Blockchain in Entertainment Industry – A Complete Guide for 2020

The media and industry are primarily relationship-based meaning that creators are being at risk by the involvement of the intermediaries or middlemen margins or stealth profits.

This is because many artists are never taught or exposed to the intricacies of business law and finance in their pursuit of creativity and artistic expression.

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry could potentially eliminate fraud, vastly reduce costs, and increase transparency overall.

One of the greatest issues in entertainment is ownership and rights management.

Blockchain promises some applications or uses cases which effectively track in the entertainment industry :

Effective Use Cases of Blockchain in Entertainment and Media Industry

1. New pricing option for paid content

 Consumers demand individual content experience.

They want to consume services like blogs, pictures, single articles, news bites, or short-form videos from their preferred sources to complement the content from Tv, newspapers, radio, etc.

The success of media and music streaming services has become a trend.

Consumers are demanding a “ peruse “ payment strategy instead of paying monthly/ yearly fees for an online subscription to one particular newspaper or tv channel.

The subsequent increase in the number of transactions for each user will directly affect the transaction costs in billing systems. 

With the help of blockchain, it enables micropayments and can help publishers to monetize the flexibility.

Also, individual articles or other pieces of content could be sold for a cent – prices without disproportionate transaction costs.

• Micropayments boost paid content

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry makes it cost-efficient.

Ad sponsored content such as Youtube videos can be monetized with an “ad-free” alternative for a small fee.

Moreover, the combination of clearly-defined ownership rights and the ability to track sales permits the launch of totally new pricing models.

Thanks to blockchain, the decentralized and distributed nature makes it more fluid and prevalent.

• Impact on digital content

The Blockchain in Entertainment Industry significantly affects the way in which media companies organize their workforce, and payment schemes, e.g. articles posted on a news website could be directly linked to their respective authors.

This way, profit-sharing could permit the featuring of articles not just by well-known columnists, but equally ones by freelancers.

With the help of blockchain, online news websites could charge readers for its article, for a small price of only a few cents per reading. 

2. Elimination of Content Aggregation

The decentralized nature of blockchain enables content creators, such as musicians or writers to directly distribute their work to consumers.

Bypassing traditional distribution channels and leaving a larger share of the revenue for content creators themselves.

• Blockchain forms customer relationships

Everybody from large media houses to independent bloggers provides advertising revenues.

It extracts the tracking of content usage and allocation of advertising budgets.

Moreover, a fair allocation of revenues from music streaming becomes possible, whether advertising or paid content-based.

Since a blockchain permits easy tracking of usage and deduction of the associated payments, artists can market their songs independently of big platform providers wherever they want.

• Shifts of power in media, collection, and aggregation of content will remain an important stage of the media value chain.

Power in the media industry will probably shift back to the artists, and the dominating role of huge platform providers will decline.

• Reposition

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry enables the CEO of the companies for the new era.

Aggregators can meet the requirements of content producers with fair billing models and in this manner, it can be seen as a fair partner.

3. Distribution of royalty payments

 The distribution of royalty payments builds on multiple contracts between artists, producers, and music publishing houses.

For instance,  whenever a song is played on TV, radio, at events, or is streamed online, the rights holders should receive a royalty payment in a contractually defined split.

In order to ensure that this is happening, the national copyright collection bodies act as a collection platform for copyright holders and compensate the eligible parties.

The share of royalty payments distributed in this manner relates to music consumption that cannot be linked to the rights holder.

It can be a playlist at a wedding, music played in a store, or music in a YouTube video.

• Blockchain permits for transparent royalty distribution

With the help of blockchain, the distribution of royalties would be more efficient and transparent.

It includes a music directory with the relevant identities of people in content creation.

It is also possible to store instructions in the form of smart contracts that specify how the artists are to be compensated and how sales proceeds are to be divided among all eligible parties.

• Opportunities and threats for collection associations

Permit the blockchain ecosystem for musical rights are created.

Based on a broad consensus amongst the parties involved, the industry bodies would act as “gatekeepers” to grant and/or withdraw access to the closed ecosystem.

