Larger, younger, faster, harder: expansion, transformation, and inequality in YouTube’s creator economy (2019–2026)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The growth of YouTube's creator economy raises a question that accounts of individual success and precarity cannot settle: how are the conditions of participation changing across the platform? Comparing two population-scale crawls from 2019 and 2026, we examine expansion, changes in production, and the distribution of attention across millions of channels. The population above the 1,000-subscriber threshold for advertising monetization grew from 4.4 million to 24.5 million, while its video catalogues grew ninefold. Expansion was strongest in South, Southeast, and East Asia, with India's share of channels declaring a country rising from 10 to 27 percent. This growth accompanied substantial turnover: most channels recorded in 2019 had no recent upload in 2026, and continued participation differed sharply by prior standing. Production also changed fundamentally. Median video duration fell from 247 to 60 seconds, with shortening across every content category and channel size. Among channels above 100,000 subscribers, new entrants accounted for most of the shift toward short form, while most continuing incumbents also shortened their output. Attention became more concentrated even among the same channels observed at both dates, and advertising revenue grew more slowly than the population meeting the subscriber threshold. These findings show how the output imperative extends from producing more to adapting what is produced, while sustained participation remains sharply unequal. They also place the increasingly Asian geography of the creator economy at the center of questions about platform labor, opportunity, and precarity.
Source: SocArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7220834951