Warning: The Creator Middle Class is Disappearing | Creator Upload

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren. Yes. You're moving up in the world out of the closet and into a library. You know, I think what dawned on me is when you told me you were at, like, I think a school event or something. And somebody came up to you and was like, great podcast. What's the deal with a girl in the closet? Like, was that what you said? Something like I haven't? Yes. Totally. And like, I'm not mad. like I think the cloud it's kind of a thing you could argue like well she's talking about me all press is good press which I don't disagree with but I'm just you know what she's trying some new things out we'll see how it goes I like you trying some new things that looks great some new things out so we'll see um so yeah maybe I'm in the library you don't know where I am that's what I like could be anywhere a little bit mystery too yeah Lauren you're a Nate Barghese fan right I am he I've seen him live a couple times uh one time was okay one time was great so I wouldn't say I'm I mean, I'm very familiar with his work, but yeah, I like him.

1:01Yeah, Incredible Stand-Up Comic has had this meteoric rise by having just safe, family-friendly comedy. Bringing it back into the home. Something you could say at a church. Sure. Most of the time. He's hosting the Emmys. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. I feel like it's going to be a good show, but you know who's not going to be there? Tell me. Any creators whatsoever. Sure. Well, why would they? Are they on TV? I don't know. What is TV? Who are we? Where are we? Yeah, what is entertainment too, right? But you know, YouTube's been doing this Emmys FYC push with a few of its big time creators for the past couple of years now.

1:38Like Neil Mohan didn't mention it at this year's Brandcast, but the Brandcast 2024 wrote an op-ed that I think was in Variety or Hollywood Reporter, one of those publications. And also at Brandcast talked about how YouTubers should win an Emmy. So if the Emmys are honoring the best of television and YouTube is the new TV, then YouTubers should be eligible for Emmy Awards. That sounds logical. Totally logical. So for the past couple of years, YouTube has brought around Michelle Currie, Sean Evans of Hot Ones, and Rhett and Link of Good Mythical Morning to do these mini four-year consideration campaigns, FYCs, among Emmy's voters to try to get them at least nominated for different awards.

2:20And you might have seen, if you're in the ecosystem, in the industry, these creators do a ton of press with like LA Times, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter again, these entertainment industry rags about their Emmy bids. And then the nominations came out yesterday. Guess who got no nominations? And that was, but they didn't, you're saying they really pushed it in 24. Did they push it a lot in 25? Here in 25 too, yes. It came less from top down, like Neil Mohan wasn't talking about it this year, but they still did a bunch of four-year consideration campaigns, got them on a press tour. Sure. And then came up with no nominations at all.

2:52So Hot Ones was vying for a nomination in the Outstanding Talk Show category. Where they only had three nominees there, Kimmel, Colbert, and Stewart. They didn't even fill that category up. Oof. Michelle Corre was trying to get a nomination in the Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special category. Uh-huh. But she missed out to Conan O 'Brien, Stanley Tucci, David Letterman, and more. And Red and Link wanted to try to get a nomination in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama, or Variety Series category for the Good Mythical Morning show. Right. Where it was just all basically web YouTube companions for unscripted TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Daily Show and more.

3:31Just the kinds of things that the Television Academy has been nominating for the past several years, if not decades. Listen, what I have to say about this is this is really boring and not just what you're the words that are coming out of your mouth, but also just like we know how this is going to end. Do you know what I mean? Like, they're gonna eventually give the YouTubers a nomination. It's like, these are very old institutions that are trying to figure it out. And they're in like, to give them not credit, but like, I feel like, you know, they're trying to maintain the integrity of the institution of the Emmys, as an example.

4:07and you know we're redefining what television means every day and i think it's it's not unusual that this is going to take a minute for them to sort of catch up but the reason i brought this up is because i think there's been just a paradigm shift obviously in the entertainment ecosystem in the past even just a year with the ascendancy of youtube sure and like youtube on tv i mean connected tvs yeah exactly and i get why even last year two three four especially five and more years ago, these creators would want to win an Emmy award or at least be nominated because with it becomes a certain amount of notoriety.

