I was in my orthopedist’s office the other day, waiting for my SynVisc shot (left knee), when I chanced to read a magazine article about the Celebrity 100 “streaming” millionaires.
I’m so out of touch, I had no idea.
People are making ungodly amounts of money streaming music, humor, opinions, and gobs of trashy stuff to the billions of people on the planet who are connected to the Internet. The article I read was about “celebrities” who are raking in the dough, like P. Diddy ($130 million per year), Beyonce ($105 m), Howard Stern ($90 m), LeBron James ($86 m), Rush Limbaugh ($84 m), Ellen DeGeneres ($77 m), Kim Kardashian ($45 m), etc.
There’s a bunch of these folks that we already knew as “famous” who are really on top of the new way of doing business. They have followings on social media, and their followers must be clicking on website downloads, ads, VIP/premium upgrades, and such at a prodigious clip to forward dimes, quarters and dollars into the celebrity bank accounts.
Good for them; I’d hate to see ‘em go hungry.
In particular, the music business has really changed with the Web. Recording artists aren’t beholden to producers, labels, and distributors like they used to be. I think Prince was the artist who decided that HE should make the real money from his art, not the record producers. Prince cut out the middlemen, selling product directly to his fans via the Internet.
Nowadays, artists give away their music as a means to gain followers, which translates into major venue live concerts, where they can make real money. Chance the Rapper, for example, made $33 million last year, despite the fact that he has never sold a physical album or signed a record deal. He freely distributes his work via a streaming service, and makes his money on festival gigs, arena dates, and has hooked up with some sponsors like Apple and Kit Kat. At the rate he’s going, 24-year-old Chance the Rapper could be rich someday.
Adam Sandler, the comedic actor who hasn’t made a funny movie in twenty years, amazingly made $50 million bucks last year, primarily as a result of a deal with Netflix, which streams their inventory of lousy, old Sandler movies to his bored and demented fans. Netflix reported in April that its members have spent 500 million hours watching Sandler’s movies since December 2015, an average of five hours of Sandler per subscriber. Mr. Sandler is laughing all the way to the bank. As the saying goes, “There’s no accounting for taste!”, and who cares when the cash register is ringing.
Speaking of taste, there seems to be an insatiable appetite out there for weird shit streamed to living room TVs, computers, and smart phones. Plain, ordinary people have become famous, on the Web, for performing asinine stunts, giving how-to instructions, and behaving badly on U-tube.
Anybody can play; just submit a video clip. If you get a lot of “likes”, then it’s time to monetize your product with ads, “premium” come-ons, and VIP treatment…at a small price. And, free stuff, too.
Morbidly obese people are now being rewarded for being gluttons. It appears that there are quite a few Web followers of very fat people, who are “liked” and followed because they are horrendously corpulent and proud of their multi-thousand calorie meals several times per day.
I don’t get the fascination, but some people do, apparently, and don’t mind shipping coin to the celebrity fatsos.
I’ve never given in to the social media thing: I’m not that interested in what you’re doing right now, and it’s none of your business what I’m doing. My “blog” site is not connected with Facebook or any other social media platform because I don’t want to be bothered with “likers” or “dislikers”. I don’t care if one thinks like me, or likes the things I like. Be yourself; that’s my motto. If you want to eat an extra large pizza for breakfast, go for it.
Personally, I’ve fallen prey to golf swing doctors on U-tube who offer “free” advice. Sure, they provide a few useful tips in their video, but to really take advantage of the SECRETS offered, one has only to click a button, for a nominal fee, and the “VIP lesson” is downloaded in an instant. And, once you fall for that, your e-mail is bombarded, once a week, with all manner of ads from other salespeople. Because your friendly golf pro supplemented his income by selling your email address to Madison Avenue.
That sucks for me, but not for the enterprising golf pro, who also has product ads on his U-tube site. He’s a digital entrepreneur who can also golf.
Obviously, your opinions and preferences are valuable to advertisers, politicians, and culture influencers. Every time you buy something at the supermarket, respond to a poll, or “like” something on a streaming service, that data goes into cyberspace to be manipulated into some form that will later be used to steer your behavior in a particular way. For that reason, I don’t respond to polls: I’d like to remain as mysterious as possible.
Can you imagine what our intelligence services know about you, as an individual? They might know you better than you do.
None of this digital economy that I’ve noted above existed twenty years ago. Back then, the jury was still out on how money was to be made on the Internet. Then, with the advent of social media and streaming services, the whole world changed and made multi-millionaires out of perceptive people like Ellen DeGeneres, Adam Sandler, Chance the Rapper, and the 1,000-pound Sisters.
People can say what they will about Donald Trump, but his mastery of social media made possible his election in 2016. He’s not the brightest guy in the room, but he knows how to put himself out there to the folks who are interested in his brand of politics. Prince would be impressed, although he probably wouldn’t vote for him.
It is almost scary to think what life will be like in twenty more years. Artificial intelligence will, undoubtedly, run the world, deciding what you want, when you want it, and if you’re willing to pay for it. Choice may not be necessary: the Algorithm in the Sky may decide that you want/need to watch an Adam Sandler movie tonight.
We may not need a President by then, either.