With every change and advancement in technology, the digital trends towards an increase in smartphones and web services have been increasing. Digital media has been creating a tsunami and disrupting the media and entertainment industry. Traditionally the process of returning royalties to appropriate holders has been complicated because of multiple middlemen intervention. In addition to that, the media and entertainment industry have been encountering huge revenue loss due to the unauthorized use of content and piracy.
Digital media services like YouTube, Twitch, etc allow users to participate in creating and displaying their own content through the said platforms. But most users face unfair compensation in payments and uneven distribution of content. This is due to the lack of structure and a centralized system to manage the said media infrastructure.
Implementing blockchain technology in media industry will decentralize all operations or at least most of the important operations. This automated operating system functioning under a decentralized server will eliminate intermediaries causing an increase in audience and artists. This increase would be due to lower cost in subscription, proper return of royalties, borderless distribution of content, etc.
Keep scrolling down to know more about how next-generation media of 2020 will be influenced by blockchain today.
Enabling the potential of next-generation media with blockchain
Integrity in the origination of data
Providing provenance to media content is one of the major challenges faced by the media industry today. With unlimited access to online media and streaming sites, it is not easy to track every content and identify where the data is stored exactly. With the help of blockchain, the media industry in the future starting today can provide verifiable timestamp to every content published.
Blockchain stores the digital signature in an encrypted format and it will automatically recognize and authorize content for appropriate user identities. Most of all, blockchain uses hash functionalities to map fingerprints of any content that is published through the decentralized system. This way all media data can be identified in terms of its origin and content.
Finding an audience across borders
Today, the traditional system of Digital Rights Management (DRM) influences the media industry. Due to the complexity in digital regulations and media regulations across countries, not every country is given DRM for content produced by another country. This causes consumers to become obsolete over time due to limitations.
However, with blockchain, billing of media content subscription across countries with different regulations have become easy. Self-executing ability and transparency offered by blockchain enable effective DRM via smart contracts without border limitations. This helps in finding and increasing the audience base irrespective of their nationality.
Secured infrastructure against piracy
Some giant organizations such as IBM, AdNode and Mediachain state that blockchain is one of the strongest distributed systems that the media industry will ever see. All the data stored in the blockchain is encrypted but yet open-sourced. Even given the fact of being open-sourced, no hacking threat has ever been reported to date.
All data is encrypted without any global key. Every data stored using blockchain requires a unique user’s individual key to access it. This way any media content can be protected from online piracy and unauthorized access. Even in the case of losing the key, smart contracts can provide an alternate key to the identified user without breaking the security.
Eliminate aggregation of content
It is simple to say that media functioning under traditional models and technology have their content published all over the place. This is one of the reasons why most consumers lose interest and unsubscribe from a media service. The worst-case scenario is that due to aggregated content, digital advertising companies find it harder to monetize the media content.
Blockchain supports direct media customer interaction. In the future media, aggregators may very well become obsolete. This is because of the rate at which blockchain is replacing the aggregation of media sales with direct media sales. With this service, fans and artists can have direct relationships with each other too.
Provide reliable royalty distribution
Today, when a media content or any artist’s work is published, those content are distributed across various parties involving multiple contracts. For example, a song is played at events, TV, radio, YouTube, etc. The rights holder of this song must receive royalty payments appropriately with a defined split. The involvement of multiple parties and contracts makes the payments and settlements more complex.
But by using blockchain, artists can receive allocated royalty payments in real-time according to the usage of their work. This process is hugely supported by smart contracts. Starting today and in the future, the media industry can say goodbye to the black boxes of confusion in returning royalty payments to an artist. Most of all, with blockchain there will be no additional cost in tracking the payment or monitoring the media usage systems.
Multiple options for paid content
Individual content experience is increasing in demand today. Meaning, consumers today prefer to access different media content such as photos, videos, music, blogs, etc from their interested source. With an increase in media service, consumers have become more choosy and picky when it comes to what they want to experience. With this increase, providing only one type of payment model is a loss of opportunity and consumers.
Micropayments enabled by blockchain can offer pay per use kind of payment model instead of providing only monthly or yearly kind of payment model. For example, a consumer can pay only for one TV channel instead of paying for a package of channels. This increases the accuracy in copyrights and also improves the willingness of a consumer to pay for the media service subscription.
Create P2P sharing of content
Unlike the traditional business media models, blockchain allows content sharing even between peers to peers. There are no middlemen causing any confusion or adding cost to the media service. Be it a DVD or online streaming, the media service can be sold P2P directly. This also eliminates the possibility of media and content infringements in the future.
Blockchain creates a consumer-to-consumer kind of business model for the media. For instance, a subscriber of a particular media service can share access to the subscription with their friend. The friend by then will be charged directly for the content shared by the original owner. This is an easy way to generate revenue and put a full stop to illegal file-sharing at the same time.
Final takeaways:
Blockchain is a boon for next-generation media in 2020
Payment tracking and copyright protection are the biggest benefits that blockchain offers the media industry. Artists can charge their consumers directly and they can also increase the customer experience through pay per use access to paid content. Using the blockchain media industry can distribute content across countries without any restrictions. This is already starting to shape the future of the media industry with automated royalty payments and immediate transactions in revenue distribution.
What other blockchain services will enable next-generation media in 2020? Let us know.
