Originally Posted by Paul Markham

Generally speaking, the times when the industry supported 1,000s of independent content creators are over. It wasn't the introduction of digital cameras or even their cost if you can't focus, light a scene or afford a $10,000 for a camera you don't deserve to be in business.

It was the online industry only being able to support a low product which has steadily got worse.

Grapesoda points out the problems this brought, offline if the product wasn't good enough distributors didn't buy. In a market that was supposedly easy to sell to.

Today a few companies buck the trend, by producing a product some customers are willing to pay for. The problem is most have budgets that leave little for the independent content creator or have in-house content creators. Because the root problem is so long as it's free 99.9% of consumers can jerk off to a pretty poor product rather than pay for a good one.