TED has 27 million YouTube subscribers and 11 billion combined views. MasterClass has 2 million subscribers and charges $120 per year. The 40-year-old conference that gives content away for free dominates the platform where premium education struggles. The data reveals a counterintuitive truth: in the attention economy, free content scales faster than paywalls.
Why Are Premium Education Platforms Struggling?
MasterClass doubled revenue during COVID, hitting $100 million in 2021. Then reality hit. By 2023, they cut 50% of their workforce. Subscriptions stalled as people returned to normal life. Meanwhile, TED adds 500,000 YouTube subscribers every few months. TEDx, their decentralized sibling, has 43 million subscribers and 8.5 billion views. No subscription required. No paywall. Just ideas, free to anyone with internet access.
What Makes Free Content Beat Premium Subscriptions?
The paywall assumption killed MasterClass's growth. Charging $120 per year creates friction at exactly the moment when curiosity is highest. Every potential viewer must make a purchase decision before discovering value. TED eliminated that friction entirely. The result: 13x more subscribers for the free platform. Attention is the new currency, and paywalls block the very thing that builds audiences.
How Does TED Actually Make Money?
We confused production quality with business model. MasterClass spends millions on celebrity instructors and cinematic production. TED invests in curation and distribution. Both create excellent content, but only one understood that reach precedes revenue. TED monetizes through $5,000 to $25,000 conference tickets, corporate sponsorships, and content licensing. Each free video is marketing for a premium experience. The content is free. The community is the product.
What Can Content Creators Learn From TED's Model?
Give away the content. Monetize the community. TED's 7,000+ talks create a discovery engine that feeds their premium experiences. Sir Ken Robinson's talk on creativity has 75 million views. That single video has driven more conference interest than any advertising campaign could buy. The lesson: free content at scale creates more revenue than paywalls ever could.
Imagine a world where the best ideas flow freely across every border, every income level, every language. Where a teenager in Lagos watches the same lectures as a CEO in London. Where knowledge isn't locked behind paywalls but spreads like light, illuminating everyone it touches. TED proved that sharing ideas freely doesn't diminish their value. It multiplies their impact. The most powerful business model of the attention economy isn't exclusion. It's generosity at scale.