4:46They can potentially book bigger guests. They can potentially get better ad deals and they can potentially do more stuff in television if that's what they want. But now that YouTube is like the gorilla in this room and commanding all the attention from viewers, I don't think they need this anymore. Like they're doing fine with opportunities in Hollywood. They're doing fine with advertising dollars and they're doing great with booking their own guests. And YouTube is doing fine with all that. But like the individual creators can always use a boost. YouTube as a whole as a, you know, is doing fine.

5:26But I think individual creators can always use more press and publicity and bigger brand deals and things like that. So I don't know. I don't I don't agree that that this wouldn't be a boon. And like, you know, and one should one would assume should somebody a YouTuber or show on YouTube that originates on YouTube is nominated. It's it's going to mean it's like really good. Like Hot Ones is a perfect Hot Ones is going to be like the my prediction is that Hot Ones will eventually be like, should it stay on the air? the first one to be nominated. Because to be honest, that show's amazing. Like it's so good.

6:02It's just, it's truly, it's so unique and simple and good. So I think that, I don't agree that this couldn't do something for individual YouTubers. For YouTube as a brand, not necessarily matters. I get it. Look, it's not a bad thing. I just don't think it nearly means as much as it could have several years ago. And will continue to mean less and less as the ascendancy of YouTube and these individual creators on YouTube. ascend with it. All right. Go on this news. Yeah. Okay. All right. I think this is very interesting. Neo Reach did a study analyzing data from 3 ,000 creators with a combined reach of 1.1 billion followers.

6:39So here's sort of the high level. The creator economy has grown about 19 % since the start of 2025. There are more than 127 million active creators. However, over 50 % of creators earn less than$15 ,000 a year. And that percentage is increasing partly because there's so many new creators that are entering the market. But here's what's sort of staggering is that only 5 % of creators earn more than$200 ,000 a year. And new creators with less than a year of experience, obviously, are averaging that lower amount. And experienced creators, four plus years average over$100 ,000 a year, five times more than new creators.

7:22So once you reach that$15 ,000 a year, if you can get there, then usually you can sort of grow. You tend to accelerate after passing that. Managed creators, so those with representation, earn about three times more than unmanaged creators, not surprising. And creators with their own brands, so not just like the channels, but have a whole brand, which is about 45 % of the people who responded to this survey earn two times more than those without. So I thought this was really interesting, not surprising. And like, I'm not mad at it. Like, I feel like it's something, maybe it'll like deter some people from being creators because there's such a glut of content right now.

8:01But like, this is the truth. It's very hard to do this. And it's hard to do that and this, and it's very hard to make money as a creator. It's not easy. It's not a no brainer. And it's incredibly hard work that's just a grind that never ends. I thought that 15 ,000k threshold was really interesting. I'd like to see kind of the distribution of that. I'm guessing it's a big long tail towards that 15k too. Sure. 50%. Yeah, I think so. The vast majority of people creating content are making probably several hundreds of dollars a year or less. Yeah. But then if you're able to break out of that threshold, you can really kind of go for it.

8:38You know, it's interesting about that 15 ,000. I mean, it's not related, but related. So, you know, when I was working in corporate development at Jelly Smack, I saw so many, you know, obviously startups and$15 million a year was also this really interesting, interesting threshold, like a lot of, in a different kind of way, a lot of companies would get kind of stuck. But if you could break through that 15 million, you were kind of like on your way. You know what I mean? Like, like that 15 million, there was a lot that were there in terms of total revenue. Anyway, not related, but just made me think about it.

9:07Very interesting. Go on. Are we starting a myth about 15 now? Maybe. A myth? Maybe it's a meme. I don't think it's a myth. I think it's just like what it is. Lauren, there are also some interesting takeaways here among the demographics of creators. It found that the average male creator is making about$8 ,500 more per year than the average female creator. Neorish also found some discrepancies between the earning capabilities of different genres of content creators with the news, politics, and current event creators making the lowest among their counterparts followed closely by art creators and with musicians making the most followed closely by food and drink creators, probably for the possibilities of them being able to sell different courses, some of their own materials, some of their own products, and just the universal appeal of food and drink and music to everybody.

9:56Obviously, news and political and current event creators are going to be at the lower end of the earning spectrum because the nature of the content limits them in terms of brand deals and other revenue generating opportunities there. But it was interesting to see that breakdown by gender and then also buy content for the Coher. I'm wondering if another influencer marketing agency does this same study with the same quantity of creators, if they find similar results or dramatically different results. Why are you trying to challenge these results? Do you take issue with some of these results? No, I just think it's such a new ecosystem and industry and way of life for a lot of these people that probably the methodology for collecting all of this data isn't defined.

