To follow this up, one of my favorite channels on Youtube is Outdoor Boys. It's just a father who made videos once a week doing outdoor things like camping with his family. He has amassed billions of views on his channel. Literally a one-man operation. He does all the filming, editing himself. No marketing. His channel got so popular that he had to quit to protect his family from fame.
Many large production companies in the 2000s would have been extremely happy with that many views. They would have laughed you out of the building if you told them a single person could ever produce compelling enough video content and get at many viewers.
Serious question: but aren't there thousands of other guys doing almost the same thing and getting almost no views? Even if there are lots of new channels, there aren't going to be lots of winners
But there are many Youtubers making a decent living doing it as a one person shop or a small team. In the past, you needed to a large team with a large budget and buy in from TV/DVDs/VHS to get an audience.
There are no such detailed numbers as far as I know. No platform (twitch, YouTube etc.) generally provides this information. Thinking bad one could assume it's because most people would realize it's one in a million who makes it.
Channels that make money consistently also have teams behind. Sure, probably they are smaller then TV studios, but TV studios do also other jobs compared to youtubers.
Anyway, these are the only numbers available. If there are numbers that show that masses of individuals can make a living in a market with so many competitors like YouTube I am happy to look at them. Until then, I will observe what is known for almost everything: a small % takes the vast majority of resources.
YouTube is a platform, it's not a product. And in this case, created a new market. A market in which, by the way, still very few people (relative to those who try) are successful. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage would be much smaller than 10%.
Basically I would flip the question and ask: if you could produce videos now very simply with AI and so could other 10000 people, how many of the new channels do you think will be successful?
If anything, the YouTube example shows you exactly that it doesn't matter than 1000000 people now can produce content with low overhead, just a handful of them will be successful, because the market of companies available to spend money to sponsor through channels and the men hours of eyeballs on videos are both limited.
Talking about companies that just produce products, either you come up with something new (and create a new market), or you come up with something better (you take shares of an existing market). Having 10000 companies producing - say - digital editing software won't make suddenly increase by 10000x the number of people in need of digital editing software. Which means that among those 10000 there will be a few very good products which will eat all the market (like it is now), with the usual Paretian distribution.
The idea that many companies with smaller overhead can split the market evenly and survive might (and it's a big hopeful might) work on physical companies selling local and physical products (I.e., splitting the market geographically), but for software products I cannot even imagine it happening.
New markets are created all the time, and it's great if maybe smaller companies (or co-ops) could take over those markets rather than big corporations, but the way the market distribution happens I don't think will be affected. I don't see any reason why this should change with many more companies in the same market.
I also don't think that 10000 new companies will create 10000 new markets, because that depends on ideas (and luck, and context, and regulation, etc.), not necessarily on resources available,
Now count how many TV stations there were in the 90s and 2000s.
This is just Youtube alone. What about streamers on Twitch? Youtube? Tiktokers? IG influencers?
Plenty of people are making money creating video content online.
The internet, ease and advancements in video editing tools, and cheap portable cameras all came together to allow millions of content creators instead of 100 TV channels.
77.500 channels which make any money. Now plenty of those make a handful of dollars per month.
Also, 77k worldwide.
I am not going to deny that YouTube (and all social media) created new markets. But how is this not an argument that shows that when N people suddenly do some activity, only a tiny minority is successful and gains some market share?
If tomorrow a product that is made by 3 companies will see competitors by 10000 1-man operations, maybe you will have 30 different successful products, or 100. 9900 of those 10000 will still be out of luck.
I
YouTube is not an example of a market that being exposed to a flood of players gets shares somewhat equally between those players or that allows a significant number of the to survive with it. Nor is twitch or any of the other platforms.
Now answer these questions:
And what will those people who make videos on Youtube do? Produce videos in uber-saturated categories?
Or magically 9900 more media channels will be created, all of them successful?