What is Replay?

Below is an extract from our Whitepaper. You can read all of our Whitepapers in the following section.

Abstract: Video Distribution is Broken

The concept of the Creator Economy is gaining traction as creators are the life-blood of all major internet platforms, creating video content which drives all the engagement across Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok,all social platforms. Not to mention the consumer web and the myriad of OTT services and distribution endpoints Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock , and thousands of others servicing every entertainment and infotainment niche.

That said, Content owners aren’t getting paid fairly for their work. Existing content distribution methods are mired with opaque revenue shares and technology fees for content delivery. While many companies (talent agencies and tech platforms) exist to broker/license creator content, they do a universally bad job of tracking revenue appropriately and mostly rely on manual record keeping. The advertising platforms and distribution platforms which license the content come up with proprietary formulas to distribute revenue shares. Often, only minimum payments are paid and distributed - to be shared among a group of creators and content owners.
What we need is a Content Economy, for an internet that in 2021 is 82% video. We need an entirely innovative approach that works for Creators and Content Owners; that secures their work and compensates them fairly for their work so that they can continue to invest in creating the content that is entertaining the world.

The solution is a decentralized, transparent video distribution ecosystem based on Blockchain technology. The core framework is Replay, a tracking and payment platform for content owners. One that accurately measures every play and ensures that owners are compensated fairly. One that allows distribution platforms and publishers to access content for their audience and pay for it in a predictable way so that they can optimize their business.

Replay connects content owners, distributors, and consumers and is denominated by content consumption while removing the friction and economic costs associated with existing distribution methods. Replay is an economic system that rewards consumers while entertaining them while providing creators and content owners with liquidity and real-time payments. We view Replay and associated technologies as the future of content distribution across all screens focused on solving the key challenge of accelerating compensation for content owners, creating greater economic opportunities for content creators, and ensuring transparent, reliable and ubiquitous access to content for distributors and consumers around the world.

Replay will now introduce RPLAY (Replay Token), a token for a decentralized content distribution ecosystem and Replay Now, Replay Token (RPLAY) White Paper - 4 a cross-platform OTT streaming service which adopts the core Replay technology and rewards consumers with tokens for subscribing & watching content.

Value Proposition

The Replay system and (RPLAY) is a token of exchange in a secure, trustless, content distribution ecosystem. Replay provides:
• Content Owners:Transparency and visibility into content performance, secure real-time payments, liquidity.
• Distribution Platforms: Access to a wide range of content for distribution and monetization via a predictable model that allows them to optimize their business.
• Consumers: With access to limitless free content including both Premium and User Generated and allows for them to participate in the success of the streaming ecosystem.
• Fans/Investors: The ability to participate in the success of a given piece of content or the success of the content ecosystem at large.

Introduction
Simplicity, Consistency, and Trust

While platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Twitch are making significant efforts to court creators and content owners, there is one company that stands far ahead of the pack. A far and away leader, YouTube. YouTube has become the de-facto storage and content management platform for creators and most content owners. Countless hours of content are uploaded daily hoping to be monetized; But why? Trust, Consistency, and Simplicity. Let’s look at those.

Simplicity:

YouTube made it dead simple for anyone to upload content. Sign up for a self-service account, upload a video, agree to be monetized and you're off to the races. When you add free storage into the mix it was a no-brainer.

Consistency:

YouTube pays. Reliably, every 30 days. In fact, in the last three years alone they have paid over $30 Billion dollars out to Replay Token (RPLAY) White Paper - 5
some 2 million creators.

Trust:

Near Real Time reporting. By providing access to a real time reporting dashboard creators could see how their videos were performing in real time and over time could optimize their business to create more success.
Even-still, over the years there has been an active and on-going debate over what a given creator's actual revenue share percentage is. On top of that YouTube typically controls the prices at which a channel must sell its advertising inventory if working with direct advertisers and sometimes disallows the practice altogether.
Further, given their leverage and scale (along with being a subsidiary to Alphabet/Google) they have started to embark on a campaign of de-platforming and demonetization. A creator's entire body of work could be lost in an instant if they rub against the Terms of Service.

This effort paves the way for new and emerging video platforms to establish market presence; not only on the social side with the emergence of TikTok, Twitch, and Snapchat, but on the big screen at home with Direct-to-Consumer streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu, Paramount + and thousands of others catering to every content mega-niche and vertical.

These platforms emerge with a variety of new business models to serve consumers. The model for the vast majority of content owners and platforms is largely the same - revenue share. While a Netflix deal may seem very exciting - in most cases we’re talking about a modest payment paid over years. In the case of the most popular series of all time, Squid Games, Netflix paid $21,400,000; the series has already reportedly generated nearly $1 Billion in value for the streaming service, while the content creators will earn more for season 2. Their earnings for the global sensations season 1 are capped.

With emerging Over the Top (OTT) platforms like Roku, Vizio Smart TVs, Tubi TV and Pluto TV content owners and creators typically strike revenue share after “fees” which are largely opaque - reporting to content owners, if any, coming over email after 90+ days, and payment as long as 90 days after that. Most creative projects fail to return a profit. And with long payment cycles the creators barely scrape by.

But Trust and Transparency are not the same thing, and simplicity is hard to achieve.
YouTube and all the rest are closed ecosystems run by traditional corporate giants. The world and especially the future provided to us by Web 3 is open and decentralized and will inevitably disrupt the status quo. We will now walk through the challenges with content distribution today and how with a decentralized system we can achieve simplicity, consistency, and trust at scale.