There is A LOT o f creators supported by pure money donations from individual creators, or mostly by those. A lot of them support themselves by selling merch. Which is nothing new, as nowadays a lot of small/medium size bands live of selling merch.
When a major Polish radio, legendary 3rd national radio channel, went to shit after several decades (fired important staff and dummed down offer) people literally crowdfunded a full successor, with same famous presenters and so on. When that one started to push weird agenda to much and diverged from original goals... There was another one crowdfunded, pulled a lot of other major famous personell, and runs as a huge project successfully from Patreon donations.
But noone wants to pay.