When considering a medium it’s important to determine its accessibility—both for the artist and the audience. If a medium is accessible for the artist, but inaccessible for the audience, the audience has to sacrifice to consume whatever the artist has made. If the situation is flipped, and the medium is accessible for the audience, but inaccessible for the artist, the artist has to sacrifice to create whatever the audience wants to consume.
What makes the sticker, the shirt, the book, and the podcast unique is that they are highly accessible for both parties. Everyone has somewhere they can put a sticker, everyone loves a t-shirt, everyone knows how to read, and everyone can listen to a podcast. On the flip side, most people can afford to get a batch of sticker made, most companies can afford a small run of shirts, anyone can write a book, and it seems everyone has already started a podcast. Which means the barrier to entry to create or consume a sticker, a shirt, a book, or a podcast is relatively low—yet the ceiling, the chance that we will love creating or consuming them is incredibly high.
And even though the ultra-accessible nature of stickers, shirt, books, and podcasts lends itself to producing a lot of things that kinda suck, we don’t loose much by choosing to create or consume them. In a world filled with confusing workflows and prohibitively expensive MOQs it’s nice to have the ability to opt for something that won’t break the bank.