In the early days of blockchain technology, the general belief was that blockchain was all about cryptocurrencies, but things are dramatically changing. We now know that blockchain transcends all spheres of life.
Financial institutions, agriculture, and the health sectors have benefited immensely from blockchain technology. The adoption of blockchain technology is overwhelmingly transforming industries, however, the relation-based nature of the media and entertainment sector singles it out as being in an exceptional position to gain from the transparency, decentralization, and traceability that blockchain offers.
The fundamental fact that the media and entertainment industry is relationship-based has been the primary reason why creators are put at a disadvantage by middlemen. Publishing rights and distribution profits were a goldmine for executives, managers, and other industry insiders.
This decentralization will ensure that creators can no longer be fleeced by middlemen. lBlockchain technology will eliminate fraud, vastly reduce costs, and increase transparency overall.
With blockchain, it becomes easier to track IP across multiple channels. The technology ensures the protection of intellectual property rights. In the end, digital rights management companies will easily assess any transaction.
Where this advancement has not gone wholly on stream, the following organizations have started setting the pace.
The music sector was among the early pacesetters in the adoption of blockchain technology in the entertainment industry. Vezt, powered by Sony and BMG, has come on strong as the first music rights marketplace where fans can partake in the royalties of songs and recordings they love.
The company has the view of transforming the music sector in such a way that artists, songwriters, and producers will generate their resources directly from fans without middlemen. The blockchain tracks their royalties and all song rights are encoded.
If fans want, they can purchase a percentage of the song’s rights. This will enable them to become some sort of shareholders and enjoy any success their favorite artists may be making with their projects.
Verifi also came up with the view of resolving rights management for the music sector, linking media files, ownership data, and artwork. The organization focused on how to harmonize the issue of ownership across stakeholders in each song, this ranged from the artist to the label, and finally, to the streaming service.
The music sector of the entertainment industry is not a case in isolation, the film/content sector also is experiencing radical changes by this decentralization. The Ethereum based, FilmChain has come on stream to collect, allocate, and analyze revenues in film, TV, and other digital media.
What FilmChain has set out to ensure is that there is transparency in the distribution process, where parties can get their rewards without the meddlesomeness of the middleman. FilmChain has made it easy for budding and established artists to reach across the globe for funding from their wide-spread fans.
Even where you consider MP4.social a new kid on the block, MP4 is an offshoot of Blockchain Music Entertainment (BME) and the music industry decentralization DAPP, MP3. The aim is to tokenize the world by substituting a randomly generated identifier for (a sensitive piece of data), prevent unauthorized access, and create an entirely new system of values.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealed in a study that digital piracy, fraudulent copies, infringed studio intellectual property (IP), and duplication of digital items cost the US film and TV industry an estimated $71 billion and losses of hundreds of thousands of jobs annually.
MP4 is set to do for the film/content industry what MP3 does for the music industry. BME Group has been in the pipeline as a worldwide body of developers that contributes to the decentralization of the entertainment industry as well as to enable those who create.
MP4 will serve as the utility and value token for the film/content industry DAPP; this will be like a social media platform where influencers, filmmakers, and content creators can tokenize themselves, their media, and their visions to interact with web3, according to MP4.social.
StreambedMedia, operating from Toronto is engulfed with the creation of a content provenance mechanism with which creators can track content posted on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with a reputation mechanism.
Creators can use the free platform to share traffic data and immutably link to other creators in the video. You can also share with those who paid you to make the video and distributors. StreambedMedia’s strategy is centered on using blockchain to monetize micro-content.
Conclusion
It’s important to note that the entertainment industry is centered around the audience, there is no way you survive without the audience. Whether you are into the film or music sector, once you don’t have effective engagement, you cannot be talking about longevity and profitability, which boils down to monetization at the end of the day.
What blockchain is transforming is how media content such as music, video, and other types of entertainment is delivered, distributed, consumed, and eventually paid for. The systems we had before the adoption of blockchain were not capable of managing complex, personalized content and service bundles.
Blockchain has, therefore, eased the difficult task of managing the digital rights, royalty collections, and transactions among the concerned partakers. The decentralized and shared ledger nature of blockchain ensures that no single person has a controlling authority. This will play a big role in checkmating copyright infringements by aiding transparency and security.