As technical innovation potentially advances to a new trajectory in the future, blockchain technology is expected to impact major areas in the film, media, and entertainment industry positively. The promising future of blockchain technology has lured the attention of both retail and institutional investors. Blockchain start-ups received more than $25 billion in 2021 alone, a 731% hike from the previous highs. The funding is expected to be much more than in 2022 as more industries experiment with the blockchain ecosystem.
Blockchain’s Success Attributes
With slightly over a decade in operation, blockchain technology has grown tremendously as an efficient and effective distributed ledger ecosystem. The technology promotes transparency, accountability, safety, and security across all major players, making it the only secure decentralized technology in this era.
The following are areas where blockchain technology could heavily impact the film, media, and entertainment industry;
Blockchain’s Positive Impact on Content Production
The ledger technology may aid the production of new content by allowing content creators to have more authority over their production. Blockchain will allow music artists, actors, and journalists to easily follow and monetize their content.
Elimination of centralized third parties like YouTube is imminent. This move also means that the artists will earn much more than they currently do under the centralized media and entertainment production system. Artists will also benefit greatly from long-chain revenue in the Blockchain network.
The distributed ledger technology will enable content creators and entertainers to handle projects involving different locations, countries, and continents using the hash mechanism representation. For instance, blockchain technology could easily conduct payment transactions faster and cheaper. A media company may work hand in hand with another media company with transactions concerning the projects happening inside the blockchain network.
Blockchain will also enable content creators and artists to keep track of milestones achieved and the production budget aligned with the milestones.
Piracy and Plagiarism in Media and Entertainment
The industry has struggled to fight piracy and copyright claims for the longest time. Blockchain may not entirely solve this problem immediately, but it may be the best application laid out to stop the malignant illegal acts.
In hindsight, if developers entirely built the internet on the blockchain’s distributed ledger technology, trucking of unlawful actions would be very easy to detect, follow up, and stop. The distributed ledger technology could make it very difficult for users to share and profit from posted content that already belongs to other owners. Users must seek permission from owners before sharing or benefiting from other people’s content.
Peer-to-Peer Media and Entertainment Transactions
Peer-to-peer transactions in the blockchain network will allow direct commercial transactions between the content creator and the media consumer. Moreover, commercial incentives required for a user to comply with pay rights to content owners may also be settled through peer-to-peer transactions.
A peer-to-peer business model will enable compensation of copyrighted content. The process will occur passively through validating smart contracts between the two parties. This means that copyright permission will be autonomously issued after the p2p payment transaction has been completed and the compensation fees transferred to the owner.
The p2p transaction will also not be technical. The decentralized model will promote equal charges to users to comply with copyright and pay rights for all. Through the p2p transactions, content creators will maximize revenue as artists, actors, and creators will avoid centralized third parties such as Spotify.
Blockchain in Television Broadcasting
Once implemented, the new technology will play a vital role in broadcasting news and other mainstream content. Once a news event is validated in the network through the hash embedded in all blockchains, unverified information, such as rumors, will no longer be published and broadcast to the mainstream audience. It will be impossible or very difficult to publish fake news or videos.
On the commercial side, blockchain will enable consumers to only pay for the channels they want to watch and the amount and type of content they want to broadcast. This will make the Television Broadcasting process more decentralized. Users will have more control over what they want to watch and what they want to pay for.
The Ledger Technology in Film Distribution
One of the principles behind blockchain success is that no one can erase the information added to the blocks. This particular feature of the network can revolutionize the film industry. For instance, an actor may be paid for the rights of each verified reach of a movie or episode.
Blockchain technology will enable the actors to follow through with each verified view on the network. Since no one can erase the viewing information, the information embedded in the blocks is reliable and may be retrieved at any time, at the discretion of the actor.
Content creators will also have the privilege of following up on advertisements placed upon their content and accurately price them during monetization. Due to the same working principles, the follow-up chain will be straightforward when done in the blockchain.
Sharing of content rights will be easy as the ledger technology will keep track of all income generated from shared-rights content and allocate the earned revenue to the stakeholders depending on the rights owned by each party.
Contracts involving media companies and actors will be stored in the blockchain network as smart contracts. Blockchain security will preserve these contracts in their original form, making each involved party accountable to the signed contracts.
Final Thoughts
The world may only achieve blockchain’s full potential in the media and entertainment industry through the full exploitation of the network. Institutions and government departments should therefore invest in exploring this new technology to ensure that the film, media, and entertainment industry merges with the decentralized technology. The subject industry may become more efficient in the future than it has ever been.
