|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Or a Facebook author page. Or an Amazon author profile. Or a Spotify account. Take your pick.
Creators keep getting told this all the time. Yes, it is true that with all these platforms, based on whether you are a writer, a musician, a singer, a painter, or any other creator, you get ready access to publish your work. And potential access to millions.
But as a creator, you must remember that these are not publishers the way they used to be, or music labels or painting galleries. Or whoever else who, in the earlier world, was responsible to curate work from artists and present it to the world by taking a risk on the artist so to speak.
These are platforms where there is no curation. They really don’t care. The more the merrier. They are not working for the creator. They are working for the audience. Because the audience is the product. They pay for the platform. And the platform offers them whatever they happen to choose, based on algorithms. Your work may not appear.
That is the reality. As a creator, you are stuck between the traditional gatekeeper publisher who wants to run his business and hence reduce risks by going with well-known names; and the open system platform who wants your content which will likely get lost in a forest where more the trees the merrier because that’s when the algorithm has its value for the platform’s user.
So as a creator, options are quite limited. The only real option is to earn your own audience and preserve them with consistent good quality work, and then hope that either the gatekeepers or the platforms notice you. Really.
***