The Taste Economy: Why Curators Will Win the Next Decade

In Part 1, we diagnosed the crisis: your brand is dissolving. AI has multiplied output by 100x, but most marketers use it to produce more of the same mediocre content—faster and cheaper. The result? Every brand looks identical. Every campaign feels templated. Every piece of content is forgettable.

We introduced the taste gap: the chasm between analytics-driven volume and brand-building quality. And we showed you the five dimensions of taste—tension, restraint, craft, resonance, and signal—that separate memorable work from generic slop.

Read Part I. - The crisis in taste and why AI might make it worse.

In Part 2, we gave you the training regimen. You learned to see craft as a curator does. You built your aesthetic vocabulary. You created your reference collection—North Stars that represent excellence, and Not This examples that show what to avoid. You trained your eye over 90 days to recognize quality and articulate why it works.

Read Part II - How to train your taste using AI.

In Part 3, we showed you how to scale judgment across your organization. You can't be the bottleneck reviewing everything. So we built the systems: principles over guidelines, clear veto power, shared reference libraries, feedback loops, and modular frameworks that maintain brand coherence even when AI lets you produce 100x more content.

Read Part III - Building a taste-driven organization.

Now comes Part 4: Why that work just made you incredibly valuable.

Because here's what most marketers haven't realized yet: We're not in a content crisis. We're in a curation crisis. AI didn't just make production cheaper—it inverted the entire value chain. The bottleneck moved from "can we make this?" to "should we make this?"

This final part answers the questions we've been building toward:

We're going to show you what's coming. And why the work you've done in Parts 1-3 puts you ahead of 99% of marketers who are still optimizing for volume.

But first, let's look at an industry that's already been through this exact transformation. Because this isn't theoretical. We've seen this movie before.

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In 1948, any half-baked idea could get on television.

Production was amateur. Scripts were rough. Shows went live with minimal rehearsal. "Texaco Star Theater" literally had a guy in a Texaco uniform standing on stage between acts. The bar was low.

Why? Because attention was abundant and content was scarce. Three networks. Millions of viewers desperate for anything to watch. You didn't need great taste to succeed in early TV—you just needed a camera and a broadcast license.

By the 1980s, television had professionalized. Production values rose. Writers' rooms became sophisticated. Directors brought cinematic techniques to the small screen. There was competition. As more networks appeared and attention fractured, only quality survived.

Then came the internet as a secondary channel. Suddenly, you could watch anything, anytime. Television had to compete with infinite online content.

And the medium split in two:

Path 1: Mass-Market Cable Mediocrity
Generic crime procedurals. Formulaic sitcoms. Cheap reality TV. Low production costs. Minimal risk. Maximum volume. Background noise for people scrolling their phones.

Path 2: Premium Streaming Excellence
"The Sopranos." "Breaking Bad." "Succession." "The Bear." The best television we've ever seen. High budgets. Obsessive craft. Distinctive voices. Shows people actually pay for and remember.

The middle ground disappeared. You're either commodity content competing on volume, or curator-driven excellence competing on quality. Nothing in between survives.

In 2030, the marketing world will look like television in 2025:

No middle ground.

The question isn't "can you make content with AI?" anymore—everyone can. The question is: "Do you have the taste to decide what's worth making?"

Because in 2030, every company will ship 10,000 pieces of content per month. Production cost will approach zero. Every brand will generate infinite variations of anything.

And most organizations will have no idea how to answer the most important question: "Should we?"

In Parts 1-3, you learned how to build taste. Now let's talk about why that work just made you one of the most valuable people in marketing.

Early TV (1948-1980):

Production Scarce → Produce Anything → Attention Guaranteed

You could literally point a camera at almost anything and millions would watch. Attention was abundant because alternatives were nonexistent. Three networks controlled everything. Production capacity was the bottleneck.

Mature TV (1980-2000):

Production Common → Compete on Quality → Attention Selective

Cable arrived. Channels multiplied. Suddenly you had competition. Production became accessible, so production quality stopped being enough. You needed good writing. Good acting. Good direction. The medium professionalized because it had to.

Internet Era TV (2000-2020):

Production Abundant → Split Into Commodity vs. Premium → Attention Only for Excellence

The internet destroyed the attention monopoly. Suddenly TV competed with YouTube, Netflix, video games, social media, podcasts—infinite alternatives. The medium bifurcated. Cable became cheap filler. Streaming became appointment viewing. The middle died.

