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What the end of YouTube Originals could mean for the future of streaming independent filmmaking

Clayton J. Hester
2 min readJan 28, 2022

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Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

YouTube says it’s going to double down on creator-generated content.

This is really auspicious news.

As opposed to trying to be Netflix, this should allow YouTube to compete with Netflix its own unique way: presenting the works of its creators.

After all, could you imagine what an advantage it would be for Netflix if the service allowed individual and independent creators to upload directly, instead of funding and spawning a hundred new shows at a time?

Yes, YouTube is of course a very crowded place, and it’s difficult to be discovered.

This, however, is true of any place you go on the web.

“Today, there are over 2M creators in the YouTube Partner Program and our creator community has never been more successful: we’ve paid more than $30B to creators, artists, and media companies over the last three years,” chief business officer Robert Kyncl said in a statement.

He says the funding will make a “greater impact on even more creators when applied towards other initiatives, like our Creator Shorts Fund, Black Voices Fund, and Live Shopping programming to name a few.”

This changes things and provides an opportunity for creators to come into the limelight.

What all this means exactly, who knows, but it will provide new opportunities for creators, and for a diverse group of creators, and it will be interesting to see where this goes.

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Clayton J. Hester
Clayton J. Hester

Written by Clayton J. Hester

Country boy. Explorer of the creative process & life, the arts, storytelling, innovation and history of ideas. Omnia in gloriam Dei facite — claytonjhester.com

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