The Patrick Ta Payment Drama Highlights a Bigger Issue With the Creator Economy

Brands are taking advantage of creators by having the upper hand. What can be done?

@avonnasunshineAny guesses on who it might be?

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In 2022, my podcast signed a deal with a publisher to act as Gloss Angeles’s agency of record, meaning they would be able to sell our podcast to advertisers and get a cut of the deal. I’m not going to hash out the incompetencies of the publisher (that now does not exist — pretends to be shocked) which became radically apparent after signing this deal because it is not pertinent to this story. (I’ll save it for a book.) But what I will tell you is that I worked painstakingly for 10 months — delivering two podcast episodes a week, staying on top of campaign deadlines, editing, producing and making sure the show stayed on schedule — with no payment. (Cue the “podcasting IS hard!” quote from bodies bodies bodies.) On top of this, they lost us a substantial amount of income due to their ignorance. I had been working for free while they kept the money our presenting sponsor had delivered to them. (We don’t fault the brand.)

We were owed six figures from this deal, split into half payments. We had to send breach of contract letters for the first half; three days before we could have stopped delivering all work and gone to the brand ourselves, we received the first payment.

This fiasco ultimately lead us to end the “partnership.” And I say this as petty as it reads: what partnership? We already worked closely with the brand sponsoring us, so it wasn’t like they brought that relationship to the table. The publisher provided no benefit to us in terms of production or editing. In fact, it was a headache working with them and ultimately they became a middle man that created problems rather than solutions. So we said see ya later and decided against signing for another year. (A blessing as a mentioned: they do not exist anymore.) But that left us with the second half of what we were owed floating in the ether, not knowing if we’d ever receive it.

We did, ultimately — 7 months later, and after an official bankruptcy filing that favored the publisher, meaning they would be able to walk away without paying us in full. It was a small miracle we saw the rest of our money because contractually they didn’t have to pay us out. Thanks, I guess!

I’m sharing all this because you may have seen my Instagram Stories losing my mind over this non-payment back in 2023. I had reached my breaking point. It is degrading to work hard and not get paid.

The creator payment ecosystem is designed so poorly that many of us are not paid on time. Just because you end up getting paid at some point doesn’t justify late payments. If you are delinquent outside of your payment terms, you simply have not paid someone. Plain and simple. As a freelancer in California, 40% of my income goes to taxes, so a company not paying according to contracted payment terms can be detrimental (to put it lightly).

Needless to say, I understand where Avonna Sunshine, a beauty creator with a large following on TikTok, was at mentally when she posted a video outing Patrick Ta Beauty for not paying her for a content partnership. Two weekends ago, Sunshine went viral after breaking Patrick Ta Beauty compacts and pumping out gobs of the brand’s foundation into a trash can. She doesn’t outright say the brand name, but she discusses how a brand who was supposed to pay her did not; she reached out to the brand and those messages went unanswered. Her video called out brands for not paying Black creators.

It was clear Ta was the subject of this video. And he left no question about it after reposting the video himself. The video now has 8M+ views on TikTok and 14K comments.

Ta responded by posting (and deleting, then reposting) a (new) apology. Eventually, Sunshine posted another video response by naming brands she was wearing that do pay Black creators and left it at that.

So what happened? Sources close to the situation told me a string of errors internally is what caused the payment issue: apparently, several employees connected to the influencer team and finance at the brand quit, were let go or went on maternity leave, ultimately leaving Sunshine’s payment for a project she worked on in the Spring with no one to keep tabs on it.

I reached out the brand for comment and they sent me the brand’s video apology. (Correction: in an earlier edition of this newsletter, I mistakingly wrote “Ta’s video apology.” I have since updated and linked the apology.) When I reached out to Sunshine, she said while she won’t be answering questions, she’d like to provide a statement. I’m posting it in full below: