Jim Louderback has lived through generations of tech media. He is a top leaders at the intersection of publishing, media and technology.
In the 1990s, he wrote and edited tech magazines. From 1998 to 2000, he was the TV host of TechTV’s Fresh Gear show. As editor-in-chief of Ziff Davis’ media internet properties, he ran PC magazine and other properties. He built and sold multiple creator economy startups to media companies including WB Discovery and Paramount. Additionally, he led editorial and ops at various cable networks, event companies, magazines and digital publishers.
Louderback served as CEO of VidCon after running the media firm Revision3. In 2017, he replaced VidCon co-founder Hank Green. As the editorial director of VidCon’s industry programming track, he was programming various tracks at the recent Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. There’s no time like the present, so I took advantage of our recent meeting at the Web Summit to talk with him about the rise of the creator economy and how it will evolve with the coming of artificial intelligence.
The creator economy has always been a fast-moving world. YouTubers disrupted traditional media, and now AI VTubers may disrupt established creators. Louderback and I talked about the notion of universal basic income for creators and how it might be the kind of job that can withstand the mass job losses that could come with AI.
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Louderback currently writes the popular weekly newsletter “Inside the Creator Economy” on LinkedIn, speaks and moderates at global events and works with several startups in the creator space.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Jim Louderback at the 2023 Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
GamesBeat: This whole creator economy is very interesting to me. And like I was mentioned on stage yesterday too, like just whether it is like how it is taking shape from your point of view? Is it kind of like a one in a million sort of luck of the draw and talent that gets you famous as a creator? Or do we think that this is going to spread out so that it’s like many, many more people?
Jim Louderback: There are a couple different ways to answer that question. One is, it depends on how you define fame. You know, fame and money tend to go hand in hand in the creator economy in many ways. But you can make a lot of money in the creator economy without being famous. If you define fame as having, you know, like TommyInnit with 50 million followers or Loren Gray, who has 80 million over all of her social,