The role of the collecting body, collecting and distributing royalty payments, could soon become obsolete, as blockchain-based smart contracts take over the work instead. 

4. Consumer to consumer sales

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry has the potential to have the potential to do secure and transparent consumer to consumer sales with the content owners to retain better oversight of their copyright material.

Illegal peer to peer file sharing of any media content in already common but these should be controlled and monetized.

When consumers purchase or subscribe to blockchain-hosted content and then share it with a friend, content owners could track and charge a fee for that distribution.

This would create an additional revenue stream for content creators and provide better transparency on how copyrighted assets are consumed and shared.

For example, a subscriber records a show on DVD which a friend without a subscription is interested in.

Giving or selling this DVD to someone without a subscription is theoretically illegal but an established practice.

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry has the potential to solve the problem.

Content owners have the full control and visibility of the consumption of uses of individual songs/movies.

Therefore piracy and copyright infringements are near to impossible. 

5. Consumption of paid content without boundaries

The last use case deals with a situation that many subscribers of paid content subscriptions (e.g. for pay-TV, VoD, streaming services) have witnessed in the past.

They cannot access the contents they subscribed to once they are in another country/region, for example during business travel or on vacation.

Reasons for not being able to access the contents is that licenses for content are usually sold country by country and therefore access from another country/territory is prohibited by the licensor and DRM systems are not seamlessly integrated between different countries.

Therefore the respective subscription rights and packages are not accessible in other countries. 

Blockchain in Entertainment Industry has the potential to make DRM systems obsolete or at least to reduce the complexity of these systems because every transaction/ consumption is tracked in the blockchain and directly linked to a user. 

6. Challenges of Blockchain

Blockchain could create additional revenue streams for new and existing content and greater protection of content intellectual property for content owners.

Applications are not fully developed and the technology is not yet matured.

Early adopters must be aware of the potential challenges and costs.

Blockchain is currently unregulated, and common standards for utilizing the technology to create value still need to be created. 

For achieving the benefits the technology needs to replace certain cases.

Integrating the technology into existing processes and building, testing, and ensuring it’s secure—will take time.

Some other use cases –

1. Blockchain in Music

Musicians are facing issues with the funding for the development of their first song or album.

Artists put all their skills and passion into their craft, but it is usually the labels who retain ownership.

Streaming services have thrown a cog into this problematic system by allowing artists to easily track streams and even launch their music without a label.

Blockchain seeks to continue this trend by creating a more direct relationship between creators and fans. 

For example, Vezt, backed by Sony and BMG, aims to be the first music rights marketplace where fans can share in the royalties of songs and recordings they love.

Another player, Verifi tackles rights management for music, linking media files, ownership data, and artwork.

Verifi’s major value proposition is to synchronize ownership across stakeholders in each song – from the artist to the label, to the streaming service. 

2. Blockchain in visual content & media

Film, TV, and short-form digital media could benefit from more efficient tracking of IP ownership and streamlined fundraising and payout models. 

For example, Ethereum based FilmChain collects, allocates, and analyzes revenues in film, TV, and other digital media.

The goal of the platform is primarily to encourage transparency in the distribution process where stakeholders can be compensated without the need for a middleman.

Toronto-based StreambedMedia is creating a content provenance mechanism that allows creators to track content posted on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with a reputation mechanism.

3. Blockchain in Audience Engagement

Engaging audiences is at the core of every entertainment business.

Whether its film, music, or any other kind of media, longevity, and profitability all hinges on effective engagement and monetization.

Audigent is a new type of transparent data platform for advertisers in the entertainment, sports, and lifestyle space.

Boasting active partnerships with YouTube and Instagram, the company is also backed by a new fund, Raised in Space, in collaboration with Ripple’s XSpring, Scooter Braun, and Warner Music Group.

Conclusion

Cryptic Ocean is a blockchain technology company that provides end-to-end blockchain development and blockchain consulting services to multiple business domains.

Our goal is to help companies adopt new technologies and simplify complicated issues that arise during technology evolution.

Contact us for the best solutions about the use of blockchain technology to solve the toughest challenges faced by the world today.

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