Creative Control

We’re taking a little break right now while we work on the next season. But we’ll be back soon with new conversations and stories about what’s changing in the creator economy. In the meantime, we wanted to share a conversation from Fast Company’s Innovation Festival last fall. Associate editor Yaz Gagne moderated the panel, Monetizing Your Brand in the Creator Economy, featuring Tracy Chan from SoundCloud, Ami Gan from OnlyFans, Ritu Khanna from Shopify, and entrepreneur and content creator Jackie Aina.

Last week we talked to some creators about how they’re approaching Black History Month this year. If you haven’t already listened to that episode, please check it out. And for this episode, I’m keeping the conversation going with Tiffany Hardin, founder and CEO of Gild Creative Group. Tiffany shared her perspective as an influencer marketing agent who has all the do’s and, most importantly, don’ts of how brands should be thinking about Black History Month.

Black History Month is almost upon us. It’s a time meant to celebrate Black culture, but as we’ve seen year after year, it’s also a time for racist trolls, tone-deaf brand campaigns, and corporate platitudes that amount to little change if any at all. It’s a lot to deal with, so I wanted to explore how Black creators are handling it all. Hear how Tyra Blizzard (@tblizzy), Garrison Hayes (@garrisonhayes), and Millana Snow (@millanasnow) are navigating February this year.

Back in the fall of 2021, a whistleblower named Frances Haugen dropped a bombshell. She released what would become known as the Facebook Papers, a massive set of internal documents that essentially showed the harmful impact Facebook and Instagram can have on society and politics. Deeper still, the documents showed that Facebook knew of those dangers but seemed to put profits over everything.

It’s easy to forget just how big a story this was, given our relentless news cycle. So, to understand what impact the Facebook Papers really had, I spoke to Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Bill Burton, a political consultant working with Frances Haugen.

We’ve discussed where the creator economy is headed this year. And there are general trends that I do think will be important to keep in mind in the short term. But what about the long term? The creator economy is still relatively young. So what will it look like once the dust and hype really settle down? Dmitry Shapiro, cofounder and CEO of app platform Koji, has some thoughts that are pretty surprising. For starters, the creator economy as we know it is dying.

If you haven’t heard of Samara Joy, I’m about to put you on. Samara is a jazz singer whose buttery vocals have earned her some of the top accolades jazz has to offer, including two Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal album. And I think it’s worth mentioning here that Samara is only 23. She’s being touted as the “first Gen Z jazz singing star.” So it’s no surprise that her career got a massive boost by going viral on social media. But she’ll be the first to tell you, and I think it’s clear from her level of talent, that she’s much more than her age or social media presence. In our conversation, Samara charts her career from honing her talent in the Bronx to becoming an international jazz star. She also explains what her success could mean for jazz, and why she’s treading lightly on social media.

Kate Davis, KC Ifeanyi, and Amelia Hemphill discuss the biggest stories at Fast Company this past year and share their favorite moments from Fast Company podcasts. Kate highlights The New Way We Work's 4-part miniseries "Ambition Diaries," which examined the effects of the pandemic on women's progress in the workplace. KC reviews some of the biggest trends in the creator economy. Amelia explains some of the most innovative approaches to sustainability, including a toilet that incinerates your bowel movement under water. Finally, Kate, KC, and Amelia share their New Year's resolutions.

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It’s been another destabilizing year across the board. But the creator economy has surprisingly held strong—despite a looming recession, increasing pressure from lawmakers to ban TikTok in the U.S., and Elon Musk being Elon Musk at Twitter. The creator economy is currently valued at $16.4 billion, a 19% increase from 2021. So will that energy carry over into 2023? To get a better understanding of where the creator economy is heading next year, I interviewed Stephanie Smith, head of talent strategy at UTA IQ; Zehra Naqvi, senior investment associate at Republic; and Madison Long, cofounder and CEO of Clutch.

This interview has been a long time coming because Shavone Charles is someone I’ve known for quite a few years now. When I met her, she was the head of global music and youth culture communications at Instagram. Prior to that, she held a similar position at Twitter. And last year, she became TikTok’s first head of global diversity and inclusion communications. Shavone is one of those people who has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to help creators of color gain more visibility and recognition, and she lays it all out in her new book, ‘Black Internet Effect.’ In my conversation with Shavone, we talk about her trailblazing career, how she’s developing her personal creative pursuits, and what she sees as the next step for creators of color.

You might have noticed that more and more social media platforms are offering paid versions of their services, like Twitter Blue, Snapchat Plus, and Discord Nitro. But what you may not have noticed is that this is nothing new. Social media platforms in China have had a huge head start in getting users to not only pay for features, but in creating features that truly are innovative. In this episode, Connie Chan, general partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, analyzes what Western companies should be learning from their successes.