In October 2021, a file appeared on the internet that the people it described did not want to see. Somebody had breached Twitch and dumped, among other things, the payout records for its top streamers. For the first time, the numbers that the creator platforms usually keep internal were sitting in a spreadsheet, sorted top to bottom.
The top 1% of creators took nearly 60% of the $889 million Twitch had paid out. The majority of streamers who qualified to get paid at all had earned less than $120. Not monthly. Not annually. Total.
I know what you’re thinking: “Well, that’s Twitch. Some weird gaming corner of the internet.” But this is not a Twitch problem. Pull the same data on Spotify, Gumroad, Patreon, or YouTube and you get the same curve.
By traditional standards, the creator economy is the least gatekept industry ever built – no record label, network, or publishing house holding the door, charging admission in the form of control. Yet it produces an income distribution more lopsided than the gatekept economy it was purported to improve.
I spent the last several months figuring out why, and the answer traces back to a 1981 economics paper about opera singers by an economist named Sherwin Rosen.
Rosen had noticed something that traditional economics struggled to explain: in certain markets, like opera, a small number of people earn enormous sums and dominate the field entirely, while people only slightly less talented earn a tiny fraction as much.
How could that be? In most markets, a slightly worse product sells for a slightly lower price. So why do the best opera singers, the best authors, and the best comedians capture not a little more than their near-peers, but vastly more?
I’ve just published the full findings as a long-form essay called The Superstar Tilt.
This post is the short version: what the Tilt is, why it occurs, and what it means for the brands and marketers who operate on this terrain every day.
🎧 Rather listen than read? Hit play on the audio version above.
What is the Superstar Tilt?
The Superstar Tilt is the structural force that combines our insatiable desire for “the best” with cheap, infinite reach, converting small differences in talent into massive differences in payout.
In his research, Rosen identified two conditions that produce the Tilt:
Imperfect substitution. Audiences want the “best,” and no quantity of second-best adds up to it – a hundred mediocre opera singers don’t sum to one great performance.
Joint consumption. Technology now lets one performer reach a nearly limitless audience at almost no additional cost per person.
Said plainly, everyone wants the best, and the best can now reach everyone. When this occurs, the performer who is a hair better than their rivals doesn’t earn a hair more. They earn most of the market.
Every new technology has steepened this curve. Radio did it. Television did it. And in 2007, when YouTube pointed a recommendation algorithm at it, it happened again.
Why this matters for brands
There are several themes – repeated by smart people for years – that actively steer brands in the wrong direction. The paper dissects each one.
Here are a few:
There is no such thing as a “creator middle class”. The phrase itself suggests a broad field of interchangeable mid-tier influencer options at reasonable prices. The reality is the opposite, and for brands, believing otherwise is a costly mistake.
Reach and trust are not on the same curve. The best brands know how to spot where the value sits and buys accordingly, reaching more customers, converting better, and hedging themselves against risk.
Taste is an actual thing with a real meaning. Despite the word curdling into exactly the kind of emptiness it was supposed to stand against, taste is real and important. But no data will show it to you – you have to spot it yourself and price it accordingly.
AI will make the creator economy’s inequity issues more extreme. Except for the one asset it can’t manufacture, and it’s worth knowing exactly what this is.
Read the full essay
If you're a brand or a marketer who has to navigate the creator economy, this was made for you.
Get excited about creators and all things fandom? Follow along. This is the kind of deep content you’re going to get from this account that you won’t get anywhere else.
