Sourodip Biswas, Digital Marketing Professional, Space-O Canada

Blockchain is yet to become the mainstream technology, and currently, it assumes a slow adoption rate among its target audience. More than the awareness of this technology, people are yet to get educated about the technology and its uses. 

However, the technology is definitely revamping most of the industries, and entertainment is one such major industry.

There are some major issues that are evident in this industry.

• Being one of the biggest industries, it is definitely unorganized in many ways. right from content creation to distribution, there is no proper way of conducting them. so, when you want to get viewing rights to a particular content, there is a whole chain that you need to revisit.
• Secondly, there is the whole aspect of distribution, where people would not give away the copyrights so easily. You cannot interact with the content without contacting the intermediaries, which is definitely a pain.
• The unfair compensation in this industry is also one of the biggest problems facing the people. The reason being the emerging digital content platforms, and the need to put up your content on these platforms. With the likes of Spotify, YouTube and SoundCloud, a lot of unknown artists are gaining attention, which has led to disputes related to the treatment and compensation being offered to major artists on these platforms.

Implementation of blockchain will help redefine the industry. Here’s how blockchain can help the entertainment industry.

Blockchain in Entertainment

• Blockchain being a decentralized technology would enable decentralization in the communication within the industry. The artists as well as their audiences can interact with each other and can connect without the need for intermediaries such as the distributor or the platform people.
• In case a particular asset has been acknowledged with blockchain, you will be able to view all the transactions that happen with respect to the asset in the system. Tracking all activities such as its usage, transfer of copyrights and even the smart contracts are visible to all stakeholders. You can easily see who are the authorized viewers of the content, thus ensuring no malpractice occurs.

Apart from actual movies and content on the streaming platform, blockchain can also be applied to the other aspects of entertainment, which include gaming, and art.

What are the aspects of Blockchain that help?

You now know how blockchain will impact the entertainment industry. Let’s have a quick look at what are the aspects that it will help with.

• Content creation and distribution: As we have discussed, this is a major issue and the decentralization of blockchain will make it easier for the people within the industry to communicate with each other. However, we will need to view this part in detail.
  • So, as we talked earlier in this content, creating or distributing the content in the past required you to connect with major media giants. It was not as easy as it is now with a Spotify or Netflix. 
  • However, even with the advent of the new streaming platforms, we have not really gotten rid of the middlemen, who tend to speak on your behalf and distribute the content for you.
  • They are the people who will add compensation and decide when and how your content will be streamed.
  • With blockchain by your side, you can have an encrypted version of the ownership as well as a smart contract of the records so that you know the exchange of your content happens for the right value.
  • You can easily customize the smart contracts to meet the artist’s requirement
  • There are the blockchain-based self-publication services as well that you can use. This will help keep your media content copyrighted so that no one can take away your right to the compensation or royalty.
• Smart Contract for Content: The second most important use of blockchain or the application within the entertainment industry is for the smart contracts to enable rights for the content.
  • A lot of people within the entertainment industry suffer from being the victim of plagiarism. When you release digital content, there is nothing that claims your right to the content. A lot of people tend to use your content and get inspired, as they call it.
  • This kind of piracy can take a major piece of your compensation.
  • The only way to get rid of this and improve your situation is by watermarking your right to the digital content. 
  • With smart contracts, you have an efficient solution.
  • The blockchain will be witness to these rights, and if anyone tries to steal what’s yours or even decides to copy these parts, you will know of it immediately. Blockchain will manage your content effectively and efficiently.
• Stop Counterfeit: With blockchain, you can surely get the authentic and real things loaded to your phone. Counterfeit is one such issue that the entertainment industry faces. Imagine getting a duplicate or a pirated merchandise of your favorite movie or character? That does not happen with blockchain.
  • With the blockchain-based platform, you can detect if anyone is selling duplicate merchandise or not.
  • In case of tickets to an event, the event organizer can issue the tickets with a blockchain-based ticketing solution so that the organizers would know if people buy fake tickets.

Summing up

Blockchain is indeed a new-on-the-block technology that will redefine every industry that it walks into. However, being in the nascent stage, and the fact that people are still wary of adopting this technology, has made its rate of inception into the industries slow.

Blockchain within the entertainment industry will set new standards for encryption as well as copyright. Every transaction will be visible, and it will be difficult for people to copy or get inspired by a particular content.

The artists, as well as the viewers, will benefit from this technology, thus giving more distribution rights and better abilities to get the content to a platform that is more accessible. 

What’s your take on blockchain in the entertainment industry?

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About the Author: Sourodip Biswas is a Digital Marketing Professional at Space-O Canada, a leading app development company that provides on-demand business solutions through Uber for X. He adores mobile app technology and regularly contributes on various websites. In his free time, he reads new technology trends and plays video games.