The great promise of the creator economy was the ability for creatives to eschew traditional gatekeepers and produce content with direct support from their audience. While some of that has come true, the creator economy has also produced many of the same ills as the broader market, with the rich getting richer and the divide between top earners and the rest of us growing wider.
On most major platforms, the money funnels to the tippy top. On Twitch, the streaming site for gamers, more than half of all revenue generated goes to just the top 1% of earners, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Data about Twitch earnings became available because of a hack, and it revealed a struggling underclass of creators; just 5% of streamers on Twitch have even made over $1,000 in the past year. Three-quarters of Twitch streamers have made less than $128, and more than half have earned less than $28 — so low that they can’t even get paid, as Twitch requires $100 for a payout.
