Description

"Nebula, launched in 2019 by an initial group of relevant youtubers willing to gain some autonomy from Youtube, is a paid video streaming platform. With over 150 creators totalling 120 million collective YouTube subscribers, and over 300.000 paid subscribers to the service, Nebula has emerged as the biggest video platform for independent creators in the world.

It has a semi-cooperative structure, with governance and revenues shared by the creators on one side and the company Standard managing the streaming platform itself and business relationships of creators on the other. The service runs on its own infrastructure, with a big team of engineers constantly upgrading it, and it's available on the major operating systems."

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Characteristics

CER:

"Commons Orientation

In this section we examine the project’s closeness to those that we consider the fundamental values of the Commons space.

Ownership, Governance and Funding

What’s the configuration of the ownership and governance structures of the project, especially in relation to the main sources of funding received to date?

Nebula promotes itself as a creator-owned streaming platform, with the aim of assisting its community of creators through funding to challenge dependence on traditional platforms like YouTube. Half of the revenues from subscriptions go to creators, based on watch time.

It has a peculiar organizational and governance structure (in constant evolution) where creators have a strong formal power; Nebula received some investments and now the company is worth 150 millions dollars, but they are firmly intentioned not to accept deals with Venture Capitalists. You can get to know more about these and other elements of the project evolution in this video by the founders themselves : How We Built a $150 Million Streaming Platform with $100,000.

Workforce, Leadership and Inclusion

How does the project ensure diversity and inclusion across various dimensions such as background, ethnicity, and gender, both in the general workforce and in leadership roles?

The current composition of Nebula’s team is not publicly available, but given the diversity of its creators and founders, we can assume inclusion and ethical workforce practices are appreciated by the management team, as it also seems apparent in their jobs page.

Decentralization and Distributedness

To what extent is the organization or system decentralized or distributed, and how does this approach fit with the specific needs and context in which it operates?

Nebula isn’t decentralized or distributed, as can be seen in their “How Nebula Works”, creating a streaming platform is already a technical challenge when decisions and content are centrally controlled.

What Nebula does for decentralization though is take away view-time from mainstream platforms such as YouTube, and although indirectly, favoring a digital market less reliant on tech giants.

Nontraditional Economics

How extensively does the project implement and test economic models based on non-monetary transactions like mutual credit, barter systems, or resource-sharing networks (CoFi)? How does it operate differently from traditional corporations or non profits?

Nebula doesn’t include nontraditional economic practices such as CoFi, or alternative and community currencies.

The subscription model is quite innovative though, mainly thanks to their offer of a lifetime subscription: while it may not be the most convenient, it gives fans of the platform a chance to support its capital in a way that isn’t tied to external investors interested in steering the company itself away from its mission.

Socio-Political Impact and Challenge to the Status Quo

What impact does the project have on existing socio-economic structures, and in what ways does it challenge or seek to alter the current political and economic paradigms?

There are many ways in which Nebula challenges the status quo of the digital streaming market:

Nebula offers a creator-centric model: Nebula offers a space where creators can experiment with content without trying to optimize for views and trying to garner the attention of an obscure algorithm. Nebula also offers direct support to creators, by sharing with them 50% of the subscription revenues based on watch time.

Nebula offers a subscription, ad-free model: instead of relying on constant ads, viewers get to enjoy the content they’re interested in without interruptions and without needing to rely on ad blockers.

Nebula offers its own original content.

Nebula offers a community approach to a usually very competitive market: being founded and led by a community of creators, it emphasizes the importance of sharing tips, techniques, resources, and cross-promotion."

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Nebula TV

Contents