‘Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty
Mass-publishing markets are <i>very</i> strongly given to power-law distributions.  We hear that &quot;anybody can be famous&quot; (or successful, or ...), but <i>everybody</i> cannot be famous.  Attention and publicity are the ultimate zero-sum games:  no matter how large a given talent pool, there will only ever be ten top-ten spots, 100 top-100 spots.  All you&#x27;re doing by enlarging the pool <i>is amplifying the competition for those spots.</i><p>There&#x27;s another side to the equation, though, which is <i>the scope of the audience</i>.  Prior to modern technological methods, and I&#x27;m including here everything from relatively modern printing (say, 19th century onward), as well as phonograph, cinema, radio, television, and sound amplification, the reach of <i>any</i> given work was <i>small</i>.  A book might have a printing of several thousand copies (Adam Smith, <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, ~5,000 initial print run, and the cost at ￡5 was roughly a quarter of a working man&#x27;s <i>annual</i> wage).  A theatre might seat (or stand) a few thousand (the New Globe Theatre:  3,000), and the largest cities had populations of about a quarter million (London in 1600, more or less).  Transportation was slow and expensive (Smith again:  2 weeks, by stage coach or horse from Edinborough to London -- that&#x27;s how he travelled to university himself).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oldbaileyonline.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;Population-history-of-london.jsp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oldbaileyonline.org&#x2F;static&#x2F;Population-history-of...</a><p>As a consequence, <i>entertainment was strongly local</i>.  There might be small touring acts, local musicians, and in rare cases, artists with a noble or royal patron (think Shakespeare himself, after a fashion, or Handel, Bach, or a church appointment (Bach, Telemann, and others).  Art as a freestanding business was more-or-less a 19th century creation -- look especially at the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Impressionists, there are several excellent documentaries and biographies of each.<p>Technology increased the reach (and income) of <i>top performing</i> creators and stars, but <i>decreased</i> the viability of those further down the rankings.  Where it used to be possible to eke out a livelihood as a local or touring performer, this became far more difficult.  (There&#x27;s something of a reverse shift in that the overall entertainment budget has increased sufficiently that the field has expanded, but the overall balance holds true.)<p>By way of quantification, I&#x27;ve been looking at the question of how many actors there are, and how many of those are considered &quot;A-list&quot;.  For the first:<p>How Many Actors are in L.A.?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hollywoodsapien.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;07&#x2F;05&#x2F;how-many-actors-are-in-l-a&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hollywoodsapien.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;07&#x2F;05&#x2F;how-many-actors-are-i...</a><p>Based on SAG and AFTRA membership and some adjustments, anthropologist Scott Frank comes up with the figure 108,640, of whom 21,728 are working actors.  Los Angeles itself provides about 80% of all acting work, and USBLS data claim 1.77% of Angelenos work in entertainment, more than any other U.S. city.<p>How many of those are considered &quot;A-List&quot; actors?  The definitions are ... fluid ... but generally about ten, no more than twenty.  The Ulmer scale is a 100-point model estimating a star&#x27;s value to a film.  The 2009 top ten list, in order, were:  Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Will Ferrel, Reese Witherspoon, Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell Crowe.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.webcitation.org&#x2F;5mnRWTArh?url=http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ulmerscale.com&#x2F;Mainarticle.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.webcitation.org&#x2F;5mnRWTArh?url=http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ulmersc...</a><p>Consider that given power law relationships, the <i>earnings</i> of a given star are going to be 1&#x2F;n of the first-ranked, income falls off <i>tremendously</i> quickly.  VSauce has a surprisingly good video on the topic:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fCn8zs912OE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fCn8zs912OE</a><p>Upshot:  We&#x27;re not all going to fame our way to wealth and riches.  Or even subsistence survival.  It&#x27;s <i>not</i> a creators world.