... By Hollywood standards, Dax Shepard is not a huge star. He started this podcast, in his attic on a lark, on his own, after a recent movie, CHiPS, failed. I don’t italicize “on his own” because starting a podcast is either hard or brave. Five million available podcasts is proof that starting a podcast is neither of those. I use italics because podcasting is the perfect example of a large and influential Media segment that almost no one thinks is part of the Creator Economy. And that proves the core thesis of this piece: The Creator Economy is both very different and much bigger than most people think. ...
Yes, Joe Rogan is a millionaire. But he wasn’t when he started his podcast - now the biggest in the world - and he was making $30 million per year on that indie podcast long before Spotify came along. Which is precisely why Spotify wanted him so badly, and why so many huge Media companies are clamoring to do enormous deals with similar Creators like the Smartless guys. They know something I’ve been professing for a while: Increasingly, Creators are generating audiences just as large, and far more engaged, as gatekeeper-led content. ...
See the full story here: https://eshap.substack.com/p/its-the-creator-economy