Does creator-land need an injection of originality and less copycat content?

What does this mean for the future of direct to consumer; plus more evidence of the importance of an entrepreneurial attitude.

There have been some indicators that the creator economy is moving into a new phase - one marked by growing professionalism, a greater emphasis on building businesses than just content channels, an increased focus on quality, more money flooding the market, while a wider range of players are launching their own strategies to lure and fund creators.

It is important for producers to keep pace with these changes, as it is so easy for all of us to get stuck with a world view that has quickly become out of date. You can see that when people think ‘YouTube is all about short form video’ despite that not being the case for a number of years.

The reason it is important for producers to keep up with these changes (even if they aren’t yet operating direct to consumer channels themselves) is because thanks to convergence, the old delineations between markets are breaking down, and therefore only producing commissioned TV shows is increasingly becoming a self-imposed limitation.

In this post I’m going to attempt to tie together a few disparate points to illustrate why this market is so fluid, ripe with opportunities but equally highly changeable.

Before jumping in, a little housekeeping note: I’m back from being (sort of) offline for the past three weeks, however there are still three more weeks of school holidays to go, so writing is being squeezed in first thing or late at night until the first week of September. Apologies if I’m slow to respond as a result.