TL;DR:
- The creator economy is booming with the potential for further growth
- Problems faced by the creators and artists: no control over IP, no equitable profit distribution, and traditional gatekeepers
- Book.io, NEWM, and Nucast are powering the creator economy by leveraging the Cardano tech.
The creator economy experienced remarkable growth during the COVID-19 pandemic as more people turned to content creation to seize the opportunities it presented.
However, centralized platforms often take a significant share of creators’ earnings and limit their autonomy.
With the advent of Web3 and blockchain technology, a new era has emerged, providing unprecedented opportunities for artists to regain control over their creations and build sustainable careers.
In this article, we’ll explore how three different projects based on Cardano are transforming the creator economy and empowering creators and artists worldwide.
The Size of Creator Economy
The creator economy is undergoing a significant transformation as emerging technologies reshape the way we consume and engage with content.
Platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch became not just sources of entertainment but also viable income generators for millions of creators.
Currently, over 50 million individuals contribute to the creator economy, with nearly 2 million pursuing full-time content creation careers. This burgeoning economy has proven rewarding and lucrative for many, as evidenced by its exponential growth in recent years.
In fact, the latest reports indicate that the creator economy market size has skyrocketed, reaching an astounding valuation of approximately $104.2 billion.
The Current State of the Creative Industry
Although the creator economy is booming, the traditional business models in the creative industry often leave artists and content creators with limited control over their work and income.
Record labels, for instance, can restrict artists’ creative freedom while taking a significant share of their earnings. Meanwhile, platforms like Spotify or Youtube offer limited revenue, as artists receive only a fraction of the profits from their content.
Creators often lose control over their IP, resulting in decreased potential profits. The industry is notorious for its inequitable distribution of profits, with creators typically receiving a smaller revenue share than other stakeholders.
As the creator and entertainment industry keeps getting bigger, the artists and creators are losing more and more ground to the centralized platform and traditional gatekeepers who are controlling these industries.
This is where public blockchain-based solutions are trying to bring the power back to the hands of artists and content creators.
Emerging Solutions: Cardano-based Decentralized Platforms
The digital revolution has forever changed the way artists and creators interact with their audience and monetize their work. Decentralized solutions are leveraging blockchain technology to empower authors, content creators, and artists by offering decentralized and accessible platforms for creators worldwide.
So let us introduce to you three different projects based on Cardano, which are empowering artists and content creators.
Book. io: Powering the True Creator Economy
Book.io is a pioneer in harnessing the power of NFTs and blockchain to create a truly decentralized digital publishing platform that empowers authors, publishers, and readers.
Book.io leverages the latest advancements in 3rd generation blockchain technology and NFTs to create a unique, scalable, and secure platform for digital books and audiobooks.
This allows for a shift from the current license-based model to a digital ownership model, where readers can buy, sell, and trade digital books, much like physical books.
The Team
The Book.io team brings unparalleled experience in the eBook and digital publishing industry, having previously created and sold an eBook platform and distribution company with over 6,000,000 registered users.
Here’s an overview of how the platform works:
Book.io provides authors and publishers with innovative solutions to longstanding issues in the digital publishing industry:
- Perpetual revenue stream: Smart contracts enable authors and publishers to get paid on all second-hand sales, creating a new, continuous revenue stream.
- Advanced security and DRM: Next-generation security and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies help prevent counterfeiting and lost revenue from piracy.
- Instant transfer of sales rights: Publishers and authors can transfer sales rights instantly from one party to another.
- Anonymized communication: Book.io enables anonymized author-to-reader communication, as well as publisher marketing tools that are not available through traditional platforms.
- Higher revenue splits for independent authors: Independent authors can earn significantly higher revenue splits on the Book.io platform.
Compared to traditional platforms like Amazon, Book.io offers numerous benefits for readers:
- Real-time value tracking: Readers can track the value of their digital book collection, as each book is a unique NFT with its own market value.
- Reselling and trading: Readers can sell or trade their digital books on open marketplaces, enabling them to monetize their collections.
- Earning cryptocurrency: Readers can earn Book Tokens (BOOK) based on their reading progress, incentivizing them to consume more content.
- Sharing and transferring: The platform allows for easy sharing and transferring of digital books, similar to physical books.
- Multilingual support and embedded audio: Unique book purchases may include multi-language support and combined audio, offering a more immersive reading experience.
Over 110k Books Minted
Book.io has successfully amassed a large and dedicated audience through its innovative approach to digital publishing. With an impressive track record of 69 book launches in just nine months, Book.io has minted over 110,000 book NFTs, showcasing the platform’s potential for growth and impact on the industry.
Unsurprisingly, publishers and authors are taking notice and actively joining the project, which began as a curated collection of classic texts.
As Book.io continues to revolutionize the digital publishing landscape, its expanding community of users and creators is a testament to the platform’s power in fostering a true creator economy.
NEWM: A Music Ecosystem with Fairness at Its Core
NEWM is a Cardano-based project at the forefront of the movement which champions artists’ rights and enables them to maintain ownership and monetize their art. Co-founded by Ryan Jones and Florian Sorg, NEWM aims to create an inclusive digital landscape for musicians.
