Creative Control
208 episodes - English - Latest episode: 13 days ago - ★★★★★ - 51 ratingsFast Company's Creative Control is taking a deep dive into the forces that are shaping the creator economy and what it means for its future. As the creator economy continues its rapid expansion, there are issues that deserve a closer look. Topics like who owns what online, where’s the middle class for creators, and what web3 technology will really mean for creators after the hype.
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Episodes
Making Sh*t Up: Improvisation and the Art of Making Something out of Nothing
February 16, 2023 10:00 - 44 minutesWe’re taking a little break while we work on the next season. In the meantime, we’re sharing an improv workshop from Fast Company’s Innovation Festival last year, led by actor, singer, and improvisor extraordinaire Wayne Brady. He gets into the importance of active listening in improv, and focusing on inclusion in his growing media empire.
Monetizing your brand in the creator economy
February 09, 2023 10:00 - 37 minutesWe’re taking a little break right now while we work on the next season. But we’ll be back soon with new conversations and stories about what’s changing in the creator economy. In the meantime, we wanted to share a conversation from Fast Company’s Innovation Festival last fall. Associate editor Yaz Gagne moderated the panel, Monetizing Your Brand in the Creator Economy, featuring Tracy Chan from SoundCloud, Ami Gan from OnlyFans, Ritu Khanna from Shopify, and entrepreneur and content creator J...
How brands should elevate (not exploit) Black creators
February 02, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutesLast week we talked to some creators about how they’re approaching Black History Month this year. If you haven’t already listened to that episode, please check it out. And for this episode, I’m keeping the conversation going with Tiffany Hardin, founder and CEO of Gild Creative Group. Tiffany shared her perspective as an influencer marketing agent who has all the do’s and, most importantly, don’ts of how brands should be thinking about Black History Month.
How Black creators are navigating Black History Month
January 26, 2023 10:00 - 27 minutesBlack History Month is almost upon us. It’s a time meant to celebrate Black culture, but as we’ve seen year after year, it’s also a time for racist trolls, tone-deaf brand campaigns, and corporate platitudes that amount to little change if any at all. It’s a lot to deal with, so I wanted to explore how Black creators are handling it all. Hear how Tyra Blizzard (@tblizzy), Garrison Hayes (@garrisonhayes), and Millana Snow (@millanasnow) are navigating February this year.
Where are we now after the Facebook Papers?
January 19, 2023 10:00 - 25 minutesBack in the fall of 2021, a whistleblower named Frances Haugen dropped a bombshell. She released what would become known as the Facebook Papers, a massive set of internal documents that essentially showed the harmful impact Facebook and Instagram can have on society and politics. Deeper still, the documents showed that Facebook knew of those dangers but seemed to put profits over everything. It’s easy to forget just how big a story this was, given our relentless news cycle. So, to understand ...
Is the creator economy dead?
January 12, 2023 10:00 - 30 minutesWe’ve discussed where the creator economy is headed this year. And there are general trends that I do think will be important to keep in mind in the short term. But what about the long term? The creator economy is still relatively young. So what will it look like once the dust and hype really settle down? Dmitry Shapiro, cofounder and CEO of app platform Koji, has some thoughts that are pretty surprising. For starters, the creator economy as we know it is dying.
How jazz powerhouse Samara Joy went from a viral video to Grammy nominee
January 05, 2023 10:00 - 44 minutesIf you haven’t heard of Samara Joy, I’m about to put you on. Samara is a jazz singer whose buttery vocals have earned her some of the top accolades jazz has to offer, including two Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal album. And I think it’s worth mentioning here that Samara is only 23. She’s being touted as the “first Gen Z jazz singing star.” So it’s no surprise that her career got a massive boost by going viral on social media. But she’ll be the first to tell you, and...
