If We Change the World for Creators... Creators Will Change the World
Web3 and the Creator Economy Will Spark the Biggest Shift in the Entertainment Industry's Balance of Power in a Century... and It's About Damn Time
I have been in the entertainment industry, in one form or another, for the entirety of my professional career. A history, it pains me to say, that is best counted in decades — not years.
To say my journey through the industry has been a love/hate relationship, would be an understatement. From the moment I signed my first publishing deal to become a “professional songwriter” in Nashville, to becoming a wildly unsuccessful major-label recording artist… to being a label owner, a magazine publisher, a digital music entrepreneur and, more recently, a fledgling film and TV producer — I have seen (firsthand) what the entertainment industry truly is: a centralized system specifically designed to exploit the creator’s output, take the majority of the rewards and suppress their artistic and business independence.
Yet, my love for creators and their work has never wavered. Nor has my desire to find ways to shift the balance of power in the industry.
Because what creators do is vitally important.
From the way we dress, to the way we dance, to the way we see the world — creators are the heartbeat of our culture. But, the truth is, that heartbeat is fading. Not because there are not enough creators. Not because their creations are not important or valuable. No, it is because if a creator wants their art to be seen or heard, they MUST hand their work over to a corrupt, dying industry. And that industry, as it flails and gasps, is taking creators down with them.
“Entertainment, really, is a dying industry.” - Ashton Kutcher
The Downward Spiral
For a century the entertainment industry has told consumers what to watch and who to listen to. They have dictated the format and they have even dictated the time, location and price of consuming those works.
This has allowed the industry to build a diabolical construct which values the ability to market and distribute entertainment, over the ability to create it. Their power comes from controlling the primary means of marketing and sales. It’s simple: whoever collects the money, dictates the economics.
“This fucking industry is a monster.” - Dave Chappelle
However, the industry’s stranglehold is loosening. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, shifts in consumer behaviors were dramatically impacting the industry’s ability to effectively market and monetize entertainment projects. Sales of movie theater tickets were plummeting, downloads of music had collapsed, even revenue from Broadway and concerts were seeing frightening declines. The industry’s only choice was to increase their marketing budgets in an attempt to bring people back to their centralized entertainment platforms. Alas, consumers did not respond to those traditional forms of marketing. No matter how much was spent, the trajectory continued downward. The pandemic only served to push the industry the rest of the way down the hill.
Still consumers want entertainment. Maybe more than ever. The problem is not consumer demand, it is that consumers are less willing to live within the “monetized, walled gardens” the industry controls.
According to Deloitte, shifts in consumer behaviors and a glut of subscription choices is likely to lead to as many as 150 million subscribers cancelling in 2022. Opting instead to “dip in and dip out” of services based on projects they want to see… a potentially catastrophic trend for SVOD services whose share prices are dictated by subscriber growth - and an even greater threat to the producers and studios that have become reliant on big budget projects paid for by the streaming giants.
Simultaneously, the declines in movie theater and concert ticket sales are accelerating in a way that points to the need for a massive consumer re-alignment.
This presents a unique opportunity in the marketplace for the creators and artists themselves to take control of their own creations. A creator’s revolution is in the air.
Change is Coming
“Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.” - Marshall McLuhan
Those of us that believe creators have the unique ability (perhaps, even, a responsibility) to move both culture and business into the future, must do all we can to create an environment where that movement can take hold.
Web3 and the Creator Economy embody this vision. But it is still early and the hill is steep. Decentralizing systems that generate massive profits simply by being centralized — and bringing transparency to industries whose profit margins depend on what they hide, won’t be easy. But if art is an “early warning system”, as McLuhan said, then the signs are clear. Change is coming and it’s time to get to work.
Because if we change the world for creators… creators will change the world.
This is a fascinating topic to me. I have only recently begun to wrap my head around NFT's and Web3. On my TIkTok and IG, I recently hinted at the idea that I may be making an NFT drop and I was received a deluge of negative comments talking about how terrible NFT's are. I was quite surprised... I'm brand new at even knowing what it is, but my fan base was unimpressed. Can't wait to learn more. thanks. Hal