A new era of content monetization? Blockchain tech can get you paid

By doing so, they have helped regular people become known celebrities, many of whom now hold more influence than TV networks and print media outlets. The same can be said for music streaming services like Spotify and iTunes, which now allow musicians to skip record label deals and simply upload their songs directly to platforms through services like DistroKid and others.

While these are amazing feats, to say the least, the model still needs to be improved. According to Jack Cheng, co-founder of GazeTV — a blockchain-based social entertainment platform:

“Content creators don’t have many choices until they are famous or have a large following, and even then they can get deplatformed pretty easily. If you think back to the early days of YouTube, the platform did not make money. These days the platform makes money as part of a great data generating engine.”

The top content platforms keep aspiring creators in the dark when it comes to their compensation policies, which leads to frequent video demonetizations and has also led to many creators having their videos removed or being shadowbanned. Some have seen their channels completely deleted or entirely demonetized with no prior warning.

Cheng believes that blockchain technology can help change this while providing better monetization for content creators, telling Cointelegraph: “Having a transparent place for content creators which allows viewers to reward the creators themselves is imperative.”

What exactly is going on?

While creators have a hard time monetizing their content — facing multiple strict rules, frequent demonetizations and generally low revenues — advertising networks are still making millions of dollars by showing ads and collecting users’ data. That data is then, unknowingly and often unwillingly, shared with other third parties to further advertising retargeting. All of this is done without a single reward being shared with the creators of all this value: the content consumer.

Creators are eager to change this. It is already happening with many other industries such as financial services, which has been disrupted by the emergence of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Now, blockchain technology may finally make an impact upon the world of entertainment and bring advertisers and creators closer together, removing the middlemen and allowing all involved parties to be properly compensated. EllioTrades, a crypto YouTuber and co-creator of the Superfarm NFT project, told Cointelegraph:

“Engagement is what matters and the reality is that YouTube and Twitter have unrivaled reach. Until a challenger can adequately provide the tools for creators to build their own brands, there isn’t much alternative to these incumbents. Almost every content creator knows this, so despite occasional censorship on these platforms creators remain steadfast in growing their channels there.”

Incentives through blockchain technology

Several platforms aim to solve the ambiguous monetization policies of various entertainment platforms by leveraging incentives and rewards, empowering creators and audiences to engage with each other and form a community.

For example, on GazeTV, users can support creators with ERC-20 GAZE tokens, based on their preferences and tastes, that can be earned, staked and exchanged. This way, creators can track on the blockchain exactly how they are being compensated. This provides creators with additional options to earn from their content. Cheng told Cointelegraph: “I don’t think it’s a binary choice. You don’t have to leave other platforms, such as YouTube, to be on GazeTV.”

Other such platforms include You42 and AIOZTube, the flagship decentralized application, or DApp, on Aioz Network. These platforms aim to create new ways for content creators to be rewarded fairly, while bringing improvements in other areas like data privacy and ad fraud.