this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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fun fact! this is not how the entertainment industry works.
The actual creators have long been paid for their work when a film/series releases, the only people who profit from the sales are those who own the IP, which is usually the production company (and the actors sometimes, if they decided to take a gamble and agreed on recieving royalties instead of signing a fixed contract. Or rarely the director, if their name alone can sell a film)
unless it's like a fully indie film, self made, self produced, and self published, people who made the thing never see the sales money
& there is very little inbetween those two extremes, only thing that comes to my mind is works either commissioned by, or sold to a streaming service (& most of the time creators lose the IP rights if they do that but still recieve royalties, then it's up to the creator team to share the royalties money).
so far the only exception to all this bullshit that i know of is Nebula
Fun thing about that service is that it was started by a group of YouTube creators who started by making an advertising service that was designed to share profit fairly (as opposed to their competition which aimed to extract as much money from advertisers and as much as they could from YouTube channels)
After the adpocalypse they started a competing video service with similar ethics (Nebula)
If Simon Whistler put his channels on nebula, I'd hardly use YouTube for anything but music
This is the Wendover video on the subject
I think what I love most about this model is that rather than remove their main videos from YouTube (I know there's a bunch of bonus content and originals), they keep them on there and pay out creators the same as for any other sponsor spot. It makes the barrier to entry much lower for new creators, but it also means YouTube is basically subsidising their ad-free tier for them. I genuinely believe that decision is one of the reasons they've been so successful, compared to some similar video services that are fully gatekept with their content. Dropout being the notable exception.
At the end of the day, I guess it proves the point that piracy is often about reasonable and affordable access. I'm happy to pay Nebula my money because it's actually going to the creatives involved. Or it's getting spent on awesome originals, without having to appeal to some braindead media executive (they currently split things 50/50). I don't have to worry about being a product either, as YouTube still gathers your watch history to sell ads on Google's other platforms.
They also bothered right at the start to set things up so they can never become a faceless corporation exploiting creatives, because it's a co-op between all of the creators. They did sell a minority stake at one point to CuriosityStream to raise capital for more originals and engineers for apps, but it required a vote amongst all of the creatives. They're already profitable too
(Sorry I realise you already know most/all of this, it's more for others reading these comments.)
Your bracketed comment: that is the normal way of comment boards, I like intensifier comments like this. It's the "yes and" of the internet
Cheers for saying so, I absolutely agree! I just often get people thinking I'm arguing instead, it feels like it's my autism making me seem a bit intense at times when I'm just info-dumping about a topic I like :)
And also piracy does not automatically equal losing profits. If there is a show I want to watch, but I can't pirate it, then I simply don't watch it. And in this case, where the options are either me pirating the show or me not watching it at all, neither situation takes away profits from anyone nor gives anyone profits.
and let's not forget that piracy still allows for the most powerful form of advertisement - word of mouth. You might've not paid to watch something, but if it was good and you recommended it to your friends, they might!
back in the old Internet days the music studio Two Steps From Hell gained popularity nearly exclusively through piracy. I'm not even sure if they sold any albums before the widespread reupload of their music happened. I myself found out about them from a long deleted anime music video. And I have since bought several of their CDs and saw them live in Europe (after fans have begged them for nearly a decade to go on a tour). Would I have known they even existed if their music wasn't spreading like illegal wildfire in the early 2010s? probably not, which would be a shame because they're one of my all time favourite band-thingies idk how to call them
While they are still insufficient, residuals do exist. It's why SAG and WGA went on strike last year, since streaming residuals were (and to a degree still are) garbage. It's not as directly tied to sales as if they received points, but with Hollywood accounting that's a risk. Though if you're talking about Nebula, maybe this is more about YouTube creators which is a different can of worms.
Well, they're negligible enough that the fact they exist wasn't covered anywhere during my filmmaking degree, and i took all the extra business/law modules :')
And it was just the writers & actors right? What about all the editors, audio mixers, audio recorders, camera men, gaffers? riggers, vfx people, script supervisors, storyboard artists, props & costumes department, even runners! There's just so much work to be done by so many people to bring a script to life, and we're yet to hear of an editor/camera op/runner who lucked out by being a part of an accidentally famous billion dollar film and then never had to work again. Apart from producers, directors, actors, and writers sometimes - everyone's work, though essential for audio visual media to exist, is rarely rewarded with a share of the profits it makes
Nebula has been slowly surpassing just "rebranded youtube content" so to speak. They've started financing films and plays like for Abigail Thorn, and they're still true to their founding ethos. It's no longer just higher quality youtube content, and i do hope to see them one day become more widely known and popular
They are very much as a whole not negligible. They can be--people can get checks for cents sometimes. But they wouldn't go on strike and sign a deal if it never amounted to anything. I'm not even in the industry and have a passing familiarity with the concept; I've just been reading about it and listening to people from it for years.
DGA also has residuals in their contract. IATSE might for some roles, but you can't feasibly give everyone involved in a production residuals. The point of residuals is to hold over people in roles that are very fickle and can go years between jobs, like everyday working actors and writers. If you're going years between jobs getting hired for craft services, your food might just suck.
It would be great if everyone could get a share, but that's not realistic. Big productions can have thousands of people who work on them. Having to send the carpenter on a film a check for two cents yearly would create insane administrative overhead. There has to be a line somewhere.
that line sure is making it so the production company gets 95% of the profits.