Video Streaming Platform Development Insights with Blockchain

Video Streaming

All these years, video sharing has evolved at leaps and bounds. Texts were replaced with pictures, and photos were replaced with GIFs. Blogs have become a thing of the past, replacing them with vlogs, podcasts, etc. Instead of spending time reading blogs/articles, people swiftly switch to YouTube or similar channels for short video illustrations. This has contributed to the bulk of Internet traffic being accounted for by video sharing, thus being a significant contributor to online business revenue. Digital video production is practically booming!.

Live video streaming is an increasingly growing segment of this market, with millions watching live online videos, uploading live videos on Facebook Live, using live video messengers like Snapchat, etc. Citizens intrigued by this notion of media consumption live in the comfort of their cell phones, wherever and whenever they want. Live video streaming growth has been incredible and continues to grow.

Blockchain-Powered Video Streaming

A video streaming platform based on Blockchain will help solve the aforementioned problems, let us see how? 

Blockchain is a distributed ledger network, peer-to-peer, that is without any central authority. Depending on a centralized server, video content producers may take advantage of their decentralized network to publish or distribute any material directly to consumers.

Benefits of Streaming with Blockchain

Creators and consumers will now access the Blockchain network, without any intermediate controller intervention. Content creators themselves can broadcast their content over the network, which can be directly accessed by customers after approval and agreement among the other nodes/miners.

This removes the need for a middle man, such as the publisher or the service provider. Blockchain-based streaming of videos lets content creators gain direct access to revenue created by the network. It can provide the basis for video-on-demand, where customers pay only for what they are interested in. Video creators can also make use of the powerful and protected video storage encryption framework offered by Blockchain. 

Content producers can receive monetary benefits from customers, who pay a monthly fee to access to their favorite streamer, in the form of crypto tokens or cryptocurrencies. Additionally, customers can gain bonuses themselves if they wish to rent out excess disk space and bandwidth for video storage and publishing. Even, when creators have full ownership of their content on Blockchain, without the possibility of losing authority to third party controller.

Also, read | The Emergence of Decentralized Blockchain Video Streaming Solutions

Use Cases of Streaming with Blockchain

Targeted marketing and advertising analytics

Worldwide digital advertising spending amounts to $200 billion in 2017 and expected to hit the $350 billion mark by 2020. Digital advertisement is of great benefit to advertisers because they can monitor the behavioral data of the customer. But more than 60 percent of digital video marketers lack adequate resources to evaluate this data, to assess and efficiently enhance the success of the digital campaign.

Blockchain can support more than 24,000 transactions per second, according to Visa's report. It also focused on marketing investments, helping marketers evaluate effective channels and add value to marketing efforts.

Decentralized Distribution of Content

Blockchain allows each party to directly check their transaction history, without any intermediaries. This also removes the need for any central authority to authorize the transactions through its peer-to-peer network, making way for quick and agile transactions.

Ownership and Accessibility Management

The problem of music ownership and sharing can be addressed at the network and protocol level by leveraging Blockchain technology. This encrypts and stores video and music files via the interplanetary file system (IPFS) swarm indefinitely. Users can access the tracks with decryption keys from anywhere via smart contracts.

Simplified online content creation with smart contract solutions

What if digital content providers like online artists can be paid directly by their fans without having to sell huge percentages of their profits to intermediaries of third parties? Blockchain allows this barrier-less communication mechanism to remove any hidden intermediary costs and lets artists create a direct consumer relationship with their fans.

Blockchain also lets them take care of the licensing and contract-related problems automatically with smart contract solutions.

Creator Royalty management 

The payment of royalties to the creators and copyright owners in the online media industry has been a longstanding issue. Spotify was pulled by the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) into a $30 million settlement over unpaid song royalties, and numerous other court proceedings against rival streaming platforms were also brought.

Using a Cryptographic Hash file to store the original music archive, Blockchain will lay those issues to rest. The creators and copyright owners can receive payments with smart contracts for each Hash file associating the creator's address.

Content Micropayment solutions 

Blockchain assists in enabling electronic micropayments between the customer and content producer without any transaction costs or service fees. Using a Blockchain-powered browser, the user can use a crypto-currency wallet to monetize their monthly spending. The client will then request license details from the public Blockchain and search the content loaded using user identifiers. Accordingly, it facilitates the transaction through on-chain payment between the user and the content owner.

Also, read | Causing the Paradigm Shift in Online Video Streaming with Blockchain

Blockchain-powered CDN

For terabytes of content consumed every day in the online media, it is important to maximize storage space. A Blockchain-powered Content Delivery Network ( CDN) can help to create decentralized applications to leverage the accumulated unused space from users around the world. Using Blockchain as a shared management mechanism will help people take advantage of this wasted distributed capacity by turning it into peer-to-peer cloud storage and data distribution network.

Licencing and incentivization 

Online content owners are well aware of the degree to which the intellectual property laws offer protection, and how quickly their content can be stolen. If anyone uses the Intellectual Property for business purposes, the copyright fee can be asserted. When you negotiate with a bigger group, though, the responsibility is solely yours. You may need to employ a solicitor to justify possession, and then enforce the rights that you may fail! 

Adopting Blockchain technologies will help you protect your intellectual property rights quite quickly. Copyright owners will have full control of their jobs, and purchases will be automatic once viewers visit the copyright.

Conclusion

The evolution of technology will continue to change the streaming industry according to most expert predictions. And there are chances of blockchain quickly overtaking the existing realities of internet video and become pervasive. We build streaming solutions that include crypto-based payments and peer-to-peer distribution of content using blockchain technologies such as Ethereum, Hyperledger and Smart Contracts