We used to have a "pay for what you consume" economy and I don't see why that suddenly can't exist anymore.
Tell me how many of these content creators are exclusively supported by Patreon.
Also, ask any of these content creators (that supposedly are able to be sustained by Patreon) if they would be willing to move away from YouTube and into another platform like Peertube.
None of them will. Some of them won't mind creating the Peertube channel and distributing their content as well, but no one will leave YouTube, because they all know that YouTube is still the platform that enables all the economy to exist.
I'm not saying this because I don't like the Patreon model. Quite the opposite. [0]. But it's hard to argue with numbers, and the numbers are just not in favor of this idea that a whole industry can be supported by a minority of enthusiasts.
[0] : https://blog.communick.com/communick-collective-a-zero-commi...
LGR is another one that comes to mind that I think barely ever does sponsors and makes most of his income from Patreon. I’m sure there are many others as well.
Not a rhetorical question. If there is anyone that is not dependent of YouTube's revenue and already amassed enough supporters, is there anything holding them to Google?
They’re both techie enough to set one up, so I feel like the best approach if they were interested would be to set it up as a mirror and see how it goes with traffic. That way they’re at least not beholden 100% to YouTube for their livelihood.
Another thing that just came to mind, how is discoverability of PeerTube in search results compared to YouTube? I wouldn’t be surprised if Google promotes YouTube links over PeerTube in search results which could also have a big impact.
"Hey everyone, big update! I'm leaving YouTube and moving my channel to PeerTube. You can follow me at @myusername@myserver. My last video on this channel will be a quick tutorial showing how PeerTube works and why it's better than YouTube. See you there soon!"
> If they’re not showing up in people’s recommended they’ll have significantly lower viewership which could ultimately affect their Patreon income over time.
Why? If they already have a substantial amount of patrons, surely they are not worried about pleasing the algorithm. They can live off solely off their fans who support them directly. Right? Right??
> I feel like the best approach if they were interested would be to set it up as a mirror and see how it goes with traffic.
Ahem, which part of "Some of them won't mind creating the Peertube channel and distributing their content as well, but no one will leave YouTube, because they all know that YouTube is still the platform that enables all the economy to exist." did you miss in my original comment?
Sorry about the caustic response. I'm just tired of wishful thinking passing for grounded reasoning. When/if you find me one creator brave enough to put moral principles over their own livelihood by leaving YouTube, then I'll accept that Patreon alone is a viable alternative. Until then, it's just signaling and posturing.
> We used to have a "pay for what you consume" economy and I don't see why that suddenly can't exist anymore.
Piracy and entitlement.
The nice thing about this era for a creator is that having 10,000 dedicated fans is enough.
Dedicated fans will happily monetize on you. 100,000 low engagement fans won't make nearly as much.
But the absolute overwhelming majority of content creators are putting all the work with the hopes of achieving that scale of success.
> The nice thing about this era for a creator is that having 10,000 dedicated fans is enough.
For one creator, yes. For a whole economy that can bring billions of dollars per year, you will need to have a much larger consumer base, and you'll need to have a substantial part of them willing to support a lot more than a handful of creators.