In Hollywood, studios have set the rules for decades by deciding how much artists get paid. Not anymore.

Many creative professionals have wished that they had a way for their audience to pay them directly. Now crypto is showing the way.

For example, artists can now sell their work directly to consumers through NFTs (non fungible tokens), which are unique digital identifications recorded in a blockchain. NFTs cannot be replaced or interchanged, and can prove an owner’s authenticity and rights to a specific piece of digital content.

The market for NFTs exploded beyond all expectations last year. “At the end of 2020, the total market revenue for NFTs was $300 million. One year later, it was a $41 billion business,” according to Chris Jacquemin, WME partner and the agency’s head of digital strategy, as quoted in a Variety magazine article. The graph below shows the monthly transaction volume of NFTs per platform in USD.

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This popularity understandable, if you consider that for the creative community, the capabilities enabled by web3 technologies (like NFTs) will lead to artists being paid for their work directly from their audience, removing the need for middle layers of production and distribution.

The blockchain’s digital ledgers are not replicable, and will be the final arbiter of who owns specific works art. According to the Variety article, the ledgers will create a digital string that will allow artists to receive royalty fees for their work forever. There is nothing comparable to this system outside of the crypto universe.

Apart from owning the art, NFT owners also get perks that they won’t get for traditional art. This can include wider access, early screenings and the right to create their own iterations of the character or asset they own. NFT Studios, a startup, has gone a step further and is aiming produce a movie funded by NFTs. Owners of these NFTs will get perks normally available only to producers, such as hanging out on the movie set, meeting actors, invitations to theatrical and digital premieres, and a share in the film’s profits.

Studios are not exactly thrilled about this - given that this ethos is in direct conflict with the tight control that they have long exerted over creative content. But some of them recognize that this is the future and are adapting.

For instance, Fox Studios and BCL launched Krapopolis, an animated comedy set in the mythical world of ancient Greece. The inaugural collection of their NFTs gives buyers exclusive access to a range of perks, including the ability to choose various elements of the show, such as background music and the song played during an episode’s end-credits.

The business potential for web3 far exceeds what we see in today's digital-collectibles marketplace. The blockchain marks the first time you can grant real digital property rights, giving content owners the ability to monetize every single transaction. The future for creative artists has never been brighter.