Evan Shapiro: The Future of the Media Industry Is the Creator

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This year, the creator economy will generate a quarter of a trillion dollars in revenue, per Goldman Sachs. By the end of this decade, the creator economy will produce a half a trillion dollars in revenue. Industry commentator Evan Shapiro believes that the future of the media industry is being driven by the creator economy and that there will be far more opportunities to make money there than in the traditional gatekeeper ecosystem.

That’s because of the industry-changing opportunity to go directly to fans and build communities of people who will pay for what an artist or creator produces.

Shapiro earns a living entirely from monetizing his work with online newsletters published on platforms like Substack, and counts himself as a creator.

He says the rest of the media industry needs to stop thinking about creators as influencers purely engaged in marketing and that the Creator Economy is driven by clicks on social media alone.

Taylor Swift and her self-produced, self-distributed Eras Tour movie, which made more than $250 million at the theatrical box office, is the poster woman for the creator economy.

Actress and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon (who built her own creative empire and sold it for $1 billion) is another. As are well-known creators Jake Paul and Trixie Mattel.

Sure, these multi-millionaires represent less than one percent of creators working in the creator economy but Shapiro points to the hundreds of thousands “making middle class livings.”

The secret, Shapiro says, is that “creator-led enterprises do not need to be massive enterprises, with tens of millions of followers to make money. Creators from an array of disciplines are able to build their own small businesses based not on impressions but cemented by their ability to monetize the love of their work from their small, passionate communities.”

YouTube series Snake Discovery, for example, is produced by the owners of a pet shop in Minneapolis. It will generate more than $125,000 from its 3,500 Patreon members alone, on top of merch (which they sell a lot of) and various other sources of income.

Shapiro argues that most creator economy gigs are not dependent on billions of clicks or tens of millions of followers. Most of the best opportunities will come from businesses like Snake Discovery, that build small but mighty, highly engaged, super passionate and loyal communities around their work.

This leads Shapiro to state, “We are at the precipice of an explosion of consumption and spending in what I call the Community Economy — a segment of media focused not on pure reach, but rather built entirely around monetizing the passions of specific audiences.”

The economic power of the media universe is shifting to the creator-led “Community Economy,” he suggests. Anyone in media who wants to make money (so, everyone…) — “even those who do not run their own creator-led businesses,” says Shapiro, “will need to learn how to ply their trades in the creator economy. Those who do will find opportunities as great or greater than those of the past gatekeeper Media era. Those who do not, will not.”

Is the industry, as Shapiro suggests, on the verge of an explosion in consumption and spending in the creator-led community economy?