Every month I see these subscription fees from online media and entertainment platforms being deducted from my bank account. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Videoland and YouTube are the platforms I pay for. But every time I see that their monthly subscription is being deducted, I wonder how much I have used each online platform during that month. Was it worth it to pay for the full price? Or is it possible to pay only for the content you have used? Blockchain will make this happen.
Blockchain is about to change the Media and Entertainment industry. The technology allows pay-per-use consumption through micropayments technology. Instead of having a subscription for an online content creator, you are charged for the content you consume. Now, firms are not able to gain revenue from customers that do not want to pay for a monthly subscription. Some customers only want to watch one show or even one season on Netflix, or read one news article. By using Blockchain technology that can make the micropayments fully automatic, firms are able to track how, when and by who their content is consumed. This can change the payment model of online streaming platforms like Netflix.
Also, Blockchain is able to track the ownership and rights of content creators over several channels. In the media and entertainment industry, one of the major problems is the management of intellectual property rights. Currently, it is very complex to track the digital rights and royalty payments across a large range of channels. Blockchain can decrease intellectual property right infringement by creating transparency and more control for the content creator. For instance in the music industry, all the songs that are streamed online or being used in a television show should be paid for to the songwriter and producer. However, several discussions arise over the fair amount of payments to the songwriter. Blockchain can easily track how long and when a song is being streamed by a third party, protecting the rights of the content creator.
This new technology is very interesting and I look forward how it will change the media and entertainment industry. What would happen to the current online streaming platforms like Netflix? Will all major platforms be integrated into one, where Videoland and Netflix will receive payments only when there content is consumed? What do you think?
https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/blockchain-me
https://www.jpmorgan.com/commercial-banking/insights/future-blockchain-media-entertainment
Hey Bram, very interesting post! Blockchain seems to offer a solution to important problems such as the payment of music artist. It would be awesome if all these streaming services would be combined into one. However, their business model is based on giving access to ‘unlimited’ content for a certain price. If we start paying for what we consume, it will basically become like the blockbuster model. Moreover, all these streaming services compete with each other for customers. That’s why Disney launched its own streaming service and made all its content exclusive for Dinsey+. Consequently, Netflix started producing more and more of its own content, so they don’t have to buy licenses of shows from for example Disney. Combining streaming services would take away the competitivity. At the moment, the streaming services are still acting like traditional entertainment businesses, which is not viable in the long term. I hope that blockchain will bring the needed change to this industry.
Hi Bram, interesting read on the use of blockchain in the entertainment industry.
I think the entertainment industry is definitely moving towards this type of distributing its content. Over the years streaming services have started making their own content forcing traditional content makers to either sell its content to streaming platforms or to start one themselves. Disney starting with Disney+ is a great example of this.
However, starting a platform yourself obviously requires massive investments and know-how. This is probably not doable for relatively small content producers. I indeed believe that blockchain technology would be a solution to this problem as it could, like you explained, easily bypass existing channels.
Floris
Dear Bram, Thank you for talking about this intersting and relevant topic. I totally agree with you that all subscription fees towards media and entertainment platforms are rising quicker than you may notice. I like the idea of how blockchain is able to track and identify when and how long certain intellectual property is used. I did not know that was possible. However, I think that using blockchain for microtransactions for pay-per-use consumption takes away the whole strategy of companies like Netflix and Spotify who offer their service with a monhtly subscription so consumer can have unlimited acces. If companies would use microtransactions than the pay-per-use would have to be that low so that frequent users of those platforms won’t pay more than with a monhtly subscruption.