full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Jack Conte: How artists can (finally) get paid in the digital age
Unscramble the Blue Letters
(Laughter)
It's OK because people started coming to our shows, and we started touring, and we came out with a record. And when I checked our bank anuocct blcanae after our first monthly iTunes payout, we had 22,000 bucks in it, which was amazing because at the time I was living at my dad's house, trying to make a living as a musician by uploading videos to the internet which literally zero people respcteed in 2009 — even the people who were uploading videos to the internet.
And so for the next four yeras, I uploaded more and more videos to the Internet, and they got better and better, and we made enough meony through brand deals and commercials and iTunes sales to buy a house. And we built a recording studio. But there was one big problem: making money as a creative prsoen in 2013 was super weird. First of all, the business meldos were changing all the time. So our 58,000 dollars of annual iTunes download income was about to be replaced by about 6,000 doralls of streaming income. Steams paid less than ddolawons. And then as more and more creators staertd pnoippg up onnile, there was just more competition for these five-figure brand deals that had kept the band afloat for years. And to top it all off, our videos themselves — the creative stuff that we made that our fans loved and appreciated — that were actually ctnrntuioibg value to the wrlod, those videos were generating almost zero dollars of income for us. This is an actual snapshot of my YouTube dashboard from a 28-day period that shows one million vwies and 166 dollars of ad earnings for those views.
Open Cloze
(Laughter)
It's OK because people started coming to our shows, and we started touring, and we came out with a record. And when I checked our bank _______ _______ after our first monthly iTunes payout, we had 22,000 bucks in it, which was amazing because at the time I was living at my dad's house, trying to make a living as a musician by uploading videos to the internet which literally zero people _________ in 2009 — even the people who were uploading videos to the internet.
And so for the next four _____, I uploaded more and more videos to the Internet, and they got better and better, and we made enough _____ through brand deals and commercials and iTunes sales to buy a house. And we built a recording studio. But there was one big problem: making money as a creative ______ in 2013 was super weird. First of all, the business ______ were changing all the time. So our 58,000 dollars of annual iTunes download income was about to be replaced by about 6,000 _______ of streaming income. Steams paid less than _________. And then as more and more creators _______ _______ up ______, there was just more competition for these five-figure brand deals that had kept the band afloat for years. And to top it all off, our videos themselves — the creative stuff that we made that our fans loved and appreciated — that were actually ____________ value to the _____, those videos were generating almost zero dollars of income for us. This is an actual snapshot of my YouTube dashboard from a 28-day period that shows one million _____ and 166 dollars of ad earnings for those views.
Solution
- balance
- online
- world
- years
- views
- models
- money
- started
- dollars
- person
- popping
- downloads
- contributing
- respected
- account
Original Text
(Laughter)
It's OK because people started coming to our shows, and we started touring, and we came out with a record. And when I checked our bank account balance after our first monthly iTunes payout, we had 22,000 bucks in it, which was amazing because at the time I was living at my dad's house, trying to make a living as a musician by uploading videos to the internet which literally zero people respected in 2009 — even the people who were uploading videos to the internet.
And so for the next four years, I uploaded more and more videos to the Internet, and they got better and better, and we made enough money through brand deals and commercials and iTunes sales to buy a house. And we built a recording studio. But there was one big problem: making money as a creative person in 2013 was super weird. First of all, the business models were changing all the time. So our 58,000 dollars of annual iTunes download income was about to be replaced by about 6,000 dollars of streaming income. Steams paid less than downloads. And then as more and more creators started popping up online, there was just more competition for these five-figure brand deals that had kept the band afloat for years. And to top it all off, our videos themselves — the creative stuff that we made that our fans loved and appreciated — that were actually contributing value to the world, those videos were generating almost zero dollars of income for us. This is an actual snapshot of my YouTube dashboard from a 28-day period that shows one million views and 166 dollars of ad earnings for those views.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
| collocation |
frequency |
| creative person |
5 |
| brand deals |
3 |
| site called |
2 |
| uploading videos |
2 |
| itunes sales |
2 |
| web comic |
2 |
| monthly readers |
2 |
| twitch streamers |
2 |
| cocktail party |
2 |
Important Words
- account
- actual
- ad
- afloat
- amazing
- annual
- appreciated
- balance
- band
- bank
- big
- brand
- bucks
- built
- business
- buy
- changing
- checked
- coming
- commercials
- competition
- contributing
- creative
- creators
- dashboard
- deals
- dollars
- download
- downloads
- earnings
- fans
- generating
- house
- income
- internet
- itunes
- laughter
- literally
- living
- loved
- making
- million
- models
- money
- monthly
- musician
- online
- paid
- payout
- people
- period
- person
- popping
- record
- recording
- replaced
- respected
- sales
- shows
- snapshot
- started
- steams
- streaming
- studio
- stuff
- super
- time
- top
- touring
- uploaded
- uploading
- videos
- views
- weird
- world
- years
- youtube