Marketing followed the exact same pattern.

We're just 10 years behind television.

Production capacity was scarce:

Attention was abundant. People wanted branded content. They'd watch 30-second pre-rolls. Read 2,000-word blog posts. Open marketing emails.

Value creation = make more stuff
Competitive advantage = who can produce at scale

Production democratized:

Attention started fracturing. Competition increased. Quality standards rose. Brands hired content teams. Agencies added "content studios." The bar went up because it had to.

Production capacity became infinite:

Attention for quality is now scarce. Customers developed "AI slop detectors." They scroll past generic content. They ignore template designs. They filter out obvious generation.

The bottleneck inverted.

Old bottleneck: "Can we make this?"
New bottleneck: "Should we make this?"

Old valuable skill: Execution
New valuable skill: Judgment

Old competitive advantage: Production scale
New competitive advantage: Curation quality

This is the television pattern playing out in real-time.

Job Market Data:

Execution roles are commoditizing. Judgment roles are holding value. The market is screaming this signal. Most marketers aren't listening.

Brand Behavior:

Customer Behavior:

The bifurcation is starting. Right now. Just like television in 1995.

The question is: which path are you choosing?

The Creator Economy Promise (2020-2024)

"Everyone can be a creator! Just start making content! Build your audience! Monetize your passion!"

Result: 500 million creators. 99.9% earning nothing. Infinite supply destroyed individual value.

The creator economy worked when creation was hard. Once creation became easy, creator became worthless. The market doesn't pay for what's abundant.

Think about television again:

In 1950, if you could produce a TV show, you were valuable. The skill was rare.

By 2020, millions could produce TV-quality video on their phones. Production skill became worthless. What became valuable? Knowing what's worth making. Curation.

HBO didn't win by producing the most shows. They won by producing the right shows. By saying no to 95% of pitches and yes to "The Sopranos." That's curation.

Netflix didn't disrupt by making creation easier. They disrupted by curating better. Their algorithm isn't a production tool—it's a curation tool.

The Curator Economy Reality (2025-present)

"Anyone can make things. Few can choose what's worth making."

The new value hierarchy:

This is exactly what happened in television. The showrunner who decides what gets made is worth more than the entire production crew. The executive who greenlights the right shows is worth more than the entire studio.

Judgment > execution.

1. The Paradox of Choice at Scale

When you can generate 100 versions of anything instantly, the hard part isn't generation. It's knowing which version is worth shipping.

Cable TV could produce 24 hours of content per day. Most of it was forgettable because there was no curation filter. Just fill the time.

Streaming services produce 10 shows per year. Most of them are memorable because they passed a curation filter. Only the excellent makes it through.

Your brand with AI: You can generate 1,000 social posts per month. Will they all ship? Should they? Who decides? That decision—that curation—is where the value lives.

Most teams drown in options. Curators know how to choose.

2. The Signal-to-Noise Crisis

More content = harder to break through. Quality becomes the only differentiator. But quality requires judgment. Judgment requires taste.

Television lesson: When Netflix launched, they had 1,000 titles. Now they have 10,000+. You know what customers watch? The shows Netflix actively promotes. The ones they curated to the top.

Marketing lesson: When everyone can produce infinite content, customers will only notice what's actually good. And "good" requires someone with taste making the call.

3. The Trust Economy

Customers are developing "AI slop detectors." They're learning to spot the tells of lazy generation. Brands that maintain craft standards build trust. Trust compounds.

Television lesson: You trust HBO's quality bar. When they release something, you watch. Why? Because they've proven they won't ship mediocrity. That's a curator brand.

You don't trust most cable networks. They'll ship anything to fill airtime. That's a commodity brand.

A Case Study:

Brand A (Commodity Path):

Brand B (Curator Path):

Same input. Different curation. Different outcomes.

Brand A is cable TV. Brand B is HBO. Brand A will compete on price. Brand B will command premium.

What makes someone a valuable curator? What skills separate commodity producers from premium curators?

Pattern Recognition Across Quality Levels

The ability to look at 50 AI-generated headlines and immediately identify the 3 worth refining. Not based on "I like this one" but based on principles: restraint, tension, craft, resonance.

This is what you trained in Part 2. This is what separates you from 99% of marketers.

