Cameo's CEO says the platform creates a "whole new set of stars" by letting more personalities earn money from fans, rather than concentrating wealth among a tiny elite like Hollywood and music do. He grew up in Chicago where celebrity felt distant, and built Cameo to connect fans with famous people directly.
Chapters
Clearly this is upending Hollywood. You know, you are creating a mechanism for famous people to connect with their fans in a way they never could before. Yeah. As somebody who's a part or driving that disruption, what do you make of what's happening in Hollywood right now?
Well, number one, I can't speak of like what's happening on Hollywood. I'm from Chicago. I've never lived in Los Angeles. I've never been part of Hollywood. So that world was not the world that I was ever trying to disrupt. What I've always been trying to do is bring people together and create these connections. And I actually think this is a business that needed to have been started in a place like Chicago where it's so hard— you don't just see movie stars or actors walking down the street like you do in LA or New York or other places. So I think by being in Chicago, we were closer to our fans. As far as broader disruption in Hollywood, the reality is Hollywood, the music industry, sports, these have all been power law distributed businesses. In sports, the top 1% of athletes make 99% of all the endorsement revenue, and 80% of NFL players go broke 5 years after playing their last game. And in Hollywood, 99.9% of the Screen Actors Guild is unemployed at any given time. In music, the top 1% of musicians make over 90% of the touring and streaming revenue. On YouTube, the top 3% of creators make 97% of all the ad revenue. So the system has been broken for all but the very, very top. We've created new surface area, which has created a whole new set of stars. What's the future of music?
