Companies and businesses across different industries – healthcare and finance, retail and automotive, to name a few – are constantly exploring blockchain technology for its potential benefits. The media and entertainment industry is no exception.
Discover the top uses of blockchain in the entertainment industry below, an industry rife with multiple inefficiencies, uneven distribution of profits, go-betweens, shifting consumption habits, and more…
Rights and Royalties Management
Following the advent and boom of peer-to-peer sharing services in the digital age, artists have been plagued with issues surrounding protecting their ownership rights. It wasn’t uncommon for artists to be unaware of how their works were digitally sold, distributed, or streamed and how many royalties they were owed. However, thanks to the immutable nature of the blockchain and the tokenization of media, it’s now easy to track ownership and rights of any digital content and calculate royalties.
Royalty payments for streaming are mainly shared among artists, publishers, and streaming services. However, artists only receive a small portion of the potential revenue. This doesn’t have to be the case. With a blockchain-based platform, artists and content creators can now upload their original work, self-publish content, control licensing options, manage content distribution, and much more.
Smart contracts are now available to facilitate immediate, accountable payments to artists for their work each time the content is viewed. These royalty payments can be programmed into the smart contract for each piece of proprietary content from the creator, consequently allowing for a more efficient and fairer system that appropriately rewards creators for their work.
Transparency and Fair-play
It isn’t unusual for traditional online casinos to conceal information about potential winnings from their customers. These casinos are also renowned for increasing their house edge against gamblers using various obscure tricks. As a result, players can often wager and lose repeatedly without knowing why they are losing. Crypto-based casinos have eliminated the possibility of the house using unscrupulous tricks that increase their edge.
Thanks to blockchain technology, these crypto-casinos are transparent and guarantee that players are presented with fair odds every time they place bets. Players can also rest assured that they will be treated fairly since blockchain-based platforms like lucky block casino are programmed with a preset payout rate, with all transactions recorded on-chain. What’s more? Blockchain casinos also have the added benefits of lower deposit and withdrawal fees, faster transaction times, and military-grade security measures.
Immutable Advertising Engagement Metrics
It’s no news that hidden and deceptive ads, bot traffic, and innovative bad actors in the entertainment industry ruin users’ experience and waste advertisers’ revenue. In 2019, the industry lost $23 billion to advertising fraud, and statistics estimate that by 2024, consumers and brands will lose over $100 billion. This is one area where blockchain comes in handy as an innovative solution to track ad spend, eliminate click fraud, and reward ad viewers.
Using blockchain in advertising and media allows agencies, advertisers, and brands to track advertising budgets accurately. It provides immutable metrics that can trace clicks back to the correct channels specified in the smart contract. With blockchain as the universal source of truth and shared ledger, stakeholders can rest assured that their data is free from manipulation and fraud regarding clicks, impressions, and lead generation.
New Content Monetization Models
In today’s digital content world, consumers are spoilt for choice when it comes to streaming services. According to research by Deloitte, the way we consume content has changed drastically in recent years. Records initially showed increased subscriptions to paid streaming services, but this trend has since reversed as more consumers cancel subscriptions. This has prompted content creators in the ensuing super-competitive entertainment market to gravitate towards more efficient and consumer-friendly solutions that provide consumers with the best ROI on their time and money.
Micropayments and usage-based consumption models are two solutions that use smart contracts to allow consumers to pay just for the content they want while ensuring that artists receive payments for their work. This creates a win-win situation for all; content creators are paid automatically and no longer have to lose a chunk of their revenue to intermediaries, while consumers enjoy bite-sized content if they so choose.
Content Security: Fraud and Piracy Prevention
Every year, the media and entertainment industry loses tens of billions of dollars to piracy in the form of counterfeit copies of content. Artists and content creators around the globe are the most affected, but this issue is slowly being put to rest thanks to the adoption of blockchain technology in the entertainment industry. Although this is still in its beginning stages, blockchain already shows great promise, notwithstanding the complex nature of piracy issues.
Piracy has proven especially difficult to combat since there isn’t sufficient evidence to understand its motives. According to CREATe, a copyright research body, the reasons for piracy could range from an ingrained cultural belief that original contents hold no value to cultural norms or even a lack of access. Currently, blockchain is being used on a small scale to implement forensic watermarking technology as well as for content surveillance. It’s expected that as the motives behind piracy are better understood, the adoption of blockchain as a key tool for combating piracy will increase.
