What makes human beings different from the rest of the animal species? Of course, the evolved language could be one reason, but the right reason is how we use the language. While a monkey can signal other monkeys about a lion lurking in the grass, it’s only human beings who can tell a story of a creature that is half human and half lion.
While other animals can live in a pack of tens and hundreds, humans can live in a group of thousands and millions because our stories bind us.
Stories sow the seed of beliefs within each of us, and beliefs keep us together.
Stories are the glue that had kept our species winning every time. Stories have not only told us what happened in the history, but they have also given us the inspiration to dream of the future that can be built. Stories have been making our species embark in the previously unchartered territories.
How are stories told?
“We are the storytelling animal.” — Salman Rushdie
Over the years, the way we told our stories has changed. It began by us painting on the cave walls, but over the years, we now tell our stories in many ways — by writing books, by recording podcasts and short films. While the internet has made the playing field available to everybody, it still has some barriers that are missed by a regular pair of eyes.
While one can make a short film and upload it to the Youtube, it becomes challenging to make it reach more than a few thousand people.
With all this technology around us, storytelling is still a lonely job.
It is going to change. We have come a long way from those cave paintings, but storytelling doesn’t need to be limited to the elites. There is a story in each one of us, and all of us ought to tell it to the world. While blockchain itself is a story and a belief of a good future, it will change how stories are told.
It’s exciting to see there are massive companies like VideoCoin building the new kind of infrastructure for videos, but what most excites me is the companies like Livetree who are making the new type of economic model around storytelling that has never been possible before.
The equation of storytelling has two variables — content creators and content consumers. Let’s talk about each of them one by one.
By the way, I run a weekly newsletter called Last Week In Crypto, which delivers an email every Monday containing everything that has happened in crypto space in the previous week.
Creators struggle making money
“A group or an artist shouldn’t get his money until his boss gets his.” — Bobby Darin
Technology has made the job of content creation easier and better. Unlike earlier, now one can make a movie with just an iPhone. It has also given rise to a number of Youtube stars who are able to showcase their talent to the world directly using the video platform. The benefits of technology and internet are enormous.
However, even with all these advantages, the most prominent issues for artists and producers remain: making money and having copyrights to their content. No, not just piracy, even with the rise of streaming, artists don’t get the money they deserve. Even the most-streamed songs barely make money for the singer, and even that needs to be split between different stakeholders. Similarly, for filmmakers, not only they need to have a big team to produce movies, but they also need to think of possible avenues to distribute their creation, even before they start its shooting. And what if you are a newcomer in this field? Well, then good luck to you as no good database can help you out with potential team members for creating the next big movie or music video you’ve been dreaming of.
Consumers are lost under the quantity
“I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.” — Daniel Boone
The job of content consumer might seem easy, but it isn’t. Think of times when you’ve wanted to watch a particular movie or TV series, but even with the various streaming video-on-demand services available, it’s not available in your specific region? You inevitably turn to torrent websites. Then there’s the fact that services like Youtube or Spotify’s free tier have made us conditioned towards not paying anything for the content, making it difficult to change our mind towards paying for merely watching a movie. Additionally, while services like Netflix set to replace cable TV, they’re increasingly becoming like that. So many shows on such platforms even though you might not even want to watch them!
So, how blockchain helps?
“Economics is a choice between alternatives all the time. Those are the trade-offs.” — Paul Samuelson
In the last several years, blockchain has proven to be an exciting economic model where one gets incentivized for what one contributes to the network. Interestingly, well-established companies like Livetree are plunging into the blockchain world to make it easier for everybody to tell a great story. They are harnessing the economic model of blockchain tokens to make sure storytelling doesn’t have to stay a lonely job anymore.
They have built a platform that solves the current problems of both the creators and the consumers through what they call ADEPT (Advanced Decentralized Platform for Transparent distribution). Livetree has already been running a successful crowdfunding website for creators, and it had been the go-to community for budding filmmakers for almost two years. With its seed (SED) token, it’s not only offering the opportunity to raise funds but also provides a database of skillful people for things like casting, shooting, marketing, etc. that one can hire in their team. For content consumption, it’ll make it easier for users to back their favorite movies and watch them on demand on Livetree’s Blossom platform.
What stood out to me was that individuals who back a campaign own a tiny portion of the copyrights, which gives them (a tiny) ownership of the finished project.
Blockchain has allowed for the first time in the entire human history for strangers to collaborate without having first to trust each other. And the implications that it is creating in the industries other than the finances is astonishing. This shift is huge!
A long journey that started at cave paintings…
Who would have thought that the journey on which human species embarked upon thousands of years ago by painting marks on the cave walls would lead up to the day where the future of the entire species would revolve around telling stories.