2021 was the year acceleration stuck. It was also the year in which the “passion economy” gave birth to the “ownership economy”, which blurs the line between creators and fans into communal ownership. All driven by the Web3 boom. And it reveals a glimpse into a possible future where all platforms are built, operated, funded, and owned by their users, who are rewarded with tokens that are proportional to the value that they’re able to create.

Chris and Andrew explain this paradigm shift, summarizing in just 20 minutes the 15 industry articles, 31 podcasts, and 7 industry watch lists the RockWater team published in 2021.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Chris Erwin:

So Andrew, it is the end of January and we are recording our first Roundup podcast of the year. I think we've left our listeners hanging a bit.

Andrew Cohen:

Pros and cons of not being a full-time media company, try our best to turn out excellent content, but not always the most timely we do our best

Chris Erwin:

We're full-time advisory and just added doing some direct balance sheet investing this year into digital goods as well, trying to have all of... Stay updated on all things content, a little bit of a challenge, but we do our best. So we just published a piece that summarized all of our amazing thinking and all of our articles and podcasts in 2021, it was our year in review and we talked about two key themes. So I'll talk about the first one. And then you could talk about the second. How does that sound?

Andrew Cohen:

Sounds good.

Chris Erwin:

All right. So looking back on 2021, one thing that didn't surprise us was sticky acceleration. So we defined this as that there was certain things, dynamics of the economy that were pulled forward during COVID in 2020. These things include e-commerce penetration, content consumption, and content spending. And what we saw in '21 was that this acceleration, it wasn't a reversion back, it was sticky. It stayed with us in 2021, actually continued along it's trajectory. So let me review a few key stats on that front. On the e-commerce front, reminder that in 2020 during COVID e-commerce sales grew 32%, 2021 they grew by another 16%. Incredible. On the audio front in 2020, 52% of consumers said they began listening to more podcasts. Last year, monthly audio listenership was up 7%.

Chris Erwin:

In OTT video by the end of 2020, 73% of consumers were streaming more OTT video c...

Birth of the Ownership Economy: 2021 Year In Review

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