What’s here, what’s coming, and what’s possible for creators in 2025 and beyond.
And yet, creators are facing more obstacles than ever. Volatile platforms, unpredictable income, difficulty reaching followers… the list goes on and on.
Because despite all of these challenges, there are signs that a new fundamental shift is underway toward a more creator-first future.
We surveyed
Here’s what we learned... and why we’re so f*cking excited about it.
The creator-fan relationship used to be the beating heart of the social internet. The ‘follow’ and ‘subscribe’ buttons allowed fans to keep up with creators they loved, and helped creators build loyal, energized communities around their art.
But today, fans’ feeds are increasingly filled with recommended posts for creators they don’t know, along with ads, sponcon, and “brain rot” – the sort of stuff that keeps you watching, but doesn’t provide lasting value. What happened?
A social media rec-ing ball
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The shift away from the follow was led by Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, but no one perfected it quite like TikTok and their ‘For You’ page. Instead of giving users control over what they see based on who they follow, TikTok serves up a feed based on what they predict will be most engaging.
Overcorrection toward short-form
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Any platform whose business model relies on ad revenue is incentivized to value engagement and watch time. So it makes sense that those platforms would heavily feature short-form, which fans report being more likely to engage with.
But by leaning all the way into short-form at the expense of long-form, platforms are preventing creators from providing more value to their audiences… and earning more money.
Pros and consequences
The way that major platforms currently organize their feeds is all about maximizing attention, watch time, and ad revenue. This approach has broadly earned the nickname ‘The Algorithm’, and creators aren’t shy in venting their frustrations about how it’s disconnecting them from their followers.
Creators Feel Manipulated
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A creator’s decision of what to make should be based on what excites them and their fans the most. But creators increasingly feel forced to post memes, trends, clickbait, and sensationalism, because they understand that’s what will perform well.
Creators feel hamster-wheeled
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The creative process is not an assembly line. It requires time for experimentation and exploration. Yet a majority of creators say they feel pressured to create new work all the time, or else the platforms will stop showing their work in fans’ feeds.
Creators feel gatekept
Platforms do offer following-only feeds, but those feeds are only useful if they’re used. By deprioritizing the follow, platforms are increasingly serving as gatekeepers between creators and their fans.
Creators feel destabilized
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It’s not just that platforms are forcing creators to play a game they don’t like. They’re also changing the rules all the time, and that volatility has a direct impact on creators’ bottom lines. In fact, a majority of creators agree it’s harder to build a business now than it was five years ago.
Creators feel trapped
Creators have begun to realize that they don’t actually own the relationships with their own fans on many of the major platforms. They don’t have emails or contact info. They don’t have any way to continue reaching those fans if they ever go somewhere else. The platforms keep all of that for themselves.
But if you don’t own the fan relationships, then ultimately they’re not your fans. They’re just the platforms’ users.
Difficulty reaching fans, burnout, unpredictable income, the fall of ‘the follower’… it sounds pretty rough for creators. So why are we feeling so optimistic?
Because creators’ values are changing, and there are growing signs that the internet is starting to change with them.
Creators’ needs are evolving
As the creator economy grows, more creators are deciding to seriously pursue creativity long-term. Which means their values are shifting toward ways to achieve long-term stability instead of chasing short-term metrics.
The Direct-to-fan market is growing
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It’s been a wild ride for creators these past few years. The 2020 pandemic caused an outpouring of online creativity… but as the world opened back up all of that momentum began to slow. Some even wondered whether the creator economy had peaked.
New players are emerging
With that growth comes an incredible opportunity for new ideas, new platforms, and new solutions to creators’ biggest challenges.
Not only has this new creator economy helped give creators more of what they want, it also puts competitive pressure on the major platforms to adapt as well… or be left behind.
One reason creators now value building fan relationships over follower counts is because they’ve realized an important truth: it’s actually a small minority of their fans who make the most outsized impact on their income, and how energized their community is overall. Some call these fans true fans, or real fans, or superfans. We’ll call them *core fans*.
What is a core fan?
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Whereas casual fans might passively see what a creator posts when it’s served up to them, core fans actively want more. They talk about their favorite creator’s work with friends and other fans, they get involved in the creative process, they consider their fandom a significant piece of their identity, and they’re much more likely to buy subscriptions, merch, and tickets.