10:35And - I think the methodology is defined. I think what you're probably more speaking to is like with a cohort that they're probably, you know, serving. But these, honestly, this, I think these results make a ton of sense to me, especially in the world that we live in now with TikTok. If this were a TikTok free world, you know, no comment on what I feel about that, then it would be odd. But there's so many creators on TikTok that make no money. That just, it's, you know what I'm saying? And it's the ease of which to join that platform and start creating content and then call yourself, you know, a creator is, you know, you know, the threshold is so low that like this makes a ton of sense to me.

11:17Yeah, I guess I guess you'd have to look into they surveyed over 3000 creators. What creators are more likely to respond to these types of surveys? Yeah. And then it's like where and I would love I guess more information I would love to know is like on what platforms were those 3000 creators? Like, are they on all platforms? Is it majority? YouTube, you know, where are, TikTok, like, where are these creators? Exactly. Looking forward to more of these in the future. Great. Okay, next up, I think this is super interesting. Roblox has a new initiative where it gives creators sort of legally the right to make gains based on major IP, like Twilight, Saw, Squid Games, Stranger Things from Roblox.

11:58Our vision is to empower all creators to easily partner with the franchises they love and bring the franchise's licensed IP into their experiences. How this sort of works is the IP owners can list their property on the platform, set usage rules for these, you know, developers, creators, and then they will just automatically collect monetization shares. And then they'll automatically be sharing in monetization. I think what's really interesting is that they can do this retroactively. And I don't think that people maybe understand how massively complex IP licensing historically has been. Like time-consuming legal fees, like months, if not years, if ever, has this stuff historically, you know, been allowed to happen?

12:46You know, I would say music is the prime example of where licensing is a nightmare. but like this is so huge and like and like also historically you know even if the IP owners wanted to do something like this the technology just didn't allow it so basically you were like I'm just gonna have to keep this up and I can't as the IP owner share in the profits at all or I'm gonna take it down and then we're the taking it down the problem with that is that you're probably getting a ton of kind of free marketing if you will if you allow a creator that you like to use your IP, but you want to and should and have the right to share in the profits.

13:22But historically, it hasn't been possible from just a tech standpoint, just from the product ability. So I think this is one of those... I don't think it seems like a small product change. You know how I love a small product change that results in really big behavior changes. But I think that there's... I want people to understand what a big deal this is. Like the simplicity of this cannot be sort of understated. I can't underscore more how the simplicity of this is sort of total game changing. Right. So if you look at Epic and what they did with Fortnite is they let other IP owners come into the Fortnite world and let Fortnite players buy those skins and then do stuff with those skins.

14:07So you can essentially be Wolverine, a Marvel Disney owned piece of IP and pick up an AK-47 or what the equivalent of an AK-47 is and shoot a bunch of cartoon figures on screen, which seems wild when you put it on paper like that. But in practice, it makes total sense. I mean, Fortnite's nonviolent. In a way, there's no blood or anything. Sure. So it's more child friendly. But this Roblox initiative is now taking that a step further and saying, hey, use RIP to build whatever worlds you want other players to play in. And let's both share in the revenue and profits together. And Lauren, you mentioned that this could happen retroactively, too.

14:47So one of the biggest games recently on Roblox is this one called Blue Lock Rivals. Are you familiar with Blue Lock? I'm not. I know you don't let your kids watch any screens. It's just homework all day long. Zero. Blue Lock, though. I'm reading right now. Is this. In other languages. Go on. Blue Lock is this anime show about this soccer club in Japan. So presumably some unknown teen was watching the anime show, brought it on to Roblox, created this game called Blue Lock Rivals. Rivals is a very popular game on Roblox, just fighting game on Roblox. And so he just attached the Blue Lock IP to that.

15:25And recently it was reported that this anonymous 19-year-old who made this Blue Lock Rivals game in Roblox received a$3 million buyout offer in exchange for ownership from this company, Do Big Studios, which is trying to come in and scoop up all of these big popular Roblox games. So now with the IP owner of Roblox getting on the platform, it could retroactively go back and say like, hey, this game's cool. I'm moving forward. We want a piece of everything that's coming from it. Right. Which is obviously less revenue for the game owners, but does provide them with some legal protections and some just sense of security that they're not all of a sudden going to get shut down in the future.

