Uberization in the field of culture: features and trends

Today, the significant socio-economic changes affect the sphere of culture, for example, the uberization. Uberization is the new economic model based on the two-sided digital platforms. The producer of the goods and services gets the opportunity to realize the surplus that arises, connecting directly with the consumer. Digital platforms allow the manufacturer to provide their services with lower costs, the consumer to receive a quality product or service with minimal costs and additional services (seller ratings, customer feedback system, etc.), the platform to make a profit in the form of interest from transactions. The question of the applicability of such a model to the sphere of culture is an open one. This is due to the fact that cultural entities are traditional (museums, libraries, theaters, etc.) and non-traditional (cafes, bookstores, festival venues, etc.) cultural organizations, private individuals (performers in various types of art, craftsmen, etc.). Non-traditional organizations and individuals already today successfully use specialized digital platforms (Delivery Club, Fair Masters, YouDo, etc.). For traditional organizations, the Uber model may not be fully applicable because cultural organizations are both sellers and offline platforms, the creative product is unique and does not lend itself to standardization. The trends of cultural uberization include scaling up existing and entering new market segments of digital platforms for non-traditional cultural organizations, expansion of the digital platforms into the activities of traditional cultural organizations (to optimize the use of material and technical resources), building partnerships with the digital platforms in other markets and exchanging with the digital platforms user data. The main danger of the uberization for the cultural sphere is the standardization, which conflicts with a free creative act.