Live Digital

Short-form is critical for building audience, but long-form is critical for building engagement.  In the context of today’s revenue share formulas and sponsorship models, high-quality fan engagement will be the key to long-term success as the industry continues to evolve.

The scale of differentiation necessary to produce an MVIP has historically been determined based on the past behavior and preferences of demand.  People liked to consume IP via books, movies, TV shows and comic books, not via an outline, or a few chapters, or a single picture.

Now, however, the disruption of traditional IP distributors via streaming and social media networks allows IP owner to have more flexibility in terms of production and distribution.

Lil Nas X, for example, is able to distribute his music (his IP) instantly by publishing a song (‘Old Town Road’) on SoundCloud and have it explode in popularity via remixing and UGC on TikTok. Previously, he would have had to wait to be discovered by a record label, who then would decide when to release his music and in what form factor — most likely as an album rather than a single.

What was particularly fascinating, though, was that being in a live audience in the theatre (red line) led to higher highs and lower lows than watching in a small group (yellow line) in my lab. It was even more reduced when people watched the movie alone (brown line) in my lab. In fact, because of the scaling it looks like they flatlined but I can assure you, the peaks and troughs are present, they are simply greatly reduced in size.

Collective effervescence led to emotional enhancement, making the live performance with a big audience that much more impactful.

More broadly, many OnlyFans creators now treat sites such as Reddit, Imgur, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter as “front doors” for OnlyFans customer acquisition.

Also: [As an aside: OnlyFans 80% revenue share rate is practical only because it does not offer App Store-based billing (which would take 15-30% of revenue off the top). In fact, neither iOS App Store nor Google’s Play Store even allow for pornographic apps. Usually, such a ban would destroy a media platforms’ business model, but browser-based experiences are fine for viewing photos and videos and sending messages (in contrast, most games can’t even run). And while apps tend to offer better user experiences and far simpler payment processes, most OnlyFans customers aren’t dissuaded by the need to use a browser, nor the extra hoops involved in manually entering a credit card number (again, this is less true for casual games or ecommerce).]

To minimize churn, many benefits (e.g. back catalogues) are only available to long-running subscribers.