Aesthetic Vocabulary to Articulate Judgment

"This one is better" is opinion. "This one uses restraint to create tension, making the single moment of emphasis hit harder" is judgment.

Curators can explain their decisions. That's what makes them valuable. Anyone can choose. Only curators can defend their choices with principles.

Decision Frameworks for "Good Enough" vs. "Excellent"

HBO doesn't greenlight everything that's "pretty good." They greenlight shows that meet a specific bar. They have a framework.

You need the same. When does AI output ship as-is? When does it need refinement? When does it get killed entirely? That framework is curation.

The Confidence to Say No to 90% of Options

This is the hardest skill. And the most valuable.

Most marketers want to ship everything. More is better, right? No. Not anymore.

Curators understand: 10 excellent pieces build more brand value than 100 acceptable pieces. The confidence to kill 90 options—even when they're "fine"—is what separates commodity from premium.

Netflix could release 500 shows per year. They don't. They release 50 and make each one count. That restraint is strategy.

This is exactly what you've been building in Parts 1-3.

You learned to see quality (Part 1). You trained your eye (Part 2). You built systems to scale judgment (Part 3). You're already a curator. The market just hasn't caught up yet.

The Economics of Abundance: What Television Proved

When anything can be produced instantly at near-zero cost, production stops being valuable. The value shifts to selection.

Historical Precedent:

1900s: Printing Age

1990s: Digital Publishing

2020s: Content Generation

Television followed this exact pattern:

1950s: Owning a TV studio = valuable (production scarcity)
1980s: Having a hit show = valuable (distribution scarcity)
2020s: Curating the right content = valuable (attention scarcity)

HBO doesn't own the largest studios. They don't produce the most content. They're valuable because they choose the right content. That's a curation business model.

Old Career Path:
Junior Writer → Senior Writer → Creative Director

Based on: Volume of output + Years of experience

New Career Path:
Junior Curator → Senior Curator → Taste Director

Based on: Quality of judgment + Speed of discernment

The skills that got you promoted in 2020 won't get you promoted in 2030.

Writing 50 blog posts per month? AI does that.
Designing 100 social assets per week? AI does that.
Producing video content at scale? AI will do that.

What AI can't do: Decide which blog post is worth reading. Which social asset builds brand equity. Which video is worth your customer's 60 seconds.

That's curation. That's judgment. That's the valuable skill.

Organizations will pay significantly more for people who can:

Salary Projections (2025-2027):

AI Operator with taste training: $120-180K
Someone who can generate and curate. Uses AI to multiply their judgment, not just their output.

AI Operator without taste training: $60-80K
Someone who can generate but can't evaluate. Produces volume without discernment.

Traditional Producer: $50-70K (declining)
Someone who executes but doesn't direct. The market is pricing this skill toward zero.

Taste Director / Chief Curator: $200-300K
Someone who sets standards, trains judgment, maintains brand coherence at scale.

The taste premium is real and growing. The gap between curators and producers will be larger than the gap between producers and assistants.

Just like in television: The showrunner makes 10x what the production assistant makes. Not because they work 10x harder. Because their judgment creates 10x more value.

Here's the catch: Most organizations don't know how to evaluate judgment.

They still reward:

They don't reward:

This creates a massive opportunity.

The companies that figure out how to measure and reward curation first will capture disproportionate talent—and market value.

What good curation metrics look like:

Brand Recognition Score: Can customers identify your content without the logo? (60-second taste test from Part 1)

Curation Ratio: Options generated vs. options shipped. Higher ratio = more selective = better curation.

Quality Consistency: Standard deviation of content quality over time. Lower deviation = better systems.

Aesthetic Coherence: Cross-channel brand recognition. Can customers tell your Instagram and your email are from the same company?

Taste Leverage: Output per curator. Not output per producer. How many high-quality pieces does one curator enable?

These metrics don't show up on standard dashboards. But they predict long-term brand value better than CTR ever will.

The organizations building these measurement systems now will own the curator economy.

Remember what happened to television. Two paths emerged. Only one created lasting value.

Path 1: Cable TV (Commodity)

Path 2: Streaming (Curator)

The same split is coming for every industry. Curation creates moats that commodity can't cross.

1. Compound Brand Equity (The HBO Effect)

Every piece that meets your standard builds recognition. Every piece that doesn't erodes it.

