It all seems to be fair game for monetizable content these days. Simply put, the creator economy is the age of decentralized media. Individual artists can now earn money using a variety of strategies. Just like traditional media businesses, including affiliate links, sponsorships, ad revenue, digital sales, and more. That means all the TikTok cat videos, hair tips, and recipes we share with friends and family have the potential to be someone’s only source of food.
Many content producers earn enough money from their work each month to quit their full-time job. However, the existing business model forces content producers to cede ownership and a sizeable portion of their revenue to websites like YouTube and Spotify, which host their work and grow their audience. We can now explore new technologies that can allow artists and creators in this new creator economy to maintain control of their content and intellectual property, or even share ownership with their followers if they choose, thanks to cryptocurrency.
Dapps, short for decentralized applications, are the programs that enable this new reality. Let’s take a look at dapps to see what they are and how producers use them.
What is?
Dapps are blockchain-based programs that execute program code for a particular purpose or use case. They work just like any other app on your smartphone or computer, with a front-end experience that makes it easy for users to click, scroll, type text fields, and submit material or data for a specific app. Dapps are similar to regular apps like Instagram from a user perspective, with one major exception: their use of blockchain technology to store data associated with users’ crypto wallets on the back-end.
There are dapps for every use case, including creative and financial ones. For example, DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols allow users to exchange one currency for another (NFT).
Dapps use smart contracts to autonomously plan, perform, and settle transactions. This reduces the need for a centralized organization like Meta to function as a middleman, but dapp development companies continue to file policies and user agreements.
Why do artists require dapps?
Developers and creators who are optimistic about the future of Web3 argue that we have an opportunity to use dapp technology wisely and learn from some of the mistakes we made with Web2 platforms, including data breaches and centralized engagement models. in the profits they steal money and royalties from the creators themselves.
Dapps will open up greater revenue potential and greater transparency for artists and creators who typically get the short cut of the money on established platforms if Web3 works the way early adopters want it to.
Consider Spotify as an example. It is one of the fastest Web2 streaming platforms that pays artists. Every year, Spotify publishes its earnings information for contributing artists. Just 16,500 musicians earned more than $50,000 in streaming revenue on Spotify last year. Hardly enough to support the middle class in the United States. Only 1,040 artists surpassed the $1 million mark.
Not all of the problems with the Web2 paradigm can be attributed to Spotify. Any kind of traditional publication and/or streaming platform has to answer to the major players in that industry. Traditional revenue models have traditionally operated this way. According to the service provider, Spotify, the record business made $4 billion from streaming alone last year.
