---
title: 4.4 The Making of the Creator Economy
description: How does creator economy can challenge and change existing opportunities
---

# 4.4 The Making of the Creator Economy: ‘Wrapping’ Content and Other Entertainment

The application of non-fungible tokens is an extremely broad topic, each with its own business model and potential addressable market. Non-fungible tokens, leveraged for creators or types of people who originate new forms of value on a social (influencing), cultural (music, art, media), and intellectual basis (articles, blogs, and content) is known as the _creator economy._ For newcomers to crypto, the value proposition of the creator economy is best understood in reference to the opportunities available for creators in the Web 2.0 / mainstream world. 

The two most important questions to kick off any discussion surrounding the creator economy includes:

_How does the creator economy challenge and change existing opportunities for creators?_

Similar to the paradigm shift in the transition from a siloed and controlled Web2.0 into an open and composable Web3.0, the existing creator economy is riddled with middle-men and gate-keepers. From _Taylor Swift _to _Kanye West_ to issues surrounding creator monetization on Spotify and YouTube, to high fashion, and blogging, challenges to creators today tend to fall into two buckets:

* **Financial Exploitation:** When a creator is dependent upon other parties in order for them to access the value for their work. This could be via a record label, studio rights, brand partnerships, and so forth. 
* **Censorship:** When the work of a creator, is dependent upon other parties for the distribution, platforming, or access to the work. This varies from things like twitter, to substack, YouTube, rumble, and so forth. 

In both cases, the trend that the creator economy inaugurates, is a transition from centralized platforms of control, data extraction, and censorship, to open platforms or systems in which permissionless participation, value-created, and future royalties on the created value - can all stream directly back to the originator (or originators) of the work. This is the paradigm shift proposed when non-fungible tokens can be leveraged and utilized by creators. 

_How does the creator economy expand the market for creators, and fundamentally redefine the value of what can be created?_

This second question is not focused on the past, but rather the future of created value. A blockchain-based creator economy, fundamentally means an open, permissionless, global, and accessible economy, that moves beyond jurisdictional siloes and boundaries, and creates the opportunity for talent and creations from around the globe to talk to one another on a single ledger. From a financial perspective, the tokenization of non-fungible value, creates entirely new opportunities for how that value can be leveraged _composabley_ with other services. An NFT of a song, or an article, is not only a mechanism for directing value back to its creator - it can also be fractionalized, rented out to a DAO, collateralized for a loan, or embedded inside of a video game for maximum exposure. 

_A matrix to understand this process would be the following: For any NFT of the creator economy:_

* _What industry is getting disrupted?_
* _How do NFTs cause this disruption?_
* _How is the disruption composable?_

| | Creator Economy Sector / Product |
| --- | --- |
| **What industry is getting disrupted?** |  |
| **How do NFTs cause this disruption?** |  |
| **How is the disruption composable?** |  |

## What Do We Mean by Creator Economy? Diving Into Examples.

Today in crypto, the following industries are already being experimented with, and are well on their way to disruption:

## Art

**“Just as NFTs give musicians more power, artists that use NFTs have complete control over their work. Art on an NFT allows artists to create and sell their work directly to collectors, bypassing traditional gatekeepers.” ([Andrew Steinwold](https://andrewsteinwold.substack.com/p/crypto-will-change-value-nfts-will))**

Artists are the ‘break-through’ creative segment of the creator economy. The original launch of profile-picture collections (PFPs) was done hand in hand with the discovery of digital artwork, from the likes of _[Beeple](https://www.beeple-crap.com/everydays)_. Those who purchase the art, are the sole owners of the original, and sometimes hold a claim to the physical asset if there is one. Digital art galleries from [Norway ](https://www.versegallery.xyz/en/home/)to New York, have brought together communities of artists, collectors, and PFP members. For the future of art both on-chain and in the physical world, NFT’s have revolutionized: (1) The Buying and selling of digital art. (2) The prospect of fractional ownership of the physical artwork, including leasing and renting. (3) The buying and selling of the physical art itself. (4) The ability to govern the movement of art works to different galleries. 

**_Companies and Artists in This Niche:_**



* **_[Beeple](https://www.beeple-crap.com/everydays)._** A digital artist who stepped into the non-fungible renaissance at scale - selling art for over 50 million dollars, and featuring on podcasts like Joe Rogan. 
* **_Renaissance Labs:_** Aurora’s own fractional ownership of real-world art marketplace. Allowing individuals to share in the value of the art work, and jointly decide on the movement of the art work from vault to gallery. 
* **_Open Sea:_** The honorable mention of the role of NFT Marketplaces, for facilitating the transfer of value between purchasers and sellers. NFT exchanges have done over 5$ billion dollars in volume in the last 4 years. 