HBO has been curating for 30 years. You immediately know what "HBO quality" means. That's brand equity. It took decades to build. Competitors can't copy it by spending more on production.

Math for your brand:

Over time, this gap becomes uncrossable. Your brand becomes recognizable. Theirs becomes forgettable. That's a moat.

2. Premium Pricing Power (The Apple Strategy)

Customers pay more for brands they trust. Trust comes from consistency. Consistency comes from curation.

Apple charges 40% more than comparable products. Not because their specs are 40% better. Because their taste is unmistakable. Every product feels like Apple. That coherence—that curation—commands premium.

Your content works the same way. Customers will engage more, convert better, and pay more when your brand demonstrates consistent care for quality. That's not marketing fluff. That's economics.

3. Lower Customer Acquisition Cost (The Netflix Compounding Loop)

Distinctive brands get remembered. Remembered brands get recommended. Recommendations are free.

Netflix spends billions on content. But their customer acquisition cost is lower than most streaming services. Why? Word of mouth. "Have you seen [show]?" That's free marketing. Only excellent, curated content generates that.

Generic content doesn't get recommended. It gets consumed and forgotten.

Data from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (referenced in Part 1): Aesthetically coherent brands achieve 30% lower CAC over time. Curation pays for itself through reduced acquisition costs.

4. Talent Attraction (The Pixar Phenomenon)

Good people want to work for brands that give a damn about craft.

Pixar can hire the best animators in the world. Not because they pay the most. Because they have the highest quality bar. Talented people want their work to be excellent. Curation cultures attract talent. Commodity cultures don't.

The organizations building taste infrastructure now will attract the best curators in 2026-2030. The commodity brands will compete for whoever's left.

This compounds. Better curators make better choices. Better choices build stronger brands. Stronger brands attract better curators. It's a flywheel.

5. AI Leverage Advantage (The Multiplier Effect)

Here's the paradox: The brands with the strongest taste infrastructure will get the most value from AI.

Why? Because they generate more options, choose better, ship faster—while maintaining higher quality.

Commodity brand using AI:

Curator brand using AI:

Same tool. Different results. The difference is taste.

Taste × AI = exponential advantage
No taste × AI = exponential mediocrity

This is the real AI disruption. Not that AI makes production free. But that AI makes curation the only differentiator.

Year 1: Slight Advantage

You're shipping quality while competitors optimize for volume. Customers start noticing your brand feels different. You're building the foundation.

Year 2: Visible Gap

Your brand recognition is measurably higher. Customers can identify your content without the logo. Competitors are still chasing volume metrics.

Year 3: Moat Established

Your aesthetic coherence creates customer loyalty. Your CAC is declining while competitors' is rising. They can't catch up without rebuilding their entire culture. That takes years.

Year 4: Category Leader

Your aesthetic is the standard others copy. You're commanding premium pricing. Talent wants to work for you. Customers trust you first.

Year 5: Uncrossable Advantage

You've built brand equity that took 5 years of consistent curation. Competitors would need 5 years of perfect execution to match you. Most won't make it.

This is what happened with HBO, Netflix, Apple, Pixar—every curator brand. The compound curve is brutal for latecomers.

Start now. Compound later.

The window is open right now. In 2025, most brands are still optimizing for volume. The ones building taste infrastructure today have a 2-3 year head start.

By 2027, it will be too late to catch up.

The curator economy is here. The question is: are you positioned to capture its value?

Most marketers are still operating with creator economy mindsets. They're optimizing for output. Measuring success by volume. Building careers on execution speed.

That worked in 2020. It's a career-limiting strategy in 2025.

Your new job title doesn't exist yet. But here's what you're becoming:

The title doesn't matter. The skill does.

You're not a "content creator" anymore. You're not a "copywriter," "designer," or "social media manager." Those are execution roles. They're commoditizing.

You're a curator. Someone who can evaluate 100 options and identify the 3 worth shipping. Someone who can articulate why. Someone who can build systems that scale judgment.

That's a different career. And it requires different positioning.

1. Document Your Judgment (Not Just Your Output)

Build a portfolio that shows your curation process, not just final deliverables.

Traditional portfolio: "Here are 10 campaigns I created."

Curator portfolio: "Here's a campaign where I evaluated 50 AI-generated concepts, rejected 47, and chose this one. Here's my reasoning."

Show the options you didn't choose. Explain why. Demonstrate judgment.