The Fast Company podcast team looks back on 2022
December 29, 2022 10:00 - 48 minutesKate Davis, KC Ifeanyi, and Amelia Hemphill discuss the biggest stories at Fast Company this past year and share their favorite moments from Fast Company podcasts. Kate highlights The New Way We Work's 4-part miniseries "Ambition Diaries," which examined the effects of the pandemic on women's progress in the workplace. KC reviews some of the biggest trends in the creator economy. Amelia explains some of the most innovative approaches to sustainability, including a toilet that incinerates your...
Top predictions for the creator economy in 2023
December 22, 2022 10:00 - 31 minutesIt’s been another destabilizing year across the board. But the creator economy has surprisingly held strong—despite a looming recession, increasing pressure from lawmakers to ban TikTok in the U.S., and Elon Musk being Elon Musk at Twitter. The creator economy is currently valued at $16.4 billion, a 19% increase from 2021. So will that energy carry over into 2023? To get a better understanding of where the creator economy is heading next year, I interviewed Stephanie Smith, head of talent str...
Unpacking the ‘Black Internet Effect’ with Shavone Charles
December 15, 2022 10:00 - 36 minutesThis interview has been a long time coming because Shavone Charles is someone I’ve known for quite a few years now. When I met her, she was the head of global music and youth culture communications at Instagram. Prior to that, she held a similar position at Twitter. And last year, she became TikTok’s first head of global diversity and inclusion communications. Shavone is one of those people who has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to help creators of color gain more visibility and re...
How social media companies should think about paid subscriptions
December 08, 2022 10:00 - 38 minutesYou might have noticed that more and more social media platforms are offering paid versions of their services, like Twitter Blue, Snapchat Plus, and Discord Nitro. But what you may not have noticed is that this is nothing new. Social media platforms in China have had a huge head start in getting users to not only pay for features, but in creating features that truly are innovative. In this episode, Connie Chan, general partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, analyzes what Western companie...
What Tumblr’s new rules on adult content means for creators
December 01, 2022 10:00 - 27 minutesBack in 2018, Tumblr banned all nudity, which, unsurprisingly, led to a massive dip in page views as well as adult creators being forced off the platform. But earlier this month, Tumblr, under new management, announced it would be relaxing its “no porn” rule to allow some adult content back onto the site. In this episode, Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg breaks down the fine print of what this means for creators and the future of Tumblr.
Coming up after Thanksgiving . . .
November 24, 2022 10:00 - 1 minuteWe're taking a break this week and wishing everyone a warm holiday! When we come back, we'll be talking about what's changing in content policies at Tumblr and the effect of the Facebook Papers one year later.
If Elon Musk resurrects Vine, can it compete with TikTok?
November 17, 2022 10:00 - 28 minutesA few weeks ago, Elon Musk, Twitter’s new CEO, tweeted a poll asking if he should bring back Vine, the short-form video app Twitter purchased in 2012 but shuttered in 2016. Nearly 5 million votes later, 70% of people had voted to resurrect Vine. There were a number of factors that led to the app’s downfall. So if Vine were to come back, what would it need to do differently? More importantly, could it compete with the reigning short-form video juggernaut that is TikTok? To help me unpack this,...
Will changes at Twitch help or hurt creators' pockets?
November 10, 2022 10:00 - 34 minutesMost creators know they won’t reach the level of getting insanely lucrative brand deals or tens of millions of followers—and that’s perfectly fine. The overall sentiment from creators is that they just want stable and reliable income, i.e. a more robust middle class. It's a reasonable request but one that hasn’t been so easy to attain. A perfect vehicle to explore this right now is Twitch. In case you missed it, there’s been a few changes at Twitch that the company says are in the best intere...
How much do you spend on the creators you love?
November 03, 2022 09:00 - 33 minutesWhen you think about what you’re already shelling out for on-demand entertainment with Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, Apple Music, HBO Max, how do content creators fit within your budget? We conducted a poll to get some answers. And to help me unpack these results, I reached out to Anthony Iaffaldano, VP of sales, marketing, and insights at Fandom.