16:01Well, this is a very, you know, sort of modern way of looking at IP. And I would say the first time I sort of heard about this was, you know, I want to it's a while ago, probably like eight or nine years ago, when Amazon, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson, saw all of this stuff that was sort of with his likeness on Amazon being sold. and he went to Amazon and said, hey, I don't want to take all this down. I'd like to pick the best, create a storefront and share in the profits. And the Amazon created a program and there were like initial, there were old school creators that were a part of the launch.

16:32I remember Annoying Orange, Shane Dawson, like all these people were a part of that. And it was like, I thought, I remember thinking it was so kind of revolutionary, but like a lot of people didn't really pick up on it. And then I remember there was a startup that I looked at, I want to say in like 2019, it was called Trash. It was a video platform that I think was acquired by Vimeo. Don't quote me, but I'm pretty positive. And they were creating this video platform that was going to have built in kind of IP sharing rights kind of inside of the platform from jump. They weren't going to like go into like, you know, a new video platform thinking like it's all or nothing in terms of IP.

17:05And I remember thinking like, thank you. We've been waiting for like a platform to do this. And then so I just this is like, I mean, I guess it's not real. It's not a new idea, but it's been very slow for like, you know, the platforms finally got on board in terms of the way they deal with, you know, rights management and things like that. But it took a long time. And like, it's, I mean, because historically, you know, going back to like our Emmys conversation, these old school institutions, like it was like, you need to pay me all the money to do all the things or you cannot use this at all. I mean, that's just what it has been for 100 years.

17:43So This is a very new concept. I think it totally makes sense, too, if you look at it in terms of piracy, which was plaguing Hollywood studios and video games because it was so expensive or so hard to get access to the movies you wanted to see. It was easier to go on Pirate Bay and just torrent them. Right. Yeah. So now, especially in the age of AI, if a 19 year old has a choice of making a video game from IP that's inaccessible that he could get in trouble for later or working with some preexisting IP on a platform where he can make a lot of money from. What that's going to do is just change the calculus of what these next 19 year olds are going to incorporate into their games.

18:20They're going to use IP that they can profit from and probably stay away from IP that they know they could get in legal trouble for, which is just going to make that IP that plays in this ecosystem way more popular down the road. For the record, I might not know who that other Japanese anime cartoon is, but have you ever heard of Captain Tsubasa? I'm not an anime aficionado. I mean, I'm just not any guy. My eight-year-old is obsessed with it, and it's all about revolving around sort of football. And it's really intense. Oh, so he would love Blue Lock, too. I'm just telling you. He's like, I'm just telling you.

18:56So I'm aware of, like, Japanese anime soccer series. Okay, awesome. I didn't know there was more than one. Oh, yeah. No, it's like, I mean, I'll be in the other room and I'll be like, Tsubasa. Yeah. When I let them watch TV. Wait, is it on right now? Did you just turn it on? It's so crazy, right? It's weird. When I let them watch the five minutes of TV a week. Okay, next up, we're going to have Sam Guttel from TubeFilter joining us to talk about what is hot in YouTube charts. Sam, welcome back to the podcast. Longtime TubeFilter writer with such accolades as being referenced on the Skibbity Toilet Wikipedia page.

19:34among also low-key being perhaps, seriously, one of, if not the most knowledgeable person in the world on what's trending on YouTube. In part because Sam is the author of our weekly TubeFilter charts section on TubeFilter, where he covers the top 50 most subscribed, most viewed channels on YouTube every week, and also does a bigger top 100 once a month. Sam, welcome back to the podcast. Josh, Lauren, thank you for having me. So we were talking about this on our editorial call, and I want to bring you on to talk about it. It seems like Jesus and God is having a big moment on YouTube. It's about time.

20:09You know, first it was Spider-Man and then it was Elsa. And now YouTube has moved on to arguably the most famous pop culture character in history. And that would be Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And so tell me what you're seeing. Like what brought you to this conclusion? This really started last year. You started to see just in general people talking about religion more on YouTube shorts. There is this channel called Hassel Jun, this creator in Korea, who is a Korean Muslim and was just sharing his perspective as part of that religious minority. And this really changed earlier this year, started ramping up with the health issues and eventual passing of Pope Francis and Pope Leo's ascension to the papacy.

