Do content streamers count as creators?

Content streaming is certainly disrupting the way in which consumers receive entertainment, news, information, and more. Periscope and Meerkat now allow regular people to live stream events and broadcast them over the entire web. Of course, this has brought a great deal of controversy and legal issues to the forefront too. When someone can live stream a major sporting event that is only otherwise available at a cost to the viewer, then people lose money, and they are not happy.

Now the question is this: Are content streamers the same as content creators who produce original written and visual content for businesses, organizations and consumers, often called copywriting, and who get paid for their content creation? Should content streamers be paid for what they produce even though they are not really "producing" anything in the strictest sense of the term? Does writers on any essay website write better than copywriters?

Content Streaming – a Little Background
The use of video content is certainly not new to the web. After all, YouTube has been around since 2005. And video content is now the norm all over social media, all over news websites, all over web-based advertising – it is literally everywhere and the most popular form of content today. But all of this video content is in the form of files are uploaded – they were produced first and then published.

Content streaming is far newer and involves producing multimedia that is constantly in production as the end-user is actually viewing it. Consumers can now livestream their favorite TV shows; news is brought to web viewers as it is occurring; events are streamed. And those who film and stream these things are now called content streamers.

Live streaming requires three things – a source (e.g. a video camera), an encoder, and some form of delivery network to deliver and distribute that content.

Enter Networks
Once live streaming became rather mainstream on the web, it was only natural that companies would pop up to carry live streaming and to sell that livestreaming to consumers. It first became common with TV shows but now individual streamers are entering the venue and looking for networks to which they can stream any number of things. For example, Twitch has become the leading video platform for gamers who gather to stream their gaming and chat with one another in real time.

It was only a matter of time before streaming platforms would see the money to be made – through ad revenue, through subscription fees, through syndicating videos for future sales, and, if they became popular enough, through sales of products and merchandise that also serve as advertising. And the really good and prolific contributing streamers get paid to do what they do.

So, Are Content Streamers Artists or Entertainers?
If you ask them, they of course would say "yes" and that they deserve to be paid for their services, much like a TV cameraman is paid. But that TV cameraman is a technician, s/he is not an artist or an entertainer.

In the "arts" community, the answer would be "no." This demographic has a much tighter definition of what constitutes arts and entertainment. Thus, a journalist who provides commentary while he is live streaming a news event can be considered an "artist" of sorts. He creates verbal content along with his streaming. And an entertainer creates his own content as well. So does a film maker and a photographer, or a videographer who shoots commercials. The idea behind art and entertainment is that some new is created by the individual him/herself. A content streamer creates nothing new – s/he is simply making money from what already exists.

And the Fine Line Becomes Blurred
There is often a fine line between what is truly created and what is not. During the Vietnam War, Americans were able for the first time to see what war was really like in real time. Videographers were on the ground live streaming the action as it occurred and transmitting it straight back to their TV networks for immediate viewing as things occurred. And photographers tried to capture the war with their still shots which they sold to magazines. One photographer happened to be in the "right" spot to take a photo of a young child running and screaming in pain from napalm that had been dropped on her. That photo eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. Was this photographer an artist? The lines, we have to admit, are often blurred.

And Does It Really Matter?
In a free market economy, there is the law of supply and demand. We all understand this concept from a basic economics course. If something is in high demand, then people will pay for it, and the sellers of that product or service will make money. When something is not valued, there is little demand and the price is low or, in some instances, the product or service ceases to exist at all.
Smart entrepreneurs figure out what people are willing to pay for (i.e., what they want and/or need) how much they are willing to pay for it, produce it, price it accordingly, and then sell it.

Content streamers are not really artists in the strictest sense of the word and therefore should probably not be considered content creators unless they add something to the stream – a narration perhaps. They are, however, entrepreneurs, just as any freelance writer or videographer is. In the end, they have discovered a product that many find valuable enough to pay for, they now have the platforms to deliver that content to paying customers, and they are making money doing it.
Long live the free enterprise system.