As some of you may or may not already know, Machinima just folded, leaving 81 people without a job. That's a shockingly large staff, but maybe not as shocking as the recent purchase of popular channels for dozens of millions of dollars, which I think it kind of illustrates the current state of YouTube, with large and well financed start-ups looking for an out and those already bought either quickly turning corporate or closing down after a while.
I personally don't follow any of those personalities as I don't care about the gaming side/pop culture side of YouTube, but I follow a lot of large-ish channels devoted to woodworking, electronics, DIY and other forms of enginerding and something that has caught my eye is that even homemade operations have insanely large budgets. I'm talking about people who obviously started with lots of cash to spare right away or hit the jackpot early and managed to make a large amount of followers/build a huge base on Patreon that provided them with the necessary income to purchase professional equipment, having employees and/or being able to outsource production work (which is not cheap at all).
By any measuring, those folks are now working full time for YouTube, professionally creating from one to three or four videos per week, and being able to purchase tools and other types of hardware that easily run in the hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per week. In some cases it's also abundantly clear that they don't even buy said hardware. It's manufacturers contacting them in order to shill their products in videos that are barely disguised as tutorials or reviews, but bought and paid by big brands doling out big bucks to influential personalities.
More to the point, I've noticed due to my work that there are plenty of small time creators that are trying their best in order to get noticed and absolutely failing at it. You can't really compete with the big channels now. It's no longer is a matter of being funny or doing interesting videos, but affording the means to produce content that easily rivals and even surpasses proper shows made for TV. There's a vast gulf in terms of access and production values between what passed as a successful independent YouTube channel five years ago and what it is now, almost like the difference between a high school play and Game of Thrones. To put it simply, in terms of reach and content creation there's a now a YouTube for the rubes and a YouTube for the pros. And if you are a rube, your chances of growing out of your status are massively curtailed due to the incredible reach, positioning and appeal of the pros.
While this is something fairly natural (small guy turns hobby into job, makes it big), I can't help but feel bad for some people and even have concerns about the direction of YouTube as a platform. Much of its current success is owed to small time creators that are now having an incredibly hard time just getting themselves out in a sea of now household names and huge channels with start-up money. Getting noticed in 2010 was hard, but it's almost impossible today. And even if you start growing at a quick pace because the stars align or some of the popular indies somehow sponsors you or gives you a shout out*, chances are that you won't be able to sustain the amount of production work and expenses required to build a proper channel that pays for itself or just generates enough feedback/personal gratification to keep you going.
So all this wall of text brings me to the question: is YouTube still a viable platform for smaller independent creators or has the incredible presence of the successful, veteran ones and the rise of media groups turned it into an invisibly walled garden?
*big fat round of applause to AvE for routinely giving exposure to smaller folks in the DIY/engineering scene.
I personally don't follow any of those personalities as I don't care about the gaming side/pop culture side of YouTube, but I follow a lot of large-ish channels devoted to woodworking, electronics, DIY and other forms of enginerding and something that has caught my eye is that even homemade operations have insanely large budgets. I'm talking about people who obviously started with lots of cash to spare right away or hit the jackpot early and managed to make a large amount of followers/build a huge base on Patreon that provided them with the necessary income to purchase professional equipment, having employees and/or being able to outsource production work (which is not cheap at all).
By any measuring, those folks are now working full time for YouTube, professionally creating from one to three or four videos per week, and being able to purchase tools and other types of hardware that easily run in the hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per week. In some cases it's also abundantly clear that they don't even buy said hardware. It's manufacturers contacting them in order to shill their products in videos that are barely disguised as tutorials or reviews, but bought and paid by big brands doling out big bucks to influential personalities.
More to the point, I've noticed due to my work that there are plenty of small time creators that are trying their best in order to get noticed and absolutely failing at it. You can't really compete with the big channels now. It's no longer is a matter of being funny or doing interesting videos, but affording the means to produce content that easily rivals and even surpasses proper shows made for TV. There's a vast gulf in terms of access and production values between what passed as a successful independent YouTube channel five years ago and what it is now, almost like the difference between a high school play and Game of Thrones. To put it simply, in terms of reach and content creation there's a now a YouTube for the rubes and a YouTube for the pros. And if you are a rube, your chances of growing out of your status are massively curtailed due to the incredible reach, positioning and appeal of the pros.
While this is something fairly natural (small guy turns hobby into job, makes it big), I can't help but feel bad for some people and even have concerns about the direction of YouTube as a platform. Much of its current success is owed to small time creators that are now having an incredibly hard time just getting themselves out in a sea of now household names and huge channels with start-up money. Getting noticed in 2010 was hard, but it's almost impossible today. And even if you start growing at a quick pace because the stars align or some of the popular indies somehow sponsors you or gives you a shout out*, chances are that you won't be able to sustain the amount of production work and expenses required to build a proper channel that pays for itself or just generates enough feedback/personal gratification to keep you going.
So all this wall of text brings me to the question: is YouTube still a viable platform for smaller independent creators or has the incredible presence of the successful, veteran ones and the rise of media groups turned it into an invisibly walled garden?
*big fat round of applause to AvE for routinely giving exposure to smaller folks in the DIY/engineering scene.
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