This is an incredibly insightful talk. If youre a creative, this is highly recommended.



Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Web with Jack Conte

Patreon CEO Jack Conte explains how the current internet algorithms are killing the traditional "follower" for creators, threatening their creative freedom and livelihoods. The internet started as a platform that democratized creative distribution. You could upload your work to platforms like YouTube and immediately have it accessible to millions of people. After that came the "subscribe" button, which enabled creators to go beyond reach. Now they could build a following and find their true fans that would support them to build a creative business. But with the rise of platform-focused algorithms (Facebook's ranking, TikTok's "for you" curation), creators cannot reach their following and true fans. This shift has had a devastating impact on creators' creativity and ability to support themselves doing what they love. He advocates for the new spaces on the internet (like Patreon) where creators can always connect with their communities, create what they want, and control their own destinies.

 

Still watching, but by the description you put, it is really what is happening - if you do not become extremely popular in 1 year or 2 (and this means conforming your work to the demands of the broader public, which in great part are oriented by the bigger players in the industry), even your most enthusiastic followers and friends will forget you as an artist. Most people nowadays do not care for art: they care for FAME (and entertainment). And this is a cultural/social byproduct of living in a spectacle society where everything is a disposable and valueless merchandise and art is no different.

 

Last edited: Mar 22, 2024

Thanks for posting this Aymat and couldn't agree more with you, JennyBlack. As an artist I've been making music for many years now - played many shows and released lots of music. But right now, I have no answers as to how to reach possible fans. I think there was a time when you could pretty much let the music speak for itself but these days the music seems to often be the last consideration. The whole proliferation of "how to make music" videos on youtube doesn't help either. There's no mystery or magic anymore and you have to look really hard to find a true underground, at least where I live. I'm interested to watch the video and see how he recommends reaching people...

 

The same here. And I totally agree: music is not what most people consider first (today only the very few people (and fewer and fewer) who are music enthusiasts will really appreciate it without other bells and whistles), but your looks, a little funny dancing, etc. Music in general has become the backgound for other things related to commercial entertainment - for most, a music event is a place for you to do other things, take pictures and post on social media so everyone knows you were there.

 

Last edited: Mar 22, 2024

I grew up with the internet, from the "static" days 56k modem beeps, to the actual era. And we've been "gently" lured (via huge companys runned at loss backed by hard investors money ) from being in an open field with almost total freedom of movement to narrow servitude platforms. We, as creators, have become servants of the techlord's feud. And now that the techlords have us all pinned down on their fields and any freedom of movement that we could have has become pointless, they milk us dry and we are forced to work under their conditions and for their interest and gains. Patreon's CEO is just the nice "techlord" that want you to labor in his land, cause is a better lord than the other techlords and he's doing this shit for the sake of Humanity well being. And I hope in vane that he and his shareholders can make this thing a little better place but c'mon... Every new internet era has being worst than the previous one: Patreon is kicking out creators based on moral puritanic values. that includes NSFW art. Don't paint boobs or cunts, that's groose. Gumroad is doing it as well. The good information is now gatekeeped and scattered though Discord's channels fueling their datasets to become AI ovelords pretty soon, just like reddit is doing atm.

We have the Opensource GNU ecosystem with platforms that have all the perks this guy is talking about, ready to use, but nobody fucking cares cause A) they don't teach that stuff at school, just don't copy that floppy and B) It's not backed by Tigel Global 4 billon dollar raises.

I think this type of manipulation has succeded so well because the internet was created on english language where Facebook is FREE, instagram is FREE, join Patreon, is FREE. And the GNU opensource community couldn't have the semantic means of expresing how really fucking FREE we can be togheter.

As a bonus point, all this techlords platforms runs on Apache, and/or Linux servers. Which are FREE as well.

Sorry for the rant!

 

Art that calls out power is being manipulated by algorithms pointing people in the wrong direction. Truth is treated like falsehood. Anybody remember...going to war for peace is like fucking for virginity?

 

Very interesting speech, he was honest, and cool motivating creators to find ways to create an audience on this crazy times on internet.
And his trajectory from playing music in bars, to start a career, and finally end as a CEO.

This morality wave is heating on the face of the companies too IMO. Internet is gonna get cleaned soon, and the far far west times where you can see everything open would be, just cutted. So this morality is pushing some business out of the light, as ussual.
Coca-cola was made of coke plant. Now there is no coke, there is no cola, there is no caffeine, no sugar.... but the business persist.

Opensource would have some words to say in future too. But the numbers speak by themselves. The atempts to conquer the social media from opensource initatives are just anectdotic. (Mastodon example) The near future is kindly distopic, with this big tech companies strategies peeping in all areas of our lives, than now everything seems non authentic.

So maybe the aproach of Patreon, is one of the best, coming from where it comes:

 

It is pretty sad how homogenized the web has become. I started as a web developer in the 90s out of necessity to promote my own music, and what I remember most is that websites back then had so much personality compared to the cookie cutter templates you have now. Especially with the advent of flash which allowed so much room for self-expression and experimentation. The web then felt more like an art museum rather than a place to keep in touch with grandma or watch grown men dance on milk crates for likes.

