Lost cities, creator merchants, artist ownership, AR Lenses, and Cookin Soul
December 11, 2020 Edition (#35)
Happy mid-December to the global Trilliuminati. The end (of the year) is nigh. By way of brief housekeeping—[Ed.: the unwanted theme of 2020]—you should expect one more edition next week, unless something radically unexpected happens [Ed.: another 2020 theme.] Then, I will dedicate myself to roughly two weeks of seasonal revelry & assorted festivities, including dodging maskless neighbors, avoiding “social” videocall obligations, and working assiduously to fill the countless holes that my anxiety-ridden dog has dug across the Trillium Grounds. We will return in 2021.
“The end is getting nearer and nearer”
Geo’s lost cities
One of the more enjoyable parts of my stationary Thanksgiving “holiday” was listening to 99% Invisible’s episode: “The Lost Cities of Geo,” in which Roman Mars’ dulcet tones deliver the story of the Geocities empire. I won’t do justice to the ~45min episode here, but I recommend giving it a listen at some point, particularly if you recall the wild world of early Geocities sites: questionable color palettes, unnecessary animations, mismatched “ransom note” fonts, etc.
Two of the more interesting themes explored are the ways in which the early internet took on the shape of neighborhoods in the physical world—which made it easier for neophytes to grasp the concept of a web destination—and the idea of digital archaeology, conducted by teams of volunteers who have dedicated themselves to preserving much of “the early web.”
Much of the show centers on this latter theme, which I found particularly interesting. In case you’re keen to go down the rabbit hole of projects that document these artifacts of the Geocities era, boy, do I have some links for you. I’d start with One Terabyte of the Kilobyte Age, a site that unpacks the famous “Geocities torrent” that contained all of the Geocities listings that were saved by The Archive Team before the site disappeared from connectivity in 2009. For the record (👏👏👏), The Archive Team is a collective dedicated to “saving our digital heritage.” [Ed.: One day, perhaps the ruins of the marginal civilization briefly known as Trillium will be included within.]
There’s also a corresponding Tumblr (of course), with screenshots from old Geocities homepages. Also worth a look are Cameron’s World, which offers an aesthetically on-brand way to navigate amongst old Geocities sites, and the beautiful but less-functional deletedcities.net. TikTok can wait. You’ll enjoy the trip down memory lane to a kinder, gentler, uglier internet. It was weird, your honor:
The “multi-SKU” creator
There’s generally a rather strict Trillium policy that prohibits reposting content from the VC Industrial Complex, largely for my own sanity. Sometimes, though, I come across articles that are too squarely in the “Trillium Wheelhouse” to ignore. One such article is Hunter Walk’s recent piece on what he calls the “multi-SKU creator.” SKU stands for a “stock-keeping unit,” used in identifying a specific product.
For context, Walk—a partner at Homebrew Ventures—recently invested in Stir: the creator economy startup that we wrote about a few weeks back. In his post, he documents several of the trends that will be familiar to the Trilliuminati, including the migration of creator talent from institutions to platforms that enable them to run independent, direct-to-consumer businesses. Walk argues that, while it’s easy to do back-of-the-envelope math that can lead someone to believe that they can take a large Twitter following and start a successful paid Substack, the reality is much more difficult. As he writes: “Very few ‘Substack writers’ will make 100% of their income from their newsletter.” I agree, and I am something of an expert because I make 0% of my income from it. I also believe that there is a much smaller number of writers, for instance, who have a personal following that is large enough that converting 3-7% of them—the average number quoted for conversion to paying customers from a creator’s Twitter following—can result in a meaningful subscriber-base.
Instead, a couple of dynamics will unfold. First, creators will join forces by building informal “bundles” for which they can charge one price and deliver appreciably more value to consumers. This bundling behavior is exemplified by “The Everything Substack,” a collection of writers who might not have the audience size as individuals—nor the time and energy to produce high volumes of content day in and day out—but who make a thematically coherent and attractive package. The ability of the bundle’s creators to then market to each constituent’s creator community is a significant advantage, particularly in a world where distribution is the name of the game. [Ed: in the podcast world, there is a related concept of feed-swapping, where two shows enable each other to place episodes in their counterpart’s feed as a means to reach a new audience.] Over the past 9 months, I’ve been part of a large number of creator conversations, and the question of “how to get my content discovered” is one that cuts across all of them.
The second dynamic is what Walk refers to as the entry of the “multi-SKU creator”: the product is the creator-as-a-brand, and every possible derivative thereof. Walk catalogues the variety of SKUs that newsletter creators can produce and sell: newsletters, podcasts, speaking engagements, book deals, consulting, guest features, and more. I’ve drawn similar conclusions from my interactions with creators; this week alone, I met with three creators who each make and sell at least three different types of products. None of those creators felt that they fell into a specific “type” of content or industry “vertical.” They all believed that their personal brand was the magnetic core of their creative and commercial appeal.
These creators are also quite sophisticated at using different technology platforms to feed the entirety of their customer funnels. One person I spoke to yesterday, a musician, puts his music on Spotify and Soundcloud “to drive awareness,” uses Instagram to develop his personal profile, and built a Shopify site to sell drum samples, merch, and other secondary products. He also offers production lessons on an hourly basis. While it’s still early days for these “digital SKUs,” consumers are increasingly willing to buy them. Gen Z, in particular, grew up with digital payments and online content, and seems willing to trade cash for creations. [Ed.: Per a recent study, ~80% of Gen Zers already use a digital wallet at least once a month.] As this population continues to mature and increase its spending power, it’ll be interesting to see whether their behavior shapes the mainstream creative economy, particularly as more technology platforms emerge to enable this type of commercial interaction.
