Last Updated on October 25, 2025 by stlplace
Overall, I think it probably made the content creators lives much harder. The list includes traditional newspaper and magazines, network TV (in the US, it’s the big 3 (ABC, CBS, and NBC) plus PBS, cable TV (there are many), local TV, and musicians including singers, song writers and bands. To some extent, it had impact on traditional radio stations too, but radio station in my opinion probably already had experience the disruption from TV and Internet (early days of Internet, Web 1.0 if I may), there are the digital radio stations such as Sirius and XM radios, but I think for the most part, radio stations survived – another reason is their operating cost is probably lower, with the exception of NPR.
In my earlier blog post a few years ago Industries got disrupted: I talked about:
once at Sam’s Club (Manchester road), I saw a lady who is probably laid off from the media industry. And she was doing samples there. We all praised her for her cooking skills for salmon samples. She said she had degrees in journalism but it’s hard to find jobs in that area 🙁
And it turns out I wrote more on this in another blog post – Thinking about opening a Roth IRA:
So I was at Sam’s club, tasting the free salmon sample. The lady passing out the Salmon said something funny “Being a Mizzou journalist graduate, I know how to propaganda”. Something like that. It sounds like she lost Journalist job. An old couple who complimented the salmon and the lady’s cooking (there is really not too much cooking because the main task was to warm it up, I think), said their daughter who is in graphic design, lost job since last July. I know it’s probably very difficult for journalists these days amid the new media etc (traditional media lost all the Ads revenue). My previous 2 jobs were in two industries that were both seriously affected by the government polices, luckily my skill can be transferred to other industry. I believe the two people can look at other relatively stable industry as well, as their skills can also transfer: good communication, writing and graphical design skills are always in demand. This is my chicken soup of the day.
These days we often hear layoffs or private equity companies buying or selling those traditional media companies. Even the big ones such as MSNBC etc. This is true in local media as well, e.g., stltoday and KSDK.
Music industry
I talked about it in my earlier blog post. As my friend who was a former attorney, and now has a side gig on Spotify told me the music industry is always “the top dog makes the most money, and it’s hard for the people below the top tier make much money”. That’s probably true, even in the CD, cassette, and the analog plastic disc days.
I also heard another friend who has presence on Spotify, and she said 1,000 plays on Spotify will bring in about 7 CNY (about $1). Again it’s not easy to get 1,000 plays for musicians or songs that are not very famous.