Years ago, early 2ks, I was brought in as a consultant for a marketing agency looking to brainstorm ideas on how music labels could circumvent the increase in piracy with the proliferation of apps like napster, limewire, etc. I told them they couldnt put pandora back in the box and there would be a leverage shift not just with file sharing but self-promotion as well with sites like Myspace. I did however suggest the idea for creating a platform that would allow artists to interact with fans, stream live shows, sell tickets/merchandise which could be a possible win for both the labels and the artists. That's not really what they wanted to hear and to be fair, probably would not have been entirely feasible in that era. Of course nowadays it's completely possible and in fact I just read this morning that James Blake is already planning something along these lines:

https://variety.com/2024/music/news/james-blake-vault-launch-streaming-royalties-1235947937/

What's incredible to me is how labels and streaming platforms still refuse to give up any power dynamic and leave artists / creatives to continue fighting for scraps. My hope with the increase of AI driven technology we'll be able to make that shift but honestly I have no idea if the best or worst is yet to come for creatives.

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2024

Just saw this was your first post, welcome btw!

 

I thought I was investing in knowledge and just wasted my time. If only I could finally get away from YT and these Youtubers who are mere executants obliged to make a video every week to generate income. The titles speak for themselves: nothing but hype and empty promises.
They're not like us, they're not our community!
Without this overdose of continuous, disorganized information, I'd long since have grown my career, because it's not these idiots who are going to capture my attention any more than that; on the contrary, it's up to me to capture the attention of others,
They're sucking the life out of me and I'm really going to get serious about switching off and doing the things I'm made for! Because it's impossible for me to fail, it cant be any other way, I'm going to have to put some people in their place and show them who's boss!

> connected okay but with the universe (the harmonie of sphere) not the fu***ng robots

 

*$*

 

Money ruins everything. All bad things come from money.
AI, technology, environmental pollution, wars, etc., none of them are destructive like money. Money must be abandoned as soon as possible, otherwise it will destroy all life.

 

Yeah, has been ridiculous but the opensouce initiatives has been constantly harrased, infiltrated and sabotaged by the very same we're now chained with. It has not been a fair fight at all. And unless you are in their area of influence, cause business, activism or by the nerd friend that installs 7zip on your computer to not being nagged again about purchasing a WinRAR licence, people don't even know those things exist.

And now they have the overhelming numbers and the opensource social media are populated by the very same that program opensource tools and by very little other people.

It will depend on how united or scatterd the creatives are when the hammer catch us. As a regular and profesional user of image diffusion models, I think all creatives, present and past ones, are being robbed blind by very all the companies that used LAION B as a base for their models (midjourney, Google, OpenAI and Stability). LAION B was created for research purposes, not for building business around it. And here we are.

 

Folks, have you heard of Suno AI?
What really saddens me is not the technology per se, but how the public got to this point we already are that everyone is ready to consume whatever s**t is given to them (and this state has been built for decades). It is really the death of human creativity and originality as it will be replaced by pastiches made by bots which will be consumed by industry and algorithms oriented zombies.

 

This is a great talk, I was ranting about this recently on my podcast, but it kind of misses the main issue, especially when he talks about solutions. The problem is that there's no way for people to discover stuff anymore. Google search can't even find me interesting blog articles (it's all SEO shit), youtube only shows clickbait, twitter just pushes big accounts. Everything good that I've found over the past few years has been by complete accident and coincidence.

What's the point of having these supposedly sophisticated algorithms if they just recommend me what everyone else is into? If every 'creator' has to 'find' their own audience, then of course they're going to just make stuff which appeals to the algorithms. With advertising they will gather data on everything about you and what you're interested in so that they can specify a product and advert for you, but with music or whatever it seems they just shove a few 'favoured' people down your throat until you either submit or leave.

 

That is the whole point. It's made to funnel and corral, bind and supervise, dominate and oversee and to record your every action, be it to buy a t-shirt or be a member of this forum. Besides trying to shove us this direction or that through most search engines, right now it is primarily collating, sorting us all into categories and will certainly be used to deal with the troublemakers when the time calls to do so.

 

Thanks Man...

 

Zappa mothafuck* I will dance to the end.
There is a moment you have to choose, you are alive, but you are going to die, there is no time to loose.
So at some point you have to defend the world you wan to live in, and the world you wanna give to others.
Counter-culture has to be inside of mass media, to survive, and inspire others.

 

I don't really agree with this at all. Sure anyone can go watch a video about how to make a song, but as most people who try to make music soon find out, it's so much harder and more complex than watching some YouTube tutorials. Which then actually creates more mystery.

Besides, there are very few people on YouTube who really know what they're talking about. Most of them just regurgitate the same garbage they heard someone else say.