Self distribution is here; content owners can truly manage the digital distribution of their content on their own including the largest digital platforms. Unlike the theatrical and DVD distribution methods, the internet gives power to both the producers and consumers of video content. Things have been improving on the producer part as well as the consumer.
In this post we are more about the producer, the filmmaker. If you made a movie and you want to publish it on multiple digital stores, you have 100% control now because you can pick the artwork, platforms, languages, territories and consumers prices as part of your distribution strategy, and all without spending big enough to go bankrupt if things don’t go as expected.
Some platforms are offering the solutions themselves such as
– Distrify: https://distrify.com/
– Vimeo On Demand: https://vimeo.com/ondemand
– Amazon Video Direct: https://videodirect.amazon.com/
How about others like iTunes and Netflix?
And for others such as iTunes, Google Play, xBox and Netflix, previously one had to work with a content aggregator. Such a content aggregator would provide services to publish the content in exchange for a fee and revenue share. This has all changed when Apple improved its Compressor (and Final Cut Pro) software with a feature to create iTunes digital store package for films, which could then be simply submitted to a Delivery Partner, which will check the quality and perform encoding in exchange for a fixed fee and publish on iTunes stores picked by the content owner.
100% of the Revenue Goes to the Filmmaker
Who are these Delivery Partners?
The current list of Delivery Partners listed by Apple are as follows:
– Quiver Digital / Premiere Digital Services (http://quiverdigital.com and http://premieredigital.net/)
– Juice Worldwide (http://juiceworldwide.com)
– Walla http://walla.la
– Zoo Digital http://zoodigital.com
What makes Delivery Partners different?
They own and manage their own encoding labs. Premiere Digital Services, for example, has been the largest encoding house already when they announced the filmmaker facing Quiver brand as as Delivery Partner. They charge fixed fees instead of a revenue share model, which has been the generally adopted way of content aggregators. That is how filmmakers can now receive 100% of the revenue, instead of sharing with content aggregators.
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