philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Blockchain for Blockbusters: From Movies to VR Distribution Platforms, Media Is Embracing Decentralization

“No Postage Necessary,” a romantic indie comedy coming this June, will be the first film to be to be released with the help of blockchain technology. Viewers will be able to buy the film through the blockchain-based video app Vevue, and pay for it with the app’s digital currency. “They need to just pay a token rather than dollars,” says Culver, who directed the movie and co-produced it with actress Charleene Closshey.

Comcast Ventures’ primary purpose is to generate financial return, but it’s also taking cues from its parent company on how the new technology could help the entertainment industry.

That industry has seen distribution prices tumble in its transition to digital, says Beyda. But often, physical storefronts have simply been replaced by digital ones. “As a result of that, we had a lot of intermediaries and aggregators appear,” he says. “We think blockchain has a lot of opportunities to evolve those models.” In other words, cutting out some of the middlemen might make media more profitable.

This promise also motivated New York-based Littlstar to embrace blockchain.  “We saw what was broken,” says Littlstar co-founder and CEO Tony Mugavero. “Moving VR content around is super expensive at scale. We had to find a way of taking distribution costs out of our equation.”

To solve this problem, Littlstar began working on blockchain-powered distributed-file storage, effectively recruiting users to help securely redistribute licensed files.

Littlstar now aims to combine its decentralized file distribution technology with a blockchain-based rights-management and rewards system. The new platform is being called Ara, and is scheduled to launch later this year. Users will get tokens, or credits, every time they help to redistribute a file, which they ultimately can use to buy additional content.

See the full story here: http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/blockchain-media-biz-1202729303/