First, it's not just big YouTubers moving towards the patron model. I see many smaller creators doing the same, and I'm some cases thriving.
Second, I don't agree that the patron model will become the dominant model. I think this line of thinking is more of a medieval model from which the word derives. In terms of the number of people paying by ads & PII or through patronage, the ads& PII crowd will win. (the dollar value per contribution might be lower).
Third, I don't have any reason to believe that creators will "look back and wonder" why they would like to attract a million viewers. I think it might be a very good way to advertise to their patr(e)on-age.
Finally, there is another revenue model of direct sponsorship / placed ads which you do not seem to consider. I think it is a major contributor to the economics of medium-large creators.
Maybe my gut feeling is a response to your notion of the "attention economy being doomed" because "there are too many people online". To me, it seems the opposite. The attention economy is thriving because there are so many people online.
(Interesting topic! Thanks for making me type all of this)
I disagree with this, though I'd love (and genuinely hope) to be proven wrong. It's hard for me to imagine starting from nothing and building up a profitable following the way people have on Youtube without Youtube's userbase and infamous "algorithm".
It might just be a matter of semantics, though. I agree that content/media existed before Youtube and will exist long after it -- but I'm not sure Youtube's niche of non-traditional content creators without the money or social networks traditionally needed to publish media could do so in its absence.
More prosaically, there's a big gulf between starting out, and reaching 1,000 true fans throwing some money at you every month. Youtube plays a pretty big role IMO in bridging that gap, and without it, only people with traditional support networks or in higher economic classes will be able to afford "doing content creation" full time.
I feel like a common response (and one sort of echoed in another reply) is "Good, let's bring the old internet back, when people did things for passion and not money". I sympathize a lot with this, but I also think a lot of content I enjoy is the product of people putting tons of time and effort into making "good content" -- time spent doing pretty miserable and uninteresting work. So I'm inclined to think the end of the "youtube era" will bring the end of a certain class of creator.
Not that I think this is preventable, since like others here, I think the whole ad thing is unsustainable, and we're seeing more and more writing on the wall. Hopefully Patreon + co. and more decentralized content aggregators like Mastodon can fill the void well enough.
And if you can make it to 1000, it's pretty easy to make it to 2000, and then more - of course just getting to that 1000 can be a long slow challenge to be sure.
*Excluding the more expensive subscriptions, donations, “bits”
If ad revenue shrinks, making ads less useful for them (or even if not, given the patronage trend) why wouldn’t Google just enable the patronage model as a monetization model within YouTube, unencumbered by concerns for ad-based (or general audience) monetization.
Going to a three-tier (1) free/nonmonetized, (2) premium (with or without ads as an alternative to viewer-pays-google flat rate), (3) paid-subscriber-only model for content (where any creator could particpate in any combination of tiwrs with different content), where the last would be free of most of the content monetization, or even just content, restrictions that apply at the other tiers, would seem to be a fairly simple and natural evolution of the service. And you could easily have the Google share at the last (and even the middle tier) ratchet down with longevity and established user base so you'd pay a bigger share when you benefit most from the platform for discovery, and less when you need it less.
The catch is that Google gets a 30% cut, compared to 3-5% for Patreon and such.
Still, that's an awful lot better than 30%.
The attention economy is doomed, too many people are online now for it to be viable. Patronage and connecting with followers will come to dominate. Not to oversimplify, but there's a theory that all an artist needs to be financially stable is 1,000 true fans chipping in $2 a month.
Eventually creators will look back and wonder why they ever bothered driving millions of random people toward a platform that mostly pays someone else.