Decoding what algospeak means for creators
October 27, 2022 14:30 - 27 minutesWe’ve explored how algorithms and content moderation can make some creators feel targeted on social platforms. One way creators are getting around being flagged is through algospeak, e.g. using “unalive” instead of dead, “seggs” instead of sex, “corn” instead of porn, etc. Coded internet language has been around for decades, most commonly known as leetspeak. But no matter what you call it, massaging words to sidestep moderation raises some interesting questions we’re exploring in this episode.
Want 52 million followers on TikTok? Adapt and experiment like Michael Le
October 20, 2022 09:00 - 35 minutesIf you’re on TikTok, Michael Le has undoubtedly landed on your For You page at some point with his dance videos, which have earned him 52 million followers and more than 10 billion views. Now Michael is launching Joystick, a gaming ecosystem that aims to empower users and content creators to become business owners. According to Michael, the key to his success has been adapting and experimenting both in the content he creates and in his business pursuits. But how do you translate 52 million fo...
FROM AWS AND FAST CO WORKS: At the Edge of Innovation: A Conversation with AWS’s Jan Hofmeyr
October 18, 2022 09:00 - 25 minutesIn this special podcast episode, hear the latest on what’s taking place in edge computing and hybrid cloud from a top industry executive at AWS. Also learn how these innovations can ultimately help you transform your business.
Welcome to the hilariously bizarre world of Tony Talks
October 13, 2022 13:31 - 35 minutesYou think you know where a skit from Antonio Baldwin (aka Tony Talks) is headed until the punchlines start hitting you in the most unexpected places. It’s the kind of random comedy that forces you to pay attention—and it’s certainly caught the attention of his growing audience. Tony landed a spot on Fast Company’s inaugural Creator 25 list, and you need only watch his content (and listen to this episode) to understand why.
Why marginalized creators are feeling invisible online
October 06, 2022 22:00 - 34 minutesA lot of people say success in the creator economy is democratized: You put in the work, stay consistent, and you’ll find your audience and revenue. That may be true for some, but for many marginalized creators success feels like a steeper hill to climb than it should be. Discoverability is crucial to any creator’s career online. But what happens when the algorithms powering discoverability seem to be working against you or don’t see you at all?
Brittany Broski live from Fast Company's Innovation Festival!
September 29, 2022 09:00 - 28 minutesBrittany "Broski" Tomlinson turned her 15 seconds of fame as "the Kombucha girl" meme into a full-fledged career. In this live episode of Fast Company's podcast Creative Control, Tomlinson gives her candid take on the creator economy and explains how she's building a name for herself offline.
What's On The Horizon For Season 2 of Creative Control
September 22, 2022 09:00 - 1 minuteHere is a sneak peek of Season 2! Creative Control premieres next week, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss new episodes every Thursday.
CC Throwback: How Soman Chainani darker lens creates fairytales
September 15, 2022 09:00 - 33 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Author Jenny Han on the double-edged sword of representation
September 08, 2022 13:30 - 38 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Unpacking composer Nicholas Britell’s unusual creative process
September 01, 2022 13:40 - 43 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
FROM FRESHWORKS AND FAST CO. WORKS: What is the future of the employee experience?
August 25, 2022 14:56 - 25 minutesEvery company’s success is tied to its talent - recruiting and retaining the employees needed to deliver high-level customer experiences that support the bottom line. Yet rapid transformation has disrupted many things that organizations used to do to maintain great company cultures. So how can business leaders reimagine their employee experiences to meet the needs of their workforces? How does that translate into better customer experiences? In this thought-provoking podcast episode, FastCo W...
