Frederick Jace
In the past, the idea of a small communicator allowing you to talk to your relatives on the other side of the earth was just a futuristic dream. Now we’ve got smartphones. Transferring funds within minutes on huge distances was just a concept of a decentralized financial system. Today, we’ve got blockchain.
Not only in the finance industry, but blockchain finds its use cases in almost every field of our life. It helps to store the public and government records securely while reducing election frauds. As well as in healthcare, blockchain helps to maintain the privacy of patient info, track the shipment and authenticity of medicines. And even in the entertainment sphere — watching movies, downloading music, buying pieces of art are now possible on blockchain-based platforms. There is something more that decentralized technologies can bring into the artist’s life and we’ll talk about it next.
Content piracy is so big that its impact is felt beyond the bank account — it’s changing business models. Traditionally in the movie business, new releases often stayed in theaters for months to maximize revenues. As digital downloads, and now streaming, have made it easier for content pirates to obtain and distribute illegal copies, movie studios have continually shrunk the release window over the last several years at expressplay.com.
Why blockchain?
- Secure storage. There is no single entity or server controlling the data records. All information is kept online, meaning every participant has a backup copy of all records. It is almost impossible to falsify
- High-speed processing. When it comes to making payments online, cryptocurrencies are probably the best solution for both merchants and customers. The average execution time for bitcoin transactions is approximately 10 minutes.
- No intermediaries. Many artists should have to interact with time-consuming middlemen to promote their content and pay extra fees for the provided services. With a blockchain, musicians, for instance, can directly connect with their fans without the need for intermediary distributors.
- Reduced frauds. Thanks to greater transparency and improved traceability of data records, blockchain can help to prevent fraudulent activity in many spheres. And if the content is kept on the blockchain, we can easily trace its origin because the information is on a shared, distributed ledger.
These peculiarities allow content creators and media businesses to effectively deal with the nowadays challenges. And here is how.
Distributed ledger for proving the ownership
You may wonder, but the founding and protection of copyright is a complex task that requires substantial funding. Movie creators are well informed that their original story can be exploited through unverified or incorrectly assigned rights. While famous companies with enough income can deal with fines and litigations act, this is a huge barrier for comparingly small, independent distributors and producers. And digital piracy creates double trouble here.
By the way, should we feel sorry for movie studios that often exploit content creators who didn’t register their copyright?
When creators record a copy of their lyrics, scripts, books on the blockchain they actually register the appropriate digital rights of the ownership. The distributed ledger technologies protect the content and the copyright from being misused or compromised. Because all records on the blockchain are copied to millions of computers connected to the network. When one of the copies is damaged, the system will pull up the records from all other copies, compare them, detect and delete the compromised one.
Additionally, smart contracts (we’ll talk more about them in the next part) can be helpful for both defining the rules governing the rights assignment and for tracking the search engines, and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) for the purpose to identify illegal broadcasting or uploads.
Smart contacts for fair compensations
If Bitcoin is digital cash running on the cryptographic algorithms, smart contracts are agreements with similar characteristics. By using them you can apply the custom rules for your negotiation, register them on blockchain and it will be automatically executed or canceled (depending on the actions of involved parties). For instance, you don’t need a notary and sign tons of papers to buy a house or register your intellectual property.
In media, a smart contract could govern the relationship between a content creator and publisher or producer by using a single automated algorithm. Mainly, automated contracts encourage provisions to fairly compensate the involved parties, particularly authors. In these terms, we can not ignore the weaker negotiating position of individual artists and those indigent upcoming talents. It is possible that, despite the wide availability of smart contracts, the artist can be persuaded to make an unprofitable deal. So the blockchain algorithms designed to share the artists’ reward should be standardized, thus capturing all eventualities.
Open network for audience engagement
Funding the development of their first song or film is a headache for aspiring artists who don’t have sponsorship. Even if the creator has put into his craft all the passion, the property is mainly going to the labels. Moreover, they help to monetize the content and receive monetary compensation for it. Still, leading media platforms keep authors in the dark when it comes to their compensation policies. Many creators have faced demonetization of content and found their videos or songs had been removed or shadowbanned.
Blockchain projects can become an all-in-one solution for audience engagement and content monetization. For instance, GazeTV allows users to support creators with GAZE tokens. You can also exchange or stake tokens in the native and other crypto platforms. At the same time, with the help of blockchain creators can track their compensation. And we all remember BitTorrent, a P2P platform for sharing and downloading different types of content.
Most of the blockchain media platforms have their native token accepted as a payment for the services. Whether you are an author or an everyday user looking for a favorite song online, be ready to use cryptocurrencies to pay for the delivery services or to send tips for a singer. If you don’t have any on your own, consider opening an account on a crypto platform or downloading the crypto trading app to your smartphone. Also, when you earn some tokens for staking or sharing your content, you’ll likely want to sell them for fiat money and get hard cash. Pay your attention to the CEX.IO platform where you can simply buy, sell and trade over 55 cryptocurrencies. Moreover, it supports card payments so you can exchange Bitcoin for dollars and withdraw proceeds to your debit or credit card anytime you need it.
Conclusion
Blockchain provides a variety of media business solutions to enhance transparency and accountability for the benefit of the creator. As a result, the final product becomes more affordable for the consumer, getting rid of unnecessary intermediaries. However, this does not mean job loss for content promoters. Conversely, a distributed ledger can improve its efficiency and performance as can be widely used in advertising businesses.
