Digital media has reached an incredible magnitude in the recent years, diverting audiences from the traditional sources and locking their attention on the internet. No longer do you need to go to several places to get all your entertainment, work or communication done.
Content repositories like Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, etc. have taken over and only grow stronger every year. Hours and hours of content is produced every second, more than any one person can consume in their lifetime. In such a large industry there is obviously a lot of money involved, so that's why the most powerful companies are doing their best to keep all the attention on their platform.
These efforts have led to super-centralization of the digital media, with a small number of companies in control of the majority of distribution. This situation takes away from the consumers right of choice and makes it incredibly hard for some content creators to succeed. It is obligatory for the users to give away rights and control over their content to the third party in order for it to even stand a chance of being sold or seen. In addition, the revenue cuts by these companies have become larger and larger over the years.
As an example, an industry that currently suffers the most from this kind of centralization is stock photography. Only a handful of companies holds the whole market, namely Getty images and Shutterstock. Customers in most cases are forced to purchase stock photos through one of these two channels, and the creators are forced to submit their work there, suffering a large loss of earnings.
On paper self-distribution seems like the only option to combat such a problem, but in reality there is no way that a content creator can reach a client directly without sufficient funding and exposure.
That is why Wemark has created the Distributed Marketplace, a platform where creators can keep all the rights to their content, with set and immutable distribution fees and referral programs to help them reach broader audiences.
So how does the Distributed Marketplace work?
The core technology behind Wemark's protocol is of course a smart contract, as it takes care of all the licensing, payments and revenue distribution. Recorded in the blockchain, a set of Ethereum smart contracts allow for transparent and permanent transactions between the content creator and a consumer, that are not under control of any third party.
Since the situation is most dire in the stock photography sector, Wemark decided to implement their protocol into that industry first, as a proof of concept. The system currently in place on wemark.com can be used for any other digital media and so the details below would apply as well.
Wemark's Advantages for Photographers are:
- Photographers keep all the rights to their content.
- Photographers control the pricing and allowed use of their photos.
- They keep most of the revenue from the transaction (85% - five times higher than traditional companies).
- The whole system is transparent, with all the information reaching the creator.
Wemark has technology in place for proper identity verification, copyright claims and disputes, content review and modification. All these back-end tools would carry over to any other project that Wemark protocol is used on.
All payments on Wemark's marketplace, as well as all payments using the Wemark's protocol, will be made in Wemark Tokens (WMK). These ERC20 tokens were created for rewarding all the parties in the system for creating, distributing and promoting digital content. The token generation event is starting May 7th 2018 and is going to produce a limited amount of tokens.
If you'd like some more information about the Wemark protocol, token sale, bounty program, or you are interested in the stock photography part of the project please check out the links below. Wemark has the potential to encompass all the outlets of digital content and disrupt the current tyranny of giant corporations.
Have you worked with a digital marketplace before? What is your experience in content creation? Do you have a project in mind that could benefit from Wemark's protocol? Tell me in the comment section below.
Author's bitcointalk: OceanWind33