The price of payments

Platforms are now scrambling to compete as “creator platforms”, with a lot of effort poured into ensuring that content can generate real economic value for creators, either by paying for it themselves or by helping the audience pay.

Today almost all creative work is digitized and essentially rented — lowering payouts, devaluing work, and redirecting the lion’s share of rewards to the platforms hosting the work rather than the creators themselves.

Behind these conversations is a fundamental change of the digital age that applies to essentially every creative field: in the past, consumers bought and collected physical editions of creative work, creating a direct value exchange between fans, artists, and producers. Today almost all creative work is digitized and essentially rented — lowering

... See more