Web3 and the Creative Industries: How Blockchains Are Reshaping Business Models

Abstract

Web3, underpinned by blockchain technology, is an evolution of digital infrastructure, whereby protocol facilitates the direct exchange of value between users, removing the need for trusted intermediaries. Existing blockchain experiments seek to create artist-centric business models, dismantling agency-centred business models that brokered and organised connections between artists and their fans or buyers. By enabling the automation of the value components, including payments, licensing and intellectual property management, contracting and governance, digital content storage and access, blockchain technology also enables new ‘value-based economics’ in which artists set the terms of their market participation. In this chapter, we outline emerging models and discuss some implications for creative industries research. Blockchain technology is currently being experimentally adopted into creative industries in order to improve transparency along supply chains, to lower costs of distribution by creating more direct platforms to connect artists and fans, and to improve handling of intellectual property and licensing arrangements, metadata, royalties and payments. We discuss case studies from music (Ujo Music and dotblockchain), visual arts (dada.nyc), and story-telling (Cellarius).