The cultural impact of Youtube's dubbing • ‘Death of the Follower’ Era • TikTok Creativity Program's RPMs

Hi! 👋 On the occasion of the 5th edition of my newsletter I'd like to introduce you to Creator Economy Jobs — the corner of LinkedIn where I'm curating open positions at the creator-focused companies, talent agencies, influencer marketing departments, and creators' teams, and where you can (hopefully) find your dream job in this space!

Now let's dive into today's insights and reflections.

→ Youtube's AI dubbing is like Hollywood 2.0, but even better 🎬

When discussing AI tools for creators, I think we underestimate the cultural impact (or even shift?) that AI dubbing on YouTube will have on us. 

And I think the reason is because probably we don't yet fully realize the amount of video content that exists and that's been inaccessible to us all this time because of the language.

But the coolest thing is that dubbing will now give equal opportunities to every Youtube creator. Okay, maybe some will get more, some less...

Just imagine: American Youtubers, with even a small fraction of MrBeast’s budgets that he spends on video production, will be able to access a global audience, just like Hollywood movies were once translated and released into screens all over the world, spreading American culture to every continent.

I'll get a bit nostalgic now, but as someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I remember very well how instead of absorbing the state ideology we grew up on dubbed movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Murray and Harrison Ford (nice and sweet soft power — we loved it!). For some reason subtitles were hardly used in our region, and all the movies were translated by either amateurs or professional voice actors, who then voiced the same actor their entire career. 

But back to YouTube...

Just imagine, on the other hand, how many talented #NewWave low budget filmmakers we'll see from all over the world, who have almost zero production costs because they never had the same RPM rates or brand deals as their fellow Youtubers from the US, Canada, UK, Australia etc. 

I know it's become a bit of a cliché by now, but I'll say it anyway: today is the best time to become a creator.

→ We’re living in the ‘Death of the Follower’ Era 💀

Dylan H., CEO of REACH, has shared his insights from the CreatorFest, organized by Patreon last week. 

What caught my eye was a take from Patreon’s CEO, Jack Conte on the current stage of the internet. According to him, in 2020s we've entered the ‘Death of The Follower’ era...

Dylan has clarified what Jack Conte meant:

Quite a radical take, considering that discovery platforms are still super important. You know, like TikTok.

Speaking of which…

→ TikTok Creator Fund is over, but no one will miss it 💸

Want to hear about the death of another era?

Just like Insider Intelligence's Jasmine Enberg predicted, this year, the Creator Funds era will come to an end. 

But will creators miss it? I doubt it, given the advent of the new Creativity Program, and 14 (!) ways creators can earn on TikTok, shared by Jerry Soer, who works on the Creator Monetization team at TikTok.

Back in March of this year, Sean Kim (CPO at Kajabi and ex Head of product at TikTok) confirmed that Creator Fund was never about helping creators earn better, they just had to respond in some way to competitors, because their monetization features were hurting TikTok’s DAU and retention metrics.

Around the same time I did a small research of how much the new Creativity Program pays out. You know what? It turned out that even back then the RPM rates were about 10-15 times higher than Youtube Shorts (although I realize that the comparison is not entirely objective, because they use two different monetization models and RPMs are counted differently). 

As Avi Gandhi quotes one of the TikTok creators he spoke to:

Again (sorry), there's never been a better time to be a creator. 💰💰💰

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