CC Throwback: Lessons on leveling up with Danielle Brooks
August 25, 2022 14:30 - 34 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Monet X Change on the power of Blackness in drag
August 18, 2022 09:00 - 42 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Minding your mental health with Dr. Jess Clemons
August 11, 2022 09:00 - 41 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Ellen Pompeo broke her creative rut and you can too
August 04, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Using brainstorming and improv to boost your creativity
July 28, 2022 15:34 - 37 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: John Cho’s childlike approach to creativity
July 21, 2022 09:00 - 48 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: Janet Mock on trusting other voices in the room
July 14, 2022 09:00 - 50 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
CC Throwback: How uncertainty and negativity can fuel creativity
July 07, 2022 14:10 - 48 minutesWe’re hard at work developing season 2 of Creative Control coming this fall. In the meantime, enjoy this throwback episode to keep your creative juices flowing!
Creative Control's season one finale
June 23, 2022 09:00 - 42 minutesOver the past 15 episodes, we covered a lot of ground within the creator economy. For the season one finale, we're revisiting some of these topics with Kaya Yurieff, a reporter with The Information who's also been sorting through the ups and downs of this space. In this episode, Kaya gives her opinion on burnout, the creator middle class, and government regulation of social media, as well as her forecast for the creator economy’s next chapter.
How one woman is getting BIPOC creators a seat at the table
June 16, 2022 09:00 - 51 minutesLast week, we profiled a talent agency working specifically with deaf and disabled creators. This week, we're going even further into the space of marginalized creators with Annelise Campbell. Annelise is the founder of the CFG, an influencer marketing agency geared toward BIPOC creators like Monica Veloz, a lifestyle and beauty creator of nine years who, since linking up with CFG, has gained an entirely new perspective on value as an Afro-Latina creator. In this episode with Annelise and Mon...
This talent agency is making room for deaf and disabled creators
June 09, 2022 09:00 - 36 minutesAccording to the World Health Organization, 1 billion people around the world are living with a disability. However, it's safe to say that the majority of them still don't feel seen or adequately represented. It’s something Keely Cat-Wells set out to fix with C Talent, a talent management and consultancy agency working exclusively with deaf and disabled entertainers. As someone living with a disability, Keely wanted to make navigating the creator economy and Hollywood more equitable and inclu...
Why inventor Simone Giertz is making products that actually work now
June 02, 2022 09:00 - 47 minutesOne would think an inventor's job should be identifying a problem and building an innovative solution to fix it. Simone Giertz has been great about the first part but intentionally "shitty" about the second. For most of her career as an inventor and content creator, Simone has been the self-proclaimed "Queen of Shitty Robots" with inventions that were never meant to be anything more than a punchline. But a brain tumor forced her to stop hiding behind her shittiness and realize her dream of cr...
Social media regulation needs to happen—but how?
May 26, 2022 09:00 - 49 minutesRounding out this 3-episode arc of the current state of social media platforms is the question of government regulation. We know social media companies aren't as forthright as they could be about how their platforms work. And we know social media has fundamentally impacted politics and our health. So what's the government doing about social media? Top executives across Meta, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Snap have all been grilled on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have introduced bills that try to t...
Inside the push to make social media less addictive
May 19, 2022 09:00 - 40 minutesDoes this sound familiar? You open Instagram or TikTok to kill some time, and the next thing you know, your eyes are dried out and your thumb feels like it’s about to fall off. It’s only then you realize how long you’ve been scrolling. For most of us, spending sometimes hours on social media leaves us a little achy but mainly just feeling guilty for having wasted a chunk of our day. But for some people, getting sucked into social media like that can have a major impact on their mental health....
What we know (and don't) about social media algorithms
May 12, 2022 09:00 - 41 minutesIt feels strange to think back to a time when we weren’t so concerned with social media algorithms. For years, we accepted this idea that algorithms were there to serve us more of what we love online. Which is true…to a certain degree. Since 2016, that rosier depiction of algorithms has completely disintegrated. Now when we talk about algorithms, we’re talking about issues like mental health, addiction, political interference, and government regulation. I wanted to get a better understanding ...
