For insight on the creator economy, look to Japan's LINE

LINE, a hugely popular messaging app that originated in Japan before expanding to other parts of Asia, holds important lessons for the booming creator/collector economy at a time when NFTs dominate global headlines.

A story in Rest of World (RoW), the tech publication that focuses on stories from Asia, Africa, and South America – the vast swaths of the world often ignored by the Western press – delves into what happened when the messaging app opened up a Creators Market for people to sell stickers.

Why it matters

LINE is a messaging app that has expanded into payments, shopping, gaming, and even taxi services. It’s often mentioned in the same breath as other ‘super-apps’ that characterise smartphone tech in east Asia. What WeChat is to China, LINE is to Japan.

With one key difference: stickers. This feature is the unlikely ‘killer’ aspect of the experience. They are like personalised, cartoon emojis. Both a language and an emotional signal.

Creator economies

In 2014 the app introduced a platform through which people could buy artists’ stickers. RoW’s story looks at this economy.

It’s big business: For LINE, the sticker marketplace brings in around $200m annually. Some creators have made more than $10m from selling on the platform. For others, it has helped launch or supplement careers as Manga artists.

However, the moral of the story is about saturation amid the perception that creating and selling stickers is a quick ticket to fabulous wealth (remind you of any current trends?)

It’s a reminder that markets, especially those mediated by tech, operate under social ideas of value, whose cache helps to drive the price up. As a result, most creators make next to nothing, while a tiny minority take most of the money. As the world starts to hype about another form of digital art, precedents are a useful reminder that utopia is rarely just around the corner.

Sourced from Rest of World. Image: Line