creation of things that wouldn’t be commercially viable.

Here in New Zealand there does seem to be widespread support for increasing arts funding, I think largely because our culture is increasingly dominated by the United States and the Americans are a disgusting, shameful, people. 

It wasn’t always this way, we used to import most of our culture from the U.K. The British were a bit of a cultural juggernaut in the 60’s. Partly because of their generous arts funding, but also their generous welfare state.

Essentially every British band you can name started out on welfare. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, through to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, UB-40’s named after the unemployment form. Because artists need time and training to get good, and time to make stuff, and they just need to sort of subsist for a while.

Then over time, they stopped funding their arts and humanities, until, by the late 90’s, it’s gone. And you can see it happen in the transition from bands to solo acts. Big-budget movies to low-budget. And in a win for everybody[?], experimental theatre to stand-up comedy. But basically artists were still able to support themselves, but their content had to have lower overheads.

Then, at the start of the noughties they drastically changed their welfare system, from supporting people out of work, to pushing people into work. Now, this system has proven to be more expensive, they never see the same long-term returns on it, and it just barely juices the unemployment statistics by forcing people into temporary work and encouraging suicide. But it is the widely accepted system now. Across the world. As we follow in the footsteps of the Americans who, as I’ve mentioned, are a disgusting, vile people. Er–

But at the same time as doing this, they wanted to repeat the past. They wanted their pop culture boom back. So at the same time as cutting welfare, they increased arts funding, and widened the parameters of creative work to include everything from software development to advertising.

Now shockingly, that didn’t work. It didn’t lead to a mass resurgence of their pop culture. What it did was create a world-class marketing industry fueled by interns. Who would’ve thought. Giving rich kids start-up funding doesn’t create good art.

So they didn’t get The Beatles 2 because the next John Lennon was too busy bagging someone’s groceries. For no reason. You can bag your own groceries. 

So yes, we live in a world where anyone can download FL studio, cameras are cheaper than ever, you can build a fanbase of thousands from your bedroom. But for a creative to make a living, it’s less attainable than ever. If you want to do anything creative, it’s whoever can sustain the losses for the longest wins.

[and that breeds stagnation]

[Don’t get me wrong, I’m not insanely bitter — am I? Oh, no yeah hang on– yeah I am. I am insanely bitter.]

Maybe it’s controversial but I think everyone deserves a roof over their head, and food. Whether they’re working on something worthless, just of no value to anyone, or making art. 

[And this is barely about content creators anymore, but if you want a better world, it starts with a more equitable society. So, if you could get to work on that… ]

The floor falls away — Caleb drops into the abyss.