Lilly Singh wants you to be a triangle
May 05, 2022 09:00 - 34 minutesWhen Lilly Singh started her YouTube channel in 2010, she was all about the hustle, which led to a number of opportunities including acting roles and a late-night talk show. But in that hustling, Lilly admits her value system got out of whack. She was so focused on accolades and awards that she never thought to tie her value to things like mental health or self-growth. But now she's turning it around—and she’s encouraging us all to do the same in her new book “Be a Triangle.” In this episode,...
How a Silicon Valley engineer-turned-creator is pushing back against hustle culture
April 21, 2022 09:00 - 30 minutesLast week I discussed burnout with therapist Kati Morton and got into the nuts and bolts of what happens in our brains when we experience burnout and how to recover from it. But I also wanted to get the perspective of a content creator. Mayuko Inoue is a software engineer who's worked for Intuit, Patreon, and Netflix. But she left her stabile career behind to become a full-time creator in 2020. So I wanted to unpack burnout with a creator who jumped out of one fire in working tech and into a ...
How a Silicon Valley engineer turned creator is pushing back against hustle culture
April 21, 2022 09:00 - 28 minutesLast week I discussed burnout with therapist Kati Morton and got into the nuts and bolts of what happens in our brains when we experience burnout and how to recover from it. But I also wanted to get the perspective of a content creator. Mayuko Inoue is a software engineer who's worked for Intuit, Patreon, and Netflix. But she left her stabile career behind to become a full-time creator in 2020. So I wanted to unpack burnout with a creator who jumped out of one fire in working tech and into a ...
Burnout is getting worse—but recovery won't take as long as you think
April 14, 2022 09:00 - 29 minutesBefore the World Health Organization officially recognized burnout as a syndrome in 2019, there was already a mounting wave of high-profile creators speaking out against what they felt as pressure from platforms to consistently churn out content or their channels would suffer. And, unsurprisingly, the past two years have only made burnout worse. But therapist and content creator Kati Morton explains the small (and unconventional) changes you can make to put out the fire.
Emma Chamberlain on taking a coffee break from YouTube
April 07, 2022 12:55 - 43 minutesSince starting her channel in 2017, Emma Chamberlain has amassed more than 11 million YouTube subscribers, in large part because of her wry comedic tone and signature lo-fi editing style. Not being overproduced in both the look and content of her vlogs made Emma more relatable to an audience that increasingly has favored content creators removing the literal and proverbial filters from their lives. And part of Chamberlain being so candid has been admitting to her audience (and herself) that s...
Should your doctor be an influencer?
March 31, 2022 10:00 - 42 minutesDoctors are taking to platforms like TikTok and Twitter to make medicine less of a mystery for people—and becoming celebrities along the way. But the ethics here are in a very grey area. We’ve seen how misinformation can run rampant on social media. And we’ve also seen that it doesn’t take much for anyone to gain a following online. So I wanted to explore this to get a better understanding of what it means when your doctor becomes an influencer.
Patreon CEO Jack Conte on the creative middle class
March 24, 2022 09:00 - 40 minutesAs the cofounder and CEO of Patreon (and a creator himself), Jack Conte’s whole mission has been helping creators make a stable living. Patreon allows creators to charge monthly or annual subscription fees for access to their content. And since the company started nine years ago, it’s paid out $3.5 billion to more than 250,000 creators. Patreon itself was recently valued at $4 billion, so clearly Jack was on to something. But knowing how much the creator economy has evolved, how is Patreon th...
This company is investing $1 billion in your favorite YouTube creators
March 17, 2022 10:00 - 35 minutesSpotter buys YouTubers’s back catalogs in exchange for capital to grow their businesses—and the company recently announced plans to invest $1 billion in creators. CEO Aaron DeBevoise explains who’s getting a cut, the possibility of expanding to TikTok, and how changes to YouTube could impact Spotter.