Online streaming services like Spotify and Netflix having become increasingly popular over the past 5 years. On Spotify's first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, their company traded at a value of around $29 Billion USD. The price of Netflix stock has gone through the roof, just like Silicon Valley tech companies Amazon & Tesla. Lots of other streaming services, such as Youtube, Hulu, Soundcloud, and Deezer show astounding J-Curve when it comes to user adoption.
Relatively speaking, these companies are all in their infancy, and offer a lot of advantages over their archaic counterparts. Spotify is far more convenient and practical than CD's and 8-tracks. Netflix is far superior than going and buying a DVD or renting from blockbuster. But all these streaming services suffer from major drawbacks.
Issues with Existing Streaming Services For Consumers
For one, people are restricted from viewing content based on their geography and licensing agreements. That's why Netflix in many smaller countries is so poor, and everyone tries to utilize VPN's to circumvent it (with some level of success), which Netflix does their best to prevent. Oddly enough, Netflix is often more expensive in these jurisdictions, and has far, far less content compared to the U.S. or other major countries.
Another issue is that you have to go to different competing networks. Artists can elect not to have their content on Spotify for example. And instead their content is only on a competing network like Tidal. Or perhaps they only make their songs available for purchase only instead of allowing individuals to listen to them by paying a monthly subscription. Available content also gets siloed by the vendors.
Plus the monthly memberships can get quite expensive, particularly when you add them all together. Consumers really don't get much out of in the end, besides of bit more convenience, some of the time, for certain shows/artists/creators, for select vendors. Not a great deal.
It's not Good for Content Creators Either
To be fair to the content creators, it's not a very good deal for them either. They still have to deal with the same middlemen that gouge their profits. They're still restricted by licensing requirements based on whatever studio/network they are working with, which limits both their reach and their earnings.
A Possible Solution
Current Media has been developing a solution to help address these issues. Despite having over 200,000 active users, you probably haven't heard of them yet. They refer to themselves as an 'Incentived Blockchain Enabled Multimedia Ecosystem' and have been backed by a number of influential investors, perhaps most notably, Mark Cuban. You can find out more about the technology their utilizing in they are utilizing and how everything works in their whitepaper.
Not only does Current's platform offer a solution to the problems I alluded to above, but their platform financially rewards individuals for streaming on their platform via their CRNC token (pronounced 'Currency'). It also offers users free to discounted memberships to many streaming services, and the ability to find all their content in a single place rather than having to go to a variety of different sources.
Perhaps most importantly, the content is available worldwide. No geographical restrictions. And on top of that, content can be downloaded and viewed offline.
But it doesn't just benefit the consumer. It also benefits the artists and creators as well. The creators receive 20% of every token mined for one, on top of their traditional revenue they receive from streaming. It also allows the creators to reach a much wider audience rather than merely being restricted on the existing network. And it effectively eliminates the middlemen in the equation; all profits go directly to the creator.
Current appears to add a lot of value to existing streaming services and seems poised to me to become increasingly popular. They don't threaten the streaming services themselves, but merely enhance them. The only person they hurt frankly, is the middlemen in the equation.