How Blockchain Technology Empowers Content Creators?

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• April 12, 2019

Digital content has now become an inseparable part of our lives be it audio, video, text, or games. In the last decade, it has been at the forefront and has seen tremendous explosive growth.

 

Nowadays, there is a revolution in the amount of original content that is shared online on popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat. It is no surprise that these platforms are powerhouses of content. People incentivize to produce valuable, high-quality content and enjoy the fruits of their labor through the profits offered by these platforms. Do they for real? Or at least that’s what it seems like right?

 

But, on the contrary, there seems to be a deviation in reality. Top tier platforms try to secretly advertise the content created and posted by original creators and earn big money from it and the profits earned from it are, in most cases, not shared with the content creators while some may get paid a very meagre percentage.

 

Major challenges faced by content industries today are:

• Content piracy.
• Duplication of content.
• Undelivered content curation rewards.
• High operational costs.
• Long payback period.
• Limited monetization channel.
• Aggressive competition.

This is where blockchain technology comes to the rescue. It is an ideal ecosystem which helps:

 

• Content creators receive recognition and rewards for each and every content produced on the virtual space.
• Have control over content.
• Take major decisions regarding ownership, pricing, earnings, etc.
• Make the system mutually beneficial by allowing content creators to pay readers for viewing their content, supporting it, and for voicing their views.

 

Some of the tools empowering content creators are:

 

1.  Content Box

 

 

 

Content Box is one such solution which aims to make the content industry a whole lot better. This decentralized, open-source platform will provide a unified payout system, a shared content pool, and a shared user pool, which will help content creators gain a fair share of their remuneration each time their content is consumed by these platforms. The creators will be directly connected to consumers. This will eliminate the need for intermediaries. It provides advertisers access to shared advertisement statistics ledger automated by smart contracts. This aids in auditing and verification, thereby keeping records transparent.

 

This payout system will help content creators gain rewards every time their content is consumed. Consumers will be provided with tokens depending on their contributions. These tokens can be spent on content consumption such as viewing a song or streaming a movie.

2.  Steemit

 

Steemit is blockchain-based blogging and social media website where users are rewarded with the STEEM cryptocurrency for creating and curating content. It supports social media and online communities in terms of returning value to contributors in the form of virtual currency. It functions more like Reddit, as it has upvoting and downvoting. Each and every content is stored on the servers. It is a website based on revenue sharing. The blockchain has information about the rewards scheme and new STEEM tokens are minted each day. The community pool is divided among the users based on content popularity.

 

3.  Mycelia

 

Musician Imogen Heap aims to launch her blockchain platform named Mycelia. It uses smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. It will enable musicians to sell and license their music on a peer-to-peer platform. Payments will automatically be distributed to the artist which will then be equitably divided among everyone who was involved in song production. As there are no fees to be paid to middlemen, the money paid by the consumer is entirely owned by the artist, following which it is distributed to relevant parties.

 

4.  Brave

 

It is a blockchain browser for creators. It is an open-source, free web browser which blocks unwanted ads and website trackers. It features blockchain-based tokens which are used to reward content creators. It offers a ‘safe, private browsing mode’ which provides a deep level of protection. It loads major news sites 2 to 8 times faster than other web browsers. It has been developed by a team of privacy-focused, performance-oriented pioneers.

5.  Binded

 

This offers copyright protection. Registering copyrights on the blockchain helps you monitor the way in which they are being used. This is the right platform to protect images for free, forever. It aims to make creativity the world’s most valuable asset. Each user is given his own secure vault into which he drops his images. Following this, a permanent blockchain record is created for each image. They can monitor the usage of images using the web search feature which helps identify details of copyright infringement.

 

The blockchain is the best solution for anyone engaged in the content industry such as a content creator, consumer, or an advertiser as it provides each person total control over their intellectual property. Undoubtedly, all these tools and many more that are available, have what it takes to empower the digital content industry and make it a safe haven for everyone involved with content in the virtual space.