Wemark embeds blockchain in stock photography to connect artists directly with customers

Starting with stock photography and backed by the biggest names in the image industry, Wemark is taking the middleman out of content licensing by developing a blockchain-based marketplace for digital content

Wemark, the company creating a blockchain-based distribution and exchange system for digital content, is zooming in on stock photography by removing third party agencies and fostering a creator-focused economy, which ultimately allows creators to license their content directly to customers. With this new system, Wemark’s “distributed marketplace” keeps the control and the rights in the hands of the photographers, and protects the work they create.

Stock photography is one of the most centralized markets that exist, with agencies such as Shutterstock and Getty controlling a large part of the $4B industry. However, since these major companies aggregate creators and customers and thus control the distribution, single photographers are left behind, and are subject to the distributors changing rules and fees. Additionally, the fees charged for distribution are now among the highest of all other industries in digital content, with photographers being charged up to 85% of their photo sale price, which leaves them with only a fraction of the revenue their content is earning.

By utilizing blockchain technology, Wemark is able to replace the core responsibilities of the agencies by supporting direct transactions between creators and customers. The autonomous blockchain-based protocol processes payments, issues and registers licenses, provides access to the content itself and distributes the revenue based on pre-set rules that are immutable and cannot be altered.

Wemark is launching the concept for a “distributed marketplace”, and is introducing a dedicated token to empower a direct economy for digital content. Wemark Tokens, or WMK, will serve as a native payment system for the network, as well as a reward to all relevant parties for creating, sharing, and promoting digital content. This makes the different creators stakeholders of the platform, unlike stock agencies, where the relationship with creators is often one-sided. Creators will get paid with Wemark Tokens and will be rewarded if the economy grows.

Wemark is a VC-backed startup with an impressive advisory board, including Lars Perkins, the Former CEO & Founder of Picasa, Keren Sachs, the Former Director of Content Development at Shutterstock, Lee Torrens, the Marketplace Director at Canva and others.

“The current system for distributing digital content is not working anymore, with creators giving up many of their rights and only receiving a fraction of their content’s real value,” says Wemark Co-Founder and CEO Tai Kaish. “We have recognized that the current system, even beyond just photography, needs to be replaced. A distributed approach, where content is licensed directly between creators and consumers, is inevitable.”

“Despite the explosion in demand that the Internet has fueled, photographers are having a tougher time than ever realizing value for their creative work,” says Lars Perkins, Founder and CEO of Picasa (acquired by Google) and one of Wemark’s advisors. “Monolithic content marketplaces are middlemen who stand between them and their customers, extracting an ever-higher share of revenues by exploiting the fact that individual photographers lack the power to be heard in a crowded market. Wemark’s blockchain-based smart contracts allow content creators to re-establish a direct relationship with their customers and ensure that value is distributed more equitably. After all, don’t the creators of the content deserve more than the aggregators?”

Click here to read more about the protocol and how it works: https://tge.wemark.com/