Bitcoin has stumbled to prices below $4,000 for the first time since September 2017. There have been more questions than answers on the current state of cryptocurrencies. Blockchain’s potential has also been questioned especially in the non-crypto world and particularly in media and entertainment.
Nelson Granados, a writer for the Forbes magazine, has participated in conferences, done some research himself, combed research works by others and combined a report for the magazine on the same.
The Potential Of Blockchain Technology
The technology is in its initial stages of development with early versions of the technology receiving the limelight. Much more remains to be seen when the technology is fully developed and adopted.
In comparison to the existing technology, Blockchain’s potential is on its ability to distribute a single and immutable version of data to multiple parties. This will be useful in areas where efficiency and effectiveness are highly needed.
The technology also enforces a transparent business environment so that businesses can focus on adding value rather than using time, effort and money verifying facts and transaction settlements.
Content Creation And Funding
The technology could also be put to use in the cumbersome jobs of production of creative contents. In these fields, there are multiple parties involves, from investors to artists, producers, directors, and crews. The job of ensuring all these parties receive their share of future revenue from consumption to licensing is Burdensome.
Today, artists, fans and creative content producers can support projects through crowdfunding. A platform like Iprodos tracks fan contributions for the creative projects and allocates and distributes the revenues on their behalf according to contents consumed.
Blockchain Use In Digital Advertising
Google and Facebook are the current giants in advertising. However, their advertising system is often opaque and inefficient with little to no transparency as to who watches these ads with cases of fake publishing sites and bot replacing human eyes being on the rise.
Blockchain has jumped into digital advertising and offered tangible solutions for this problem. NTIAX enables trading and execution of ad contracts between publishers and advertisers. The platform offers a higher transparency with less fee charged.
Lucidity, on the other hand, is a platform for tracking ad impressions, improving ad effectiveness in the supply chain and minimizing fraud. Its sophisticated techniques enable it to handle thousands of transaction necessary in an ad campaign.
Blockchain Solving Piracy
While Blockchain can’t entirely solve the piracy crisis, it can, in fact, mitigate it. When the platform delivers the content, streaming can be securely tracked. Its cryptographic consensus mechanism in validating new transactions make it a challenge to develop platforms fast and robust enough to deliver contents and simultaneously record the huge number of consumption microtransactions.
Eluvio’s co-founder Michelle Munson demonstrated, in a Hollywood Innovation and Technology Summit in October 2018, how she would solve this problem using Blockchain and AI. The first version of the Eluvio platform, she says would be made available in 2019.
Professor Andranik Tumasjan from Johannes Gutenberg University says that the technology is in its developmental stages and might still not challenge giants like Spotify, Netflix and Facebook who have millions of users. “But that’s the point with disruptive innovations” he continues. The big players may underestimate the emerging projects until it’s too late for them to protect themselves.
