Читать книгу Platforms and Cultural Production - Thomas Poell - Страница 23

This chapter has demonstrated how platforms are becoming central markets in key segments of the cultural industries, as an increasing number of cultural producers create, distribute, market, and monetize content and services through these “matchmakers.” This affects, in turn, how cultural producers operate as economic actors. Aligning their business models with those of platforms, they become subject to the economic dynamics of platform markets. For one, in platform-dependent modes of cultural production, “winner-take-all” dynamics, which have long characterized the cultural industries, are further intensified. Like other digital markets, platforms allow for direct network effects; the more users who join the platform, the more valuable it becomes. Yet, unlike other markets, platforms are also characterized by indirect network effects. That is, when more end-users join a platform, it becomes more valuable for complementors, and vice versa. When positive, these network effects not only enable platforms to rapidly become dominant markets, they also lead to greater disparities between cultural producers. While some creators, game publishers, and news organizations become hyper-visible, others remain largely invisible.

Second, cultural producers as complementors are subject to the volatility of platforms markets. In their efforts to entice end-users and complementors to join while staving off competition from legacy media companies, telecoms, and other platforms, platform companies are constantly evolving, changing pricing models, and adjusting access to their market. While all markets are inherently dynamic, platform markets are particularly capricious. When a platform has just launched, it tends to be highly accommodating to cultural producers, as it tries to grow its complementor population. When it reaches a “mature” stage, however, it can alter pricing models and platform regulations on its own terms, which instantly impacts tens of thousands of content producers. In the second half of this book, we will come back to this issue of volatility by pointing toward the precarity of platform labor and the contingent nature of platform creativity.

For now, let us return to the central argument of the book concerning the reorganization of power relations in the cultural sector. In economic terms, we can observe that platformization involves a simultaneous decentralization and centralization of economic power. Especially early on in a platform’s development, this process opens up new economic opportunities for cultural producers to find audiences and generate revenue. These opportunities are open not just to large media companies, but also to individual cultural producers. As such, platformization furnishes the potential for individual producers to be economically emancipated from legacy media companies. At the same time, when network effects materialize, platformization leads to extraordinary concentration of economic power held by a handful of platform corporations. In combination with the constant evolution of platform markets, this concentration of power is particularly problematic for cultural producers, as it exacerbates the uneven distribution of resources and other forms of economic inequality.