The platform offers a suite of products, including a streaming platform, a music rights marketplace, direct tipping via micropayments, ticketing for in-person and metaverse events, and fractionalization of IP rights. The platform’s first product launch is a self-service music distribution platform enabling fractionalized IP ownership via smart contracts.
Technological Innovation of NEWM
What sets NEWM apart is its seamless integration of blockchain technology into a user-friendly music platform. NEWM’s NFT minting and fractionalization contracts are unique.
Musicians choosing NEWM as their distribution platform can enjoy the best of both worlds:
- Fractionalization and tokenization of IP and
- Royalties through smart contracts and native assets, along with the liquidity and exposure of the traditional music industry.
Addressing the Challenges in the Music Industry
NEWM aims to solve the problem of limited options for musicians in the current music industry business model. Traditional options, such as joining a record label or relying on streaming platforms, often compromise artists’ creative control or revenue.
By providing a third option, NEWM empowers musicians to maintain ownership of their creative content while distributing their music and selling/sharing music rights as they see fit. Artists can monetize their music more effectively, and music lovers can directly connect with their favorite artists more meaningfully.
The platform leverages the $NEWM token as its native currency, enabling users to actively engage in the ecosystem by buying, selling, and licensing creative content. Additionally, token holders can play a vital role in content development by providing financial support and contributing to decision-making processes.
Recent Updates and Announcements
For NEWM, the past weeks was full of announcements, with the launch of The Record Store and multiple new partnerships!
NEWM has recently launched “The Record Store,” the first NFT marketplace dedicated to music collectibles on the Cardano blockchain. This innovative marketplace was developed through a collaboration with Sick City and NMKR
Demonstrating the growing adoption of the platform by artists this week, NEWM will feature its first-ever rock tune by Mike Lerman, highlighting the platform’s expanding reach and appeal to a diverse range of musicians.
The Future of NEWM
In the coming years, NEWM envisions itself as a legacy project that offers a comprehensive ecosystem for the music industry, covering everything from Stream Tokens and IP-related products to ticket sales, collectibles, streaming services, and marketplaces. With a community-driven approach, NEWM may even become its own Performance Rights Organization (PRO), freeing artists from the constraints of traditional music industry giants.
If you want to know more ab NEWM, check out this deep-dive article.
Nucast: Decentralized Streaming on Cardano
Nucast is innovating the entertainment industry by offering a decentralized streaming platform that empowers creators and users alike. By leveraging the Cardano blockchain and advanced technologies like decentralized storage, NFTs, and CDN, Nucast addresses the problems that have long plagued the industry while providing a seamless and secure user experience.
In this section, we will explore the various components that contribute to Nucast’s innovative approach to content distribution and consumption.
Solving Entertainment Industry Problems with Nucast
Nucast solves some of the entertainment industry’s pressing issues by providing a robust platform that benefits both creators and users.
Nucast offers several advantages for creators and users, including greater control over content, the ability to own and resell content, and the elimination of intermediaries.
By allowing for permissionless content monetization and NFT-powered secondary market capabilities, Nucast fosters an environment that rewards creators fairly and gives users more control over their content consumption.
Nucast ensures improved content security by providing access only to rightful owners, resulting in unmatched privacy and security compared to traditional video streaming platforms.
Additionally, the platform’s use of CDN and edge caching delivers a fast and smooth streaming experience on par with Web2 streaming services. Nucast offers an intuitive and enjoyable user experience, enabling users to browse and watch content with ease.
The platform’s Proof of Ownership mechanism ensures that only rightful owners have access to the content, promoting a fair and transparent content consumption environment.
Nucast Leverages Sia and IPFS for Secure Content Storage
Nucast securely stores and distributes content by leveraging decentralized storage solutions like Sia and IPFS. Sia operates on a blockchain platform and utilizes file contracts to enable renters to pay hosts in Siacoin for the use of their hard drive space.
This system ensures the availability of content even if one or more hosts go offline, as the data is distributed across multiple hosts. Additionally, the use of decentralized storage solutions provides enhanced security and privacy compared to traditional centralized storage systems.
IPFS, known as the InterPlanetary File System, is a decentralized storage network that employs content addressing, Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), and Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) to facilitate efficient content accessibility and discovery.
The use of IPFS also provides increased resilience to censorship and allows for faster and more cost-effective content distribution. With IPFS, content creators can store and distribute their content without the need for a central server, ensuring greater control over their data and reducing reliance on traditional cloud storage solutions.
Nucast Ecosystem
Nucast is not building a siloed platform but an entire ecosystem of services that connects creators and film enthusiasts in the evolving landscape of entertainment. The ecosystem encompasses a variety of features, such as the Nucast Launchpad, the Web3 Film Festival, and Nucast Originals.
If you want to know about Nucast, check out this deep-dive article.
Conclusion
Web3 and blockchain technology are empowering creators and artists by addressing key challenges in the creative industry, such as control over intellectual property, equitable profit distribution, and bypassing traditional gatekeepers.
By enabling creators to build direct relationships with their audience, these Cardano-based projects offer a promising future for the creative economy. As more artists and creators adopt Web3 and blockchain-based solutions, the industry can look forward to a new era of innovation, diversity, and empowerment.