Examples of what to document:

"I killed this campaign even though it tested well in focus groups. Here's why it would have eroded brand value long-term."

"I maintained brand coherence while scaling from 10 pieces per month to 100. Here's the system I built."

"I evaluated 200 designer applications and identified the 3 with taste that matched our brand principles. Here's how I assessed them."

This portfolio is worth more than your resume. Because it proves you can curate, not just create.

2. Develop Your Aesthetic Voice

Can you articulate why something works or doesn't? In writing? In meetings? On the spot?

Practice explaining aesthetic decisions:

Judgment without vocabulary is just opinion. Vocabulary makes it authority.

Write publicly about taste:

You're building a reputation as someone who sees quality. That reputation is your positioning.

3. Build Your Curator Network

Connect with other people developing taste. Share reference collections. Critique each other's work. Build in public.

The curator economy rewards public taste. Your network becomes your credential.

Where to build:

You're establishing yourself as a taste authority. When organizations need curators, you're the obvious choice.

4. Charge for Curation, Not Production

Stop selling "10 social posts." Start selling "curated brand experience across channels."

Stop competing on volume. Start competing on judgment.

Pricing shift:

Old model (production):
$X per piece (race to bottom)

New model (curation):
$X per hour of judgment (premium value)

Frame your service as judgment, not execution. That's where the value is.

5. Build the Case Studies That Matter

Traditional case study: "Increased engagement by 40%"

Curator case study: "Maintained brand coherence while scaling content 10x. Brand recognition increased 60% over 18 months. CAC decreased 25%."

You're selling long-term brand value, not short-term metrics. Your case studies should prove you can build moats, not just get clicks.

Let's map the next five years based on what we know about technology adoption, market dynamics, and what happened to television.

2025: The Early Adopter Advantage

Right now, most organizations are still optimizing for volume. Using AI to produce more of the same, faster.

The ones building taste infrastructure now have a 2-3 year head start. This window is closing.

What to do in 2025:

2026-2027: The Bifurcation

The market will split into two distinct categories:

Commodity Brands:

Curator Brands:

No middle ground. You're one or the other.

Signals this is happening:

2028-2030: The Curator Premium

Brands with established taste infrastructure will command:

The organizations that delayed will struggle to catch up. Taste infrastructure takes years to build and can't be copied by spending more on AI tools.

What customers will pay for in 2030:

Not:

Yes:

The creator economy promised "everyone can make things."

The curator economy delivers "only some people should."

2030+: The Endgame

Two scenarios:

Scenario A (Commodity Hell):
Most brands chose volume over curation. The internet is drowning in AI-generated content. Customers tune out everything that feels generated. Only offline/experiential marketing works. Digital marketing ROI collapses.

Scenario B (Curator Renaissance):
Leading brands built taste infrastructure. They use AI to multiply judgment, not just output. The internet splits into "slop layer" (ignored) and "craft layer" (valued). Curator brands capture disproportionate attention and value.

Which scenario happens depends on decisions being made right now. By you. By your organization. By everyone reading this.

If you've followed this series:

Part 1: You diagnosed the crisis. Your brand is dissolving. AI is accelerating the dissolution.

Part 2: You trained your eye. You learned to see craft. You built vocabulary. You curated your reference collection.

Part 3: You built organizational systems. You created principles, review structures, and feedback loops that scale judgment.

Part 4: You understand why that work just made you incredibly valuable. And where the market is heading.

You're now positioned for the curator economy.

Most marketers are still in the creator economy mindset. They're competing on volume. They're racing to produce more. They're treating AI as a production multiplier.

You're different. You see AI as a judgment multiplier. You're building moats while they're chasing metrics. You're becoming HBO while they're becoming cable.

Five years from now, the gap will be obvious.

The brands that built taste infrastructure in 2025 will be the category leaders in 2030. Premium pricing. Brand loyalty. Cultural impact. Talent magnet. Sustainable competitive advantage.

The brands that optimized for volume will be competing on price in commoditized markets. Declining margins. No differentiation. High churn. Talent drain.

We've seen this movie before. We know how it ends. The curators win. The commodity producers fight over scraps.

The only question that matters:

Which side of the split will you be on?

This concludes the 4-part Taste Gap series. If you found value here:

The curator economy is here.

The split is happening.

Are you ready?

— Peter & Torsten

This edition was sponsored by:

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