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[00:00.98] So if you want to understand how challenging the future could be for creative people, just look at what's happening with musicians right now.

[00:08.67] Up until the late '90s, people either listened to music for free on the radio or by buying a physical copy to listen to at home.

[00:15.85] But then the internet happened, and now Spotify and other streaming services give us access to an infinite catalog of music.

[00:23.81] We don't own anything, but we can rent pretty much all of it.

[00:27.53] So people pay less money, which means musicians make less money, but the platforms make a lot of money.

[00:33.64] Recently, researchers have discovered a new type of song on Spotify, a ghost song by a ghost artist.

[00:40.81] These are unnamed, uncredited musicians who are paid to make music that sounds like what the Spotify algorithm says people want to hear.

[00:49.31] In recent years, some of Spotify's most prominent playlists have seen real songs by real artists, replaced with ghost songs by ghost artists. Real songs have to be paid real royalties.

[01:01.27] Ghost songs don't.

[01:03.92] Something like this dynamic is playing out across every creative industry: maximize profits by minimizing creator compensation.

[01:13.22] Now add AI, and the ghost artist doesn’t even have to be human anymore.

[01:17.74] A future of art without artists.

[01:20.92] Now I’m not an expert on AI, but I have spent the last 25 years working as a creative person and making tools for creative people.

[01:31.02] I'm a son of a musician, and my career began writing about music for "Pitchfork" and "The Village Voice," I started a tiny record label, and I’m one of the cofounders of Kickstarter, which gave creative people a way to bypass the gatekeepers and go straight to the public with their projects.

[01:50.41] Before Kickstarter, so many amazing projects had no chance to exist because they didn't fit some pre-existing business model.

[01:57.58] After Kickstarter, millions of people have exchanged billions of dollars in support of new ideas.

[02:07.41] Where there was a wall, we built a door.

[02:08.47] But despite what you hear about the creator economy, the reality for most creative people is stark.

[02:13.25] It's estimated that 85 percent of visual artists make less than 25,000 dollars a year, and that just 13 percent of creative people earn a full-time living from their work.

[02:22.81] So we're not talking about aristocrats and rock stars. We're talking about people working hard, trying to make a living by doing what comes natural to them.

[02:30.78] A musician, a craftsperson, a community theater director, a potter. Millions of people who are our friends, our family, our neighbors who inspire us and millions more people too.

[02:42.20] But despite being so central to how we experience life, we don't make things easy for these folks.

[02:47.25] There's no automatic health care, there's no retirement benefits, there's no path to collective wealth at all.

[02:53.63] They're entirely on their own.

[02:56.28] In a world of global capitalism, creative people operate like 18th-century traveling peddlers, moving from village to village and project to project, trying to piece together a living.

[03:06.38] So there’s something missing here: a way for creative people to get access to the basics and be a part of something bigger than just them on their own.

[03:15.42] And I personally really struggled with this a few years ago. I was grinding away in the creator economy and getting lonelier by the second.

[03:25.25] The people most like me, were my biggest competition.

[03:29.50] It left me constantly on edge and burnt out and alone.