Music is the creator economy catalyst

In his book The Passion Economy Adam Davidson argues that our current century is one where people set up businesses that centre around their passions. This contrasts with the main tenet of the previous century, where the focus was on commoditization, production and scale. This economic change underpins an important marker which Davidson generalizes as follows: “The Passion Economy is about quality and the conversation you have with your clients.” (p.38) Music is perfectly positioned to play into this shift and, indeed, does so already.

Davidson doesn’t specifically write about music and musicians. Similarly, if we look at the top 100 social media as defined by the Knight Institute at Columbia University, we see platforms not designed for music or musicians but used by them nonetheless.

How creators create the most

The researchers at the Knight Institute call these bubbles ‘logics’ hinting at an underlying logic, or function, that connects what’s inside of the bubble. The biggest bubble is that of the ‘creator logic’ which the researchers define as follows:

“creator logic platforms are for everyone and enable users to share a specific type of media (like video, livestreams, or art), in a one-to-many fashion. They are home to “creators,” people who consistently make content for the platform, often as a source of income. Some examples of creator logic are YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Wattpad.”

Other platforms to include here are the subscription platforms such as Patreon, Currents.fm or Ampled. As Cherie Hu has argued last year, music is at the core of the the crowdfunding model underlying these platforms. What they may lack in popularity against platforms like Twitch, they gain in terms of the value they capture. Let’s go a little deeper into how music catalyzes these creator platforms and permeates the broader social media ecosystem.

Adding value

Whereas crowdfunding has strong roots in music, platforms such as Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube are first and foremost video-sharing services aimed at connecting people through experiences and stories. By now, we know how important music has been and still is when it comes to growth on these platforms. Twitch, for example, while still primarily being a platform for gamers, has seen massive growth in music streamers. Looking at Twitchtracker, the growth in channels and viewers between February 2020 and February 2021 is impressive. The number of channels broadcasting music tripled, and the number of viewers grew by almost 7x. Of course, the integration between Amazon Music and Twitch further establishes the role of music on the livestreaming platform. Similarly, music is a driver of growth on TikTok and music remains a key driver of traffic on YouTube with 22% of all views attributed to music videos. The reason, I argue, that music plays such a key part on these creator platforms is its ability to convey quality and trigger conversation.

A great example for this, which will immediately show how music permeates the wider social media ecosystem, is by going back to 2019’s biggest TikTok star: Lil Nas X. Besides having a breakout song that was ripe for conflict, perfect for meme-creation, ideal for dance challenges, etc., the artist also played into the feedback loops necessary to engage an audience. Moreover, he did so using a broad variety of social media, posting short snippets of songs on Twitter for example and asking for feedback. Of course, this requires a certain type of artist and not everyone is willing to engage in, what Jade Gomez recently described in Complex as: “commentary and memes that almost make them separate entities from their music itself.”

Capturing value

When, as an artist, you ask yourself how do I add value and how do I capture that value through my audience, it’s important to stay close to who you are. If you’re not the type of person who is happy to enter an endless feedback loop of commentary and memes, you can still look at how you can take advantage of stepping into a dialogue with your fans. The platforms are there and users are eager to engage with music. More and more, fans are becoming creators themselves, the dialogue between fan and artist becoming one where music-making is a shared passion. The creator tools for this are many and the business around it is worth almost $900million. Artists can draw the most loyal of their fans to places like Patreon, where they can give insights into their production processes and provide access to their own sound files for their fans to work on. A great example of this is Jamie Lidell, who sends out audio packs of all the sounds used during his podcast recordings to the higher-tier fans on his Patreon.

Big Tech and the Creator Economy

Recent developments show how the bigger tech companies are wisening up to the chain of feedback that allows artists, and creators more generally, to find audiences, cultivate them, and then capture their value directly. Amazon is one example of a company trying to create an integrated flow for this, but they miss the platform where people can take a megaphone and shout. A great place to do just that is Twitter. With their development of Spaces and the acquisition of Revue, Twitter seems to position itself as, what Peter Yang calls, “the full-stack platform for expert creators.”

The key element to this that Yang focuses on is the ability to mix content types. Again, this will have to fit the personality of the artist, but the message is clear: flip the value relationship between yourself as artist and fan and there’s a lot of value you can capture by directly adding value to the lives of your fans. This two-way street seems paved with music and while other creators can walk across it, it’s music that often acts as a springboard to growth and success.

Storytelling, a final word

Music drives the creator economy and permeates across all levels of social platforms. From Snapchat Stories to music subreddits, millions of people use social media every day to engage with music and musicians. As the Creator Economy continues to grow it’s the best storytellers that will reach the top. With a broad variety of available tools artists are primed to find, engage and connect with an audience that is just passionate, and sometimes even more passionate, as they are about their music. Let fans share in the story and capture the value they feel you’ve added to their lives.