Unlocking the Gates: America's New Creative Economy

Citation: Robert J. Shapiro, Siddhartha Aneja (2018) Unlocking the Gates: America's New Creative Economy.
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Unlocking the Gates: America's New Creative Economy
Download: http://www.recreatecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ReCreate-Creative-Economy-Study-Report.pdf
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Summary

Uses publicly available data, estimates, and heuristics to estimate a lower bound of 2016 revenue to U.S. independent creators on 9 platforms: Amazon Publishing, eBay, Etsy, Instagram, Shapeways, Tumblr, Twitch, WordPress, YouTube. Notably, other platforms are excluded, music is not accounted for due to lack of data from relevant platforms, and earnings not directly from sales, subscriptions, or advertising on those platforms is excluded.

Finds 14.8 million Americans earned $5.9 billion revenue on above 9 platforms for independent creations posted on the same platforms. Provides estimate for each of 50 states.

Also estimates revenue resulting from traffic to above sites from several social media platforms.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

In addition to the exclusions noted by the authors, crowdfunding and patronage as a revenue source are excluded, as is programming/software as a creative product.

Uncritical blog post at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180214/23162739240/everyone-creates-new-empirical-data-shows-just-how-much-internet-has-enabled-new-creative-economy.shtml