Marketplace Morning reports new Skin in the Game series explores what we can learn about

money and careers from the $300 billion video game industry. Plus, here how an Oakland-based

program helps young people get the skills they need to break into this booming industry.

Listen to Skin in the Game and more from the Marketplace Morning report wherever you get your

podcasts. Hey, Trian, started out helping creators monetize their content. Now, it's helping

them give it away for free. From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan

McCarty Carino.

The creator economy could grow to nearly half a trillion dollars in the next five years,

according to Goldman Sachs. That buzzword describes the ecosystem of individuals creating videos,

podcasts, newsletters, and art, usually on social media. But advertising and algorithms can

be fickle mistresses. That's where Patreon comes in. For the last decade, the platform is offered

a way for fans to directly support creators with paid digital subscriptions. Now, Patreon is offering

a free membership option and the ability to sell digital works. I spoke with CEO and co-founder

Jack Conti about how these new services can help the creator economy grow.

It's become very clear over the last three years that the way the internet is being organized

is shifting dramatically and it's not good for creators. The way the internet used to work is a

creator would publish something and then some fans would find it online and they would follow that

creator or they would subscribe to the creator and then when the creator publish more things,

their fans would see it and would enjoy it and there'd be these wonderful sort of community

of a creator and their fans and I think a lot of the major platforms are shifting to a more

algorithmic curation of content and you might think, okay, so what's the harm there? But actually,

every post that shows up in your feed that you didn't choose to subscribe to means that a post

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