Just put it on the blockchain already (🦀)
This one is for Reader KM, whose blockchain allergies are appropriately severe and who will no doubt be quite displeased with the inclusion of this story. I was willing to take hush money to leave it out, but, for better and for (much) worse, Trillium remains a no-cash-involved type of situation.
A disclaimer: I am not a crypto guy. I claim no special knowledge nor overwhelming interest in cryptocurrencies. Same applies to blockchain, etc. However, I will confess to spending a few recent weekends reading about some of the new models emerging that tie artistic creation & ownership to blockchain foundations. This was a sexy area to pontificate about a few years ago, but remained relatively unsubstantiated by actual functioning software products until more recent times.
One interesting company, in this vein, is Foundation, which brands itself as “culture’s stock exchange,” built on the Ethereum blockchain. Their product allows consumers to “discover and invest in digital artworks,” effectively becoming collectors of “digital-first” assets. Creators, meanwhile, get the ability to participate in a marketplace where dynamic pricing is at play and to preserve the ability to profit from secondary sales of their work.
It’s an intriguing model, and one that is explored at greater length in a recent A16Z podcast and corresponding post on crypto-powered auction sites and marketplaces. The general premise of the piece is that non-fungible tokens—or NFTs, “unique assets that are not interchangeable”—are enabling consumer-investors and creators to transact digitally in a way that was not possible before, thereby creating new business models for creators. In the offline world, an artist doesn’t participate in the upside from secondary sales of their work. In the online world, via NFTs, they can. For many artists who otherwise miss out on the lion’s share of the proceeds from their work—traded “post-fame”—this is a meaningful shift.
Hearing investors discuss these topics ad nauseam is about as enjoyable as living in America in 2020, but listening to artists talk about the impact these technologies can have is more compelling. I recommend the article/podcast, and taking a look at some of the work produced by artists on Foundation. Here’s one example from artist Signe Pierce, who appears in the A16Z interview:
Snap’s new Lens fund
Tech Crunch’s Sarah Perez reported that Snap has just announced a new fund of $3.5M “that will be directed toward supporting Snapchat Lens creators.” For non-Snapchat users, these Lenses are augmented reality (AR) products that “transform how you look and view the world around you.” As these Lenses grow increasingly sophisticated, they’ve become a crucial component of the Snap experience to 180M+ Snap users who interact with a Snap Lens each day. As I’ve mentioned in the past, you could make an argument that Snap Lenses are now one of the most mainstream, widely adopted visual AR products available.
You may recall the news from last week’s Trillium regarding Snap’s new “Spotlight” program, designed to pay out roughly $1M a day (at present) across Snapchat creators who submit their content. Last week’s edition also covered Snap’s recent acquisition of Voisey: an app whose music creation and overdubbing tools will be integrated over the coming months.
Connecting the dots between these stories, and several before them, leads “one” [Ed.: us] to the conclusion that Snap has realized that the user-generated content wars are escalating and that there is an existential threat to their longevity. If users find it more entertaining to create and consume content on TikTok, they will simply spend their time there. And, of course, this is equally true of competitive pressure from IG, YouTube, Triller, Parler [Ed.: just kidding], and so forth. With many users globally stuck at home, the battle for eyeballs and mindshare amongst these social media “walled garden” apps has reached a fever pitch (pun not intended, honestly).
Snap’s response seems to be predicated on the idea that they must increase the breadth of content that can be created in the app (e.g., Voisey), while sweetening the incentives for creators to focus their efforts on the platform (e.g., Spotlight). This new fund speaks to a related effort: amplifying the availability and diversity of AR Lenses that users can interact with inside the app. Indeed, as Snap writes on its Lens Studio site: “AR is core to the Snapchat experience.” Given that Snap CEO Evan Spiegel refers to his creation as a “camera company,” this is unsurprising.
With 1.5M Lenses available and “tens of thousands of Lens Creators worldwide,” Snap understands that this product component uniquely differentiates their app and the content it contains. While $3.5M may not sound like a lot of money—particularly in a world where other apps are willing to pay creators far more for their talents—it does represent an ongoing commitment from Snap to its creator-base, and a further extension of what I find to be a thoughtfully aggressive approach to reinforcing Snap’s value to its users.
For your ears only
One of my most reliable creature comforts in recent months has been the series of remix singles and mixtapes produced by Spanish DJ/producer duo, Cookin Soul. I’ve bumped into Cookin Soul’s work on Bandcamp occasionally over the past few years and always enjoyed it, but the pandemic has unleashed a creative fury that is now most welcome in all 17 pairs of headphones at Trillium HQ. In the spirit of our ongoing focus on creator commerce: beyond Cookin Soul’s musical talent, their commercial chops must be duly acknowledged. Very few producers manage to use what feels like every available technology platform to distribute their work, not to mention selling things like drum packs (at obscene price-points) directly to fans from their website.
It’s worth checking out the entire Cookin Soul back catalogue, but especially the recent deepfake videos they’ve been making to accompany their latest remixes. I’ve had the Kendrick Lamar & Action Bronson freestyles on repeat over the past few weeks. Come for Kendrick as the Incredible Hulk, stay for Action in Pirates of the Caribbean. And these beats. Spin below:
See you all next week.
N