The Japanese Heavy Metal Family Tree traces people, because a scene reproduces through musicians moving between bands. The creator economy reproduces through attention and money, so this map traces value. A creator builds an audience on a platform that pays a share of advertising, a brand pays for access to that audience, the creator turns the relationship into a product of their own, the product needs a factory, a co packer, a warehouse and a shelf, and at each of those steps a company may create employment, supplier demand, taxable sales, property use and other local economic activity. The location and scale of that activity depend on where the operations, the manufacturing, the distribution and the headquarters functions actually sit, which is rarely one place. The chains from a bedroom channel to a bottling line are the lineages here. Unlike a lineage of bands they are paths a reader can take, which is why every node's panel reads as a method: what the creator or company started with, which platform paid first, who intermediated, when the product came, where it is made and sold, and how long each step took.

Every node sits in one of five layers of the economy. Attention holds the platforms and the creators and collectives who make audiences. Intermediaries holds the agencies, multi channel networks, media companies, tools and payment rails that turn audiences into contracts. Goods holds the brands, manufacturers and co packers. Places holds the retailers, venues, studios, headquarters and events where goods and people physically land. Capital holds the investors and acquirers who buy in and, often, buy out. The interactive map stacks the layers top to bottom on a timeline, so pressing Play shows the stack building downward over twenty years: platforms first, then intermediaries, then a wave of owned goods after 2019, then the plants, stores and headquarters those goods require.

Connections come in three weights. Solid lines are money and goods moving: sponsorships, affiliate income, creator owned brands, retail placement, manufacturing, licensing, platform payouts, investment, acquisition, and the spawning of a company or a solo career out of a house or a network. Dashed lines are influence, used only where the copier or the press has said a format or business model was copied. Dotted lines are institutional: representation, events and venues, and the software a brand runs on. Trace the path follows the solid lines upstream and downstream from any node. Edges carry a type and a date, a date range or a timing note, never a dollar weight; figures appear in the notes only where they are publicly disclosed or reported.

Failures have the same standing as successes. The 54 closed, dissolved, bankrupt or wound down nodes wear a red ring, and every one of their notes names the rung that broke. A map of winners teaches survivorship; the failures are where the transferable lessons sit and where a city can see which rungs of the ladder are weakest.