Arriving late to the virtual event party, disruptive video delivery vendor Eluvio has introduced a live feature into its Content Fabric platform. In doing so, Eluvio is laying claim to the world’s first 4K video streaming and ticketing service with all content secured and sold via blockchain contracts.
Before we get into the guts of Eluvio’s latest blockchain-based breakthrough, some 18 months since the US vendor emerged from stealth mode, we should question whether the recent flurry of companies making live feature updates to their product portfolios is reflective of an industry slow to react to year-old trends? That is one viewpoint, while another is that these early 2021 developments are representative of the technical feats required to adapt to an increasingly virtualized customer base.
Either way, the pandemic aftershocks are beginning to ripple across industries as we expected they would, and Eluvio’s extension of its Content Fabric is another example of this in motion.
What Eluvio Live does is allow artists and publishers to take advantage of the Eluvio Content Fabric, which was launched on the premise of disrupting traditional CDNs with its network overlay approach for video distribution directly from the stream or file source – implementing this into a blockchain network. The Eluvio Content Fabric technology is a multi-layered architecture designed to eliminate the requirement to create additional copies of files used in distribution networks or storage facilities.
But while Eluvio has previously preferred not to upset the masses by saying its technology supports CDNs rather than replacing them, including in interview with Faultline last year, it says the advent of Eluvio Live does in fact remove the need for CDNs, as well as transcoding services or third-party aggregators.
Appropriately unveiled at this week’s SXSW virtual affair, Eluvio Live is targeting concert organizers that are not afraid to cut out the middlemen with a ticketing platform that is distributed directly from artists to global audiences. The technology aims to bring back control of video quality, customization, and finances to artists and publishers.
Eluvio Live will birth so-called “multi-experiential” viewing opportunities and therefore new monetization prospects for premium events, and the initial series of major concerts powered by the Eluvio Live technology will be filmed and produced by Paramax Films.
Eluvio Live bundles its key features into five buckets – high-quality video, reaching fans directly, retaining control, pushing boundaries, and remonetizing.
Quality is arguably the most important from the Faultline viewpoint, with Eluvio Live claiming enough global capacity to handle simultaneous audience sizes of 1 million or more across browsers, smartphones, Apple TV, or Roku devices in 4K HDR quality. For some current perspective, this week’s live virtual Grammys awards ceremony attracted around 8.8 million viewers on CBS, so the Eluvio Content Fabric is clearly not capable of disrupting mainstream events of this type of scale yet, at least not without support from traditional CDNs. We should note that this was the lowest Grammys viewership ever recorded, while also being the most streamed awards show of the past year. A bittersweet event.
While the Grammys definitely does not represent Eluvio’s target base, the very people picking up awards or watching might have their heads turned by the technology. Particularly the part about retaining control, which means artists and publishers can keep 100% ownership rights of their content and have this backed up by secure blockchain contracts to control authorized views and transactions.
Eluvio makes its cut by adding a percentage on top of ticket or merchandise sales, without any sneaky additional content management or distribution fees. It boasts cryptographically secure ticket validations, configurable viewing options, and integrations with major third-party digital payment services and ticketing portals.
Above all the blockchain benefits lies the ability to connect directly with fans by creating and customizing event sites with options to aggregate events and content under a single brand. Your live event can create tiered ticketing options (i.e. 4K, HDR, multi-view), as well as throwing in limited edition digital exclusives or collectibles (also known in the blockchain ecosystem as NFTs – non-fungible tokens) like clips or teasers, that are again cryptographically signed and delivered with authenticity guaranteed by blockchain contracts.
NFTs are a way of commodifying digital assets such as music files, that are uploaded to a blockchain where copies are recorded on the digital ledger. These NFTs can be purchased with cryptocurrency, without the purchaser owning the original file, so the artists retain copyright.
Eluvio Live’s self-descriptive penchant for pushing boundaries comes from options for dynamic content sequences or modifications (like type of view or lighting) based on audience votes. It can enable customizable integration of sponsor logos, private viewing experiences, interactive activations, and VIP experiences. The technology also encompasses dynamic advertising and personalized merchandising, including interactive points on screen that allow users to click hot spots to buy during the event, as well as things like embeddable merchandise options in ticket purchasing, or integrated online merchandising storefronts.
Remonetization is an underappreciated art that Eluvio Live wants to hammer home. It can help with remonetizing by automatically recording and making content reusable on-demand, to be re-sculpted to support new events and uses. Again backed by contracts. You could incorporate a back catalog for remonetization, like remarketing, licensing, on-demand rebroadcasts, or syndication to third-party streaming platforms.
Blockchain isn’t Faultline’s forte, admittedly, and this is the kind of technology where things get more complicated the more you read into it, rather than clearer. So, to summarize, the Eluvio Live platform provides high-quality, low-latency streaming, with built-in geofencing, dynamic personalization, digital NFT creation and merchandising for concerts, performances, sporting events, movie screenings or premieres.
Eluvio appears to be reacting to Faultline’s observations, as we wrote in February of our skepticism about the Content Fabric’s potential to disrupt the CDN and transcoding markets, saying it was better off targeting the technology at enabling new monetization opportunities or personalized experiences. The live virtual events space is certainly a good place to prove us wrong at this volatile point in time.
This consensus came about after existing customer MGM embraced more of Eluvio across its operations in a game-changing deal for the vendor, particularly with the MGM brand being behind some very large scale live events. Coincidence?