An engine for growth
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Core fans are more likely to energize the rest of a creator’s community by engaging with other fans. In doing so, they can help snowball the fandom into a community that generates value on its own, even when the creator is not posting new work.
Not only does this added value make the community even more appealing for newer fans to want to join, it also takes the pressure off of the creator to be constantly creating.
Fandom that feels like fire
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This is only the beginning. Creators are overwhelmingly seeking out more ways to deepen connections with their biggest fans. That’s not to say follower count isn’t important to creators – it’s just not the only end goal anymore. The new driver motivating creators to build a large follower count is to have more chances to turn followers into fans, and fans into core fans.
In the past ten years, the idea of paying creators online for the value they provide has gone from essentially unheard of to totally normal. Today, millions of creative people are not only getting paid, they’re building entire media businesses around their work. And they’re confident that they’ll continue to grow well into the future.
Stability through fragmentation
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The major platforms are going through a lot right now. TikTok is fighting with Washington, YouTube and Instagram are fighting to win back attention from TikTok, X-née-Twitter is fighting to keep advertisers. And yet, unexpectedly, all of this volatility has actually helped creators by encouraging them to turn toward more stable, direct-to-fan revenue streams like subscriptions and sales of digital goods.
A Direct-to-fan future
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According to internal Patreon research, over half of the $290B that encompasses the potential of today’s creator economy comes from direct-to-fan value like ticket sales, courses, livestreams, and paid memberships.
This is great news for creators, because ad revenue and brand deals are inherently unpredictable, while direct-to-fan offerings like subscriptions and digital shops are more stable revenue streams, contributing to a clearer path to long-term success.
Creators love what they do
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Being a creator isn’t easy, but the people who do it live for the challenge. And despite the exacerbating threats of burnout and platform gatekeeping, a majority of creators feel very confident they can continue producing at the same or greater level of output as they do today.
Building what’s best for creators has been at the heart of everything Patreon has done since day one. Our goal with this report is not just to share what creators and fans want, but to use this information to build the future that they deserve.
Here are our biggest commitments for 2025 and beyond based on what we’ve found:
Providing a direct line of access
Incentivizing creative expression
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The major platforms are built around an old internet philosophy that ‘Content is King’. But there’s a problem with that philosophy: by centering everything around ‘content’ these platforms have commoditized the people who actually make the work.
We remain committed to building a space on the internet that won’t push creators toward any one kind of work to serve our own interests, or the interests of advertisers. Our goal is to incentivize creators to make what excites them most, because we believe that platforms should serve creators, and not the other way around.
Helping creators reach new fans
But over the past year we’ve invested in our own forms of discovery, including an Explore tab, creator-to-creator recommendations, gifting, autopilot, and even our own algorithmic recommendations, the combination of which is now sending millions of dollars to creators annually.
Patreon is demonstrating that it is possible to build discovery tools, and yes, even algorithms, that not only help creators reach new fans, but also deepen connections with existing fans, and ultimately build stronger communities and businesses.
I’m so used to the ‘brain-rot’ model… It would be great to have a version of social media that truly wants me to feel part of a community.”Max Kolomatsky
Video creator
Enabling long-term business success
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Patreon’s mission is to help fund the creative class, and right now we’re making good on that promise. Our goal is to continue to build even more direct-to-fan revenue sources for creators to help them provide more value to their fans, earn more income from that value, and build more stable, diversified businesses that are set up for long-term success.
Fostering energized fan communities
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We’ve spent a lot of energy over the past few years building new ways for creators to bring fans together, deepen relationships, and build fired-up fandoms. Based on what we’re hearing from creators and fans, we’re not letting up on the momentum anytime soon.
“Fame and fortune were never the goal. Spreading joy, touching lives, sharing the human experience, feeling less alone in a world that can be so damn isolating — that’s the only goal. Making a living doing that is the icing on the cake.”
- Creators want a space online to strengthen relationships with their most passionate fans, explore their creativity in its purest form, and grow sustainable businesses that they control and own.
- They deserve that space. And that’s exactly the future we’re continuing to build toward: one where fandoms thrive and professional creativity is possible for anyone.
San Francisco, California
In August 2024, Patreon’s research team conducted an in-depth survey with over 1,000 creators and 2,000 fans. The goal was to develop a nuanced understanding of the current state of the creator economy and its evolution. We partnered with NewtonX to capture a representative sample of creators and fans across platforms and genres in the United States.