20:54And that's when you really start to see a few different kinds of Christian videos starting to trend on YouTube Shorts. The first broad bucket here is the AI slop Christian content, where it is usually a dashing handsome Jesus saving a dog or a cat or some other cute co-star. You know, these AI channels just love to take every trending keyword on YouTube shorts and smash it together in one video. And that's how you have channels like God Loves Dogs, an AI slop channel that added 540 ,000 subscribers in a single week back in May 2025. So about two months ago. And the second big bucket that you have is just religious figures.

21:48Christian religious figures who are starting to use YouTube shorts to spread their gospel. And so Bispo Bruno Leonardo out of Brazil is the big one here during the month of January 2025. So again, that was right around that period of papal succession. Bruno got 4.7 million subs added to his channel in the month of January. and actually what we just covered in our top 50 charts last week is that he has a second channel now, Bispo Bruno Leonardo SM, and both that channel and his main channel are now ranking among the top 50 most subscribed channels on YouTube week in and week out. Yeah, Sam, you're totally right.

22:32It seems like these channels are just hitting the groove and, I mean, Jesus is some incredible IP to exploit. It's well-known across the world and it's royalty free. So one of the AI slap channels in period de Jesus, you mentioned, has added over 3 million subscribers close to it within the last three months and is netting over, like almost netting 100 million views a month. Meanwhile, the hand of God, which is more like, what if an AI slap channel was live action, is getting a billion views a month since May. Now has over 9.7 million subscribers. The vast majority of that added within the last three months.

23:08And then Bispo Bruno Leonardo, of those main channel is bumping too. It now has over 58 million subscribers. It's been tacking on two, three million subscribers a month over the last year and recently hit a groove where it's beginning a quarter of a billion views a month or more over the last several months. I think that this is really an offshoot of a few other trends that are taking over YouTube shorts. one thing that's pretty well known is this rise in moralistic content in very black and white moral content videos where it's often set in a classroom and a class clown or a bully will do something immoral and then will receive some sort of karmic comeuppance before the end of the video the creator who's most associated with this is dhar man based out of la who's becoming not just a huge creator, but an entrepreneur and is launching this whole studio to make these types of videos.

24:07So if you think about moral videos becoming one of the big things on shorts, obviously Christianity with its strong basis in moral certitude is going to be trending up as well. This is fascinating. I really like that through line. Lauren, it makes you think, are we going to the right place on Fridays and Saturdays? Well, at least I'm going. Can you tell for the kids what AI slop is? Because I feel like that is a very specific thing. Yeah, AI slop are these videos generated by large language models by generative AI that basically use this very particular style, you know, very crisp and 3D imagery that can create any scenario you want.

24:55So if you want Jesus to be saving a dog that's been stranded on a deserted island, OpenAI's Sora, for example, is one of the things that could make that video for you. Lauren, I think if you have a picture in your head of this, it's imagine pigs at a trough and someone's just dumping in buckets and buckets of AI videos. Because they're so easy to do. I understand. I understand. I get it. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. Sam, this is great. Thank you for the informational tutorial. Looking forward to have you back. Yeah, would love to be back because let me tell you, it only gets weirder from there.

25:35There's nothing normal on YouTube Shorts right now. And maybe we can, like as just a North Star, we can see if you can get a quote on the Jesus so we can preview a page. Oh, the dream. Well, that's coveted real estate, but I'll see what I can do. Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Lauren. Thank you so much, Sam. Appreciate that. Excited for you to get some better lighting in your house. Next up, uploads, downloads, Josh. This I find, I don't know, this is the type of stuff I nerd out on so much. So YouTube upload, I think, is replacing its trending chart with new charts that are going to show micro trends, you know, because there are so many diverse communities.

26:13So a little bit of history. there's been a long active sort of hub that compiles like popular content across the platform which you know when we were starting out and there were not you know whatever that stat was today 50 ,000 125 ,000 million creators having one central location for YouTube where you know you could see what was like trending what was really popping made a ton of sense now there's more genres than you and I even could list, you know, all day. And so people want to find those like, you know, communities and what is popping off in those communities and those genres and etc. I mean, the fact that it's taken this long to do this is a little bit insane.