Social media content is a $9 billion a year Australian industry, according to an estimate by an AFR Intelligence study sponsored by YouTube.
"The nation’s enthusiastic content creators have doubled the volume of creative and original social media content posted online in the past two years to six million," says the Australian Financial Review.
The study, Culture Disrupted: Growth in Australia’s digital creative industries, says a wave of digital content creators is harnessing an explosion in technologies and platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to forge a path to global stardom, disrupting the traditional creative industries in the process.
“The creative economy and the digital economy are closely intertwined,” says Kate Pounder, chief executive officer of industry body Tech Council of Australia.
Of the $76 billion the technology sector directly contributes to Australia’s economy each year, $9 billion is derived from ecommerce and media platforms, including the creator economy.
YouTube, the most widely used digital platform in Australia, contributed $890 million to Australia’s GDP in 2022.
Content creators are becoming cultural entrepreneurs. Many now earn all or most of their income creating digital content.
These businesses are increasingly sophisticated content ecosystems with multiple online and offline revenue streams.
Some of these creators are hobbyists but a growing number are professional or semi-professional, and around one-fifth, or one million people, say they are the owners or founders of a content-related business.
This number is forecast to grow rapidly, with more than one-third (37%) of content creators in Australia wanting to build a revenue-generating business.
"Companies such as YouTube (long- and short-form video, music and podcasts), Spotify (music and podcasts), TikTok (short-form video) and Instagram (images and short-form video) have transformed traditional media and opened a new world of opportunity," says the study.
"Innovative forms of digital artistic expression have emerged across music, art and film. Not all content is to everyone’s taste, but technology has democratised the creative industries and removed traditional barriers to entry -- anyone can now become a digital creator regardless of age, income, language or location.
"This has fundamentally changed the business of the arts. It is far easier for individual creatives to earn an independent income, and a new corps of creative entrepreneurs has emerged.
"Their access to global markets is frictionless and the economic dividends are growing. Support businesses in the creative services sectors—including agencies, distribution partners, investors and marketing firms—are also discovering new models and revenue streams.
"Yet competition is intense in a crowded global marketplace. If Australia’s public, private, and regulatory institutions are to play the same catalytic role for the creator economy as they did for traditional cultural exports, support mechanisms for the cultural and creative industries need to adapt to the new reality."
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