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BlockbusterDAO Wants to Buy Back Blockbuster From Dish

tl;dr Summary: BlockbusterDAO is a decentralized streaming ecosystem that enables an unprecedented, direct relationship between creators, curators, and consumers. They aim to give creators the freedom to distribute and monetize their content and fans the ability to curate content and earn as a result, all on a community-owned and governed platform. BlockbusterDAO has announced its plans to buy back Blockbuster from Dish to continue the brand’s legacy.

Blockbuster was once the biggest movie rental company in the world, but it’s now a shadow of its former self. The company has been struggling for years and was recently sold to Dish Network for $320 million. BlockbusterDAO believes that it can revive the company by turning it into a decentralized film streaming service. The DAO plans to use the proceeds from the sale of Blockbuster to fund the purchase. If successful, this would be a major coup for the decentralized streaming ecosystem and could lead to more mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.

As the streaming war has gone on, major film studios have gotten more defensive and guarded. The modern creator has been caught in the crossfire as platforms compete for customers and copyright, being pushed further and deeper into an ever less-favorable position. At the same time, audiences are fed primarily “safe” material by businesses that seek widespread appeal above all else and whose financial incentives are not linked to creators or audiences.

The way BlockbusterDao sees it, there are a few key problems with Web2 streaming today:

Financing: 

The big studios and streamers are more likely to invest in risk-averse projects (franchises, intellectual property with a built-in audience) instead of investing in new, bold projects. They are relying more on established creators than new voices and are snatching up the most productive and promising talent into exclusive deals that offer a lot of money. When people try to get funding for their creative projects, they often have to make a lot of compromises in order to make their projects more appealing to a wider audience. This can mean changing what they originally wanted to do or making sure their project matches what executives and algorithms consider to be marketable.

Compensation: 

Creators who make it into the limelight are often fighting against studios and distributors for a fair payment. The big studios are tending more and more toward paying large upfront fees to own creators’ work. Apparently, within the indie film scene, investors tend to demand 50% or more of a project’s net profits, and creators that distribute themselves via Advertising-based Video On Demand (AVOD) channels like YouTube are rarely able to generate enough income to sustain themselves.

Intellectual Property (IP): 

In Hollywood, content creators are often not allowed to keep the rights to their intellectual property. This problem gets worse every year as all of the major studios roll out streaming platforms and want the content they finance to live on their platforms forever. When making an initial deal on a project, studios and streamers tend to take away all ancillary rights to sequels, merchandise, and any future projects related to the story and characters of the original work.

Marketing: 

Creators need help from studios and distributors to market their content. The big companies can capture most of the public’s attention. If the creators don’t get help, their content won’t be seen. Almost 90% of streaming content is never seen because it’s not marketed well. This makes it hard for new creators to enter the market because their work might be considered risky. As a result, we see more expensive content from well-known creators instead of new ones.

Customer Experience: 

Most people find that the experience of streaming Web2 content is not personal. They also find it frustrating because they have to go through a lot of content to find something they want to watch. And if they are not interested in anything that is currently on, they have to wait for their favorite showrunners to come out with something new that they might be interested in.

Why is the DAO project right for the future of the Blockbuster brand?

Being one of the faster-growing DAO’s in the space, BlockbusterDAO now has 8,000+ Discord users and over 16k followers on Twitter without releasing a product or spending a dime. They are viewed by peers in the Web3 Film community as thought leaders. They want to intertwine the old nostalgic brand with a bright new mission.

After conducting a DAO-wide branding survey they came to understand that the positive sentiment is deeply rooted in this nostalgia; more specifically, they distilled it into these few key bullet points:

At the end of the day, BlockbusterDAO’s aim is to keep these qualities that made the old version of the brand so unique. They also want to create a new significance—a paradigm shift in content creators’ and fans’ rights ownership, control, and engagement with it—for future generations.

What do you think about this story? Let us know in the comments!

BlockbusterDAO sounds like an ambitious project that aims to have a big impact on the future of streaming media if they are successful.

Author

  • Clay is a writer with experience in finance and business administration. He's interested in tech, marketing, finance, and health & fitness.

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