5 Ways In Which Blockchain is Benefiting The Entertainment Industry

The entertainment industry is a rapidly evolving industry. Starting right from theatre to online platforms today, it has come a long way. And along with the industry, the way people consume content has also evolved. Blockchain, on the other hand is touted to be ‘the next big thing’ in tech. We bring you a few ways in which blockchain can further help the entertainment industry evolve.

1. Booking Tickets

Blockchain serves as a foundation of providing immutable ledgers in a decentralised manner. It allows users to transact without trusting the other party. It also has the advantage of having smart contracts which act as a security measure, keeping a track of the transactions. Therefore, it serves as a perfect platform for the entertainment industry to sell tickets or other products. And since cryptocurrency is void of any barrier by the borders, cross-border orders become really uncomplicated.

2. No Middleman, No Royalty

In the current scenario, the artists have to pay a certain amount to the streaming platform as royalty. Here, the artists often end up earning less than what their content is worth for. Taylor Swift in 2014, after removing her work on Spotify said:

“In my opinion, the value of an album is and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace. Piracy, file sharing, and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently. Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free”

Blockchain exactly solves that. Since it is a decentralised network, there is no middleman present, ensuring the artists end up having 100% of the revenue they generate on the platform. This makes the internet, in the true sense, democratic.

3. Music Streaming

Ethereum Opus, a company developing a product on the Ethereum blockchain, specialises in streaming music over blockchain. It lets the artist decide the price of their songs and returns 100% of the revenue it generates from the artists with a contract which never expires. It uses Ethereum for transactions and IPFS, a decentralised peer-to-peer technology for file storage.

Similarly, Ujo, another blockchain music streaming platform, allows uses smart contracts to automate payments and has increased transparency.

4. Video Streaming

The main issues with the current service providers is the fact that they have control over what content should be displayed. They also limit the reach of the content based on geographic areas for reasons like licensing issues and censorship. Since blockchain essentially provides a decentralised environment, all these issues are dealt with. LivePeer, YouNow, and Stream are such platforms which provide video streaming.

5. Zero Piracy

Piracy is a huge issue plaguing the entertainment industry. However, blockchain provides a solution to that as well. Since blockchain has these immutable cells, piracy is next to impossible.