Creators are caught in a value trap: the easier it is to distribute your work, the less you can charge for it.
Digital platforms have one business model: make creative work abundant, then profit from controlling access. Spotify devalued music. Streaming gutted film economics. Social media commoditized celebrity.
Their secret? They don't need your work to succeed—they just need someone's work, and plenty of it.
If you're a filmmaker, here's your first reality check:
Don't put your movie on streaming. Full stop.
"But how am I supposed to make money at $0.03 per stream?"
You're not.
The streaming model works exclusively at massive scale—billions of views, not millions. The platforms win through volume. You can't.
It's impossible to be "oversubscribed" if you have infinite supply; price inevitably crashes to zero.
Instead, exclusively sell your work where you control the supply-demand balance:
- Release in as many theaters as you can sell out
- Limit seats or dates
- Create tiered access
- Own your audience relationship—don't rent it from platforms
Consider the Gmail launch strategy: invitation-only access creating artificial scarcity for something inherently unlimited. This wasn't desperation—it was genius.
Platforms evangelize "reach" because free content serves their economics. They've convinced creators that exposure pays bills. It doesn't.
Giving away your primary creative output (the film, album, or book that should be your income source) to "build an audience" is like opening a restaurant where everyone eats the main courses for free, hoping to stay in business off of tips.
The path out of the value trap is counterintuitive: restrict access to create favorable supply-demand dynamics. When platforms push you to flood the market, do the opposite—maintain scarcity to preserve value. The law of supply and demand hasn't been repealed just because we've moved online.
True independence isn't just creative freedom—it's escaping the value trap by designing scarcity into your business model from day one.