A shift is underway across media. It’s happening on YouTube and Reels, Roblox and Fortnite, Soundcloud and Spotify and here, on Substack. On these platforms—across video, gaming, music and journalism—consumers are redirecting their time and attention to non-institutional, non-corporate content. Call it user generated, social, short form, independent, creator, whatever you like.
I recently wrote about the creator media economy in The Relentless, Inevitable March of the Creator Economy. It is one of the few bright spots in media. In that post, I sized the creator media economy at around $250 billion globally last year, or almost 15% of the total media and entertainment (M&E) market. I also showed estimates that over the last four years it has grown at about 25% per year, representing about half of all M&E growth. In this post, I dig deeper into a key cause and implication of this growth: consumers are redefining quality in media.
https://dougshapiro.substack.com/p/quality-is-a-serious-problem