3 Ways Virtual Content Creators can Benefit from Blockchain

As of now, sharing content on the Internet is quite a problematic industry. Content creators often face stealth of their work, difficulty while copyright verification, onfair royalty distribution, etc. The reason for this is the centralized nature of most content sharing platforms.

When you decide to place any kind of content on a sharing platform, there is always someone sitting out there and deciding whether your content should be published and how much you will get paid for that. 

Previously, coinidol.com, a world blockchain news outlet, reported that popular video streaming service YouTube banned some blockchain and cryptocurrency related accounts citing security breach. Many members of the community were outraged as they thought YouTube’s campaign to be nothing more but ordinary censorship and hostility towards innovative technology. The campaign itself gained the name of Crypto Purge and forced many cryptocurrency streamers to seek decentralized alternatives for sharing their content. 

In fact, decentralized blockchain-based platforms can bring many benefits to content creators making it easier to share content and get revenues from it.

Protecting against piracy

Blockchain technology itself is completely immutable. Once the information is recorded on the network, no one can access, forge or steal it. Authors often face problems while trying to protect their works against stealth and piracy. They can be downloaded and misused or plagiarised.

Blockchain ensures that only the author can have access to one’s works. Besides, by using timestamps and smart contracts, decentralized platforms make it easy to secure copyright and prove the authorship in case the work gets stolen or plagiarised.

Another benefit of such platforms is that only the author can control the content distribution. Therefore, one can better target one’s content, making sure it is seen by those people it was intended for. Briefly speaking, blockchain technology allows creators to gain full control over their works.

For instance, a music sharing platform UJO applies Ethereum blockchain to make sure musicians manage licensing options for accessing their content, as well as its distribution to the particular target audience.

No censorship

The very same feature of blockchain technology makes it impossible for any third-party to block or suspend your content from the platform, according to their subjective opinion or other interests. Only the creator oneself is to decide if one’s content is good enough for publishing or not. 

Indeed, many of the popular platforms have strict requirements to the content published, and if the creator fails to comply with them, one’s content might be deleted. Moreover, the creator’s account might be suspended, with the restoration procedures often being complicated. While in some cases this might seem reasonable, as the services are often used by fraudsters trying to trick users out of their money, sometimes the censors fail to remain objective.  

For instance, Ripple’s CTO who had his YouTube account suspended for the purpose of revenge, as Ripple filed a lawsuit against YouTube shortly beforehand. At the same time, blockchain-based services make it impossible, despite some users might think this affects the quality of the content share. But if you come to think about it, it is always the user who makes the final voice about the content. No single platform or service can make you watch something you don’t like.

Fair royalty distribution

It is no secret that most centralized platforms get the most revenues from advertising, and advertising is the main source of income for content creators. However, the creator gets only a minor share of the money coming from advertising as one can not control the income distribution. It is the intermediary ruling a service who controls all the advertising.

Blockchain-based platforms change things. When a service is decentralized, there is no intermediary to control advertising and do the business, so revenues go directly to the creator whose content was used for advertising. Besides, decentralization is good for advertisers as well. Thus, they can choose the content they want to use for advertising, making sure they advertise with the most popular works and therefore get more exposure.

Some platforms also offer creators to choose to make their content distribution free or paid. If the content is made paid, it is usually the author who sets the price, not an intermediary running the service. Such platforms as Mediachain apply smart contract technology to ensure the artists can set prices for their works and get fairly paid. 

As of now, there are many decentralized sharing and streaming platforms making it possible for creators to control publishing, sharing and distribution of their content as well as get fairly remunerated for their work. The most popular of them include Voice, Smakathon, Musicoin, LBRY, Dtube, PeerTube and many others. In the future the entire industry might see a shift towards blockchain and decentralization.