It been over six decades since Hollywood's actors and writers joined forces to strike against the major studios (and which now includes content streamers). The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) with 160,000+ members officially joined the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in their strike this week.
 |
| Are they going in the wrong direction? |
The main issues for the strike boil down to two:
- Better compensation in the TV streaming era.
- Concerns around writers and actors being replaced with artificial intelligence.
Most of SAG's members are struggling actors that live job-to-job and require side gigs (food service, bellhop, bartender) to make ends meet.
Is Web3 their Solution?
To me, the solution for any person that creates anything is Web3 and as a major proponent of Web3 truly believe that Web2 has become a failed construct that must evolve.
Anyone involved in the creative process should be looking at Web3 solutions, irrespective of the massively ill-informed, and manipulative mainstream media which are themselves part-and-parcel of the major content distributors/owners.
.jpg) |
| Entertainment Equipment For all of your cinema's needs |
TV, movies, music, books, you name the media, are all dominated by a few players...and the content creators get little of the pie. For example, Spotify pays one-third of a cent for each stream of a song.
As, Snoop Dog put it, "Can someone explain to me how you can get a billion streams and not get a million dollars?"
However, it's not Spotify making the money, in fact, they reported an operating loss of $430 million last year. It is the big media companies that are making those billions, that Snoop refers to. Spotify has paid out over $40 billion in licensing fees to these giants. Ergo...smart musicians are leaving big media and Spotify and selling their music via NFTs in Web3.
The same can be said for live presentations, where the marketplace is even more monopolized, being controlled by Live Nation Entertainment - the ugly and usurious offspring of the merge between Live Nation and TicketMaster.
The Way Forward
The path forward for creators to really own and profit from their original ideas is through issuing unique, one-off digital assets or NFTs, which are an undeniable breakthrough innovation.
NFTs are the new building blocks for a truly creative-centric system. They allow direct peer-to-peer ownership transfer from creator -to- fan or user. The time has come where the ownership and transfer of ownership via digital assets and the use of these assets to access and add value has arrived.
Check out these articles on the 4M Performance site:
For creators, look for companies in your media for assistance and guidance for valuing and selling your NFT creations:
- Aspen - a Web3 musicians' platform by Monax Labs
- Gala Games - helps creators develop NFTs of their video productions.
- ToonStar - an animation studio which allows its NFT community to vote on aspects of its projects, including development.
So, Hollywood writers and actors, perhaps you are negotiating with the wrong folks. It might be better, if not wise, to look in other directions and a new path forward that gives space to even the smallest projects...to dismiss Web3 innovations is to live under the delusion that the current Web2 economy is really working for everyone's benefit.
By: Jim Lavorato, Publisher - Cinema Mucho Gusto
No comments:
Post a Comment