Govt eyes aggregator for creators’ online earnings

The government is developing a proposal for a Barbadian third-party aggregator that would collect revenue on behalf of content creators whose earnings are restricted by geo-blocking on international digital platforms, Minister for Culture Senator Shane Archer has said.

The initiative is being developed as the government continues to grapple with geo-blocking, the practice of restricting access to online content, services or monetisation features based on a user’s geographic location.

Senator Archer said: “We all know about geo-blocking, it is a real thing. It is something that doesn’t only affect Barbados or affect the Caribbean, but there are major countries throughout the world.

“We are working as a government to continue to agitate for this to be removed and for our content creators to earn through the different monetisation strategies.”

But the government was also exploring alternative ways for Barbadians to earn from content viewed outside the island, he added. 

“In the Division of Culture, we are working on a project, we are going to take it to Cabinet very soon, which will look at how can we utilise aggregators to more or less be a third party to facilitate the process of collecting the monies on behalf of the content creators.”

The proposal comes against the backdrop of concerns raised by the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI) about the difficulties Barbadians face in generating income from content posted on platforms such as Google, Facebook and TikTok.

In 2025, executive director Michelle Smith-Mayers announced that the BCSI had assembled a dedicated project team to examine the issue.

Senator Archer said third-party services already exist, but their costs could be prohibitive for Barbadian creatives.

“There are already those third-party programmes or institutions that offer this type of service, some of them charge a lot of money and so on and so forth.”

As a result, the government wants to “have a Barbadian company which can facilitate the process and offer better rates for those content creators”, the minister said. 

(SB)