## Content, Journalism and Media

Content remains one of the most low-hanging and easily monetizable areas of NFT’s that have yet to found significant product market fit. On the lowest level, is (1) the prospect of ‘wrapping’ individual pieces of content within an NFT, such that ownership is required in order to access the information it contains. This would refer to research articles, individual blogs, financial research, or digitized libraries / archives. For well-known individuals, popular writers, or academics wishing to maintain their autonomy or publish in a censorship free environment, the opportunity is to sell-directly to an audience and remove any middleman capable of controlling the content itself. 

Second (2), is the prospect of decentralizing content management itself - such that a media company, digital newspaper, or community of writers, could have a verifiable and reliable process for fact-checking their work. Companies like Campground and Sovereign have experimented with this, however a scalable mechanism for decentralized content management remains largely undiscovered and un-implemented. Third, (3) is the capacity to use NFT’s at slightly larger scale to coordinate membership, revenue share, or access to a community of content creators. This, goes hand in hand with (4) the ability  to gate access to an author’s work or blogs, in an on-chain version of ‘Substack’. At scale such a system would also be applicable to podcasts, videos and movies. In line with the principles above, 

### _Companies of Interest In This Niche:_



* **_Campground_**.
* **_Steem ([Limited](https://steemit.com/))_**
* **_Civil Media ([Decayed](https://civil.co/))_**

## Fashion:

[Fashion in the context of the creator economy](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2022/10/18/nfts-the-fashion-industrys-future-baby/), refers to changes in the creation, purchase, or traceability of different fashion products around the world. The applications of NFTs to fashion are multiple, and expected to expand into the future: (1) Mirroring physical fashion items with digital widgets for the metaverse. Whereby a pair of sneakers I buy from Nike, offers me a digital equivalent for my metaverse character and any perks associated with that item. (2) Marketplaces for designs and blueprints of new fashion concepts. (3) Tracing the origin of fashion items to ensure authenticity using a IoT chip, or scanned dApp from a user. 

## Music

Similar to art, the ability to gate and capture the value of music opens up a new world of opportunities for the artist. From (1) The direct purchase of songs and albums from the artists themselves, to (2) ownership to the rights of the song for reuse purposes, to (3) circumventing the record label and selling direct to audience - artists face a future whereby they can increasingly customize incentives towards the release of their music. Consider for example, an artist launching a first album such that anyone who purchases it would be entitled to receiving a small percentage of royalties from future albums. Or, the early supporters are given an exclusive long-term access link that provides a direct link to the artist himself for up to X years. 

### _Companies of Interest In This Niche:_

* **_Tamago._**
* **_Audius._**

## Social Rights:

Social rights refer to the issuance of NFT’s as representative of the community of a specific influencer, podcaster, content creator, or celebrity. The NFT guarantees the owner with a vote or a voice in determining key facets of the persons’ social presence. This might include: (A) Voting on who comes onto the podcast next, (B) Involvement in deciding where an artist tours, (C) Special access to events and fundraisers from the person involved (could be a politician, artist, comedian, etc.). Or even (D) Revenue sharing among artists participating in an event together. Interestingly this applies both digitally and physically: From a real comedian's next tour location, and to a Metaverse’s design of a new digital neighborhood. 

## Practical Implementation of the Creator Economy: Is There A Regulatory Blocker?

The story [of SingularDTV](https://singulardtv.com/) is most illustrative of the difficulty in scaling creator economy innovation. One of the first ICO’s on Ethereum launched with the promise of forever revolutionizing media and content creation - from magazines to movies - and in the process raised over 500mm. Less then five years later, there has been nothing to show due to a lack of visibility, lack of product market fit, and lack of relevant product stack (at the time NFTs were expensive and clunky). The story illustrates a number of questions pertaining to blockers and facilitators of the adoption of the creator economy: 


* Should legacy companies look to move into Web3 with their audiences and brand name? Similar to how the NY Times moved online and created a podcast with Web2? 
* Should stand alone influencers follow the Nelk brothers in experimenting with gated content and fan rights on directing the platform? 
* Will Web3 ever be able to aggregate individually monetized creations into a single uniform and friction-free subscription service? (i.e. for spotify for example)? 
* What clear regulatory blockers limit certain creator industries from embracing NFTs? 
* Does geographical location matter for the successful adoption of certain creator products using NFTs? (Leapfrog theory).