Rad’s Tony Mugavero on CoinGeek Weekly Livestream 2023: Advancing Blockchain-Based Streaming
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Kurt Wuckert Jr. spoke with Rad’s Tony Mugavero on this week’s episode of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream. The duo discussed NFTs, content distribution, disruption of the major streaming services and much more.
Introducing Tony Mugavero
Tony Mugavero is CEO of both Rad and ROW8. He has always loved the media, DJing and producing music from a young age before getting into the technical side of live streaming in New York. He has always been fascinated by the technological side of the media industry and has always had a forward-looking approach to it.
“It’s clear that blockchain is the future of media,” says Mugavero, noting how new media companies are almost always formed around new technological breakthroughs. He and his team started Rad to leverage blockchain technology.
What is Rad? What is it becoming?
Wuckert asks Mugavero to define Rad and what it is for the public. He replies that he sees the future of the company as a Web 3.0 streaming platform. He noted that there wasn’t much support for video in the room – it was all JPEGs. Supporting video is a “whole new class of problem,” he says, noting how he saw the opportunity to create such a platform.
From a content perspective, Mugavero wanted to build a platform for the thousands of independent artists and studios that Netflix and Hulu no longer care about. From a technical perspective, Rad was initially a VR platform, and they quickly landed content deals with Disney, FOX, Discovery and other media giants. However, VR started to stall and everyone started dialing back on it, so they took stock of their strengths and looked at what might come next.
Like many others, the team started playing with smart contracts on Ethereum. They had the idea of a decentralized content platform, and since there was no NFT standard yet, they invented their own. Mugavero returned to the major studios he had built relationships with and began pitching the idea of blockchain-based streaming to them.
The Rad team had to go through the “crypto winter” that engulfed everything after 2017, but they finally got there, and by 2021 they had decided to go all in on the idea of a Web 3.0 streaming platform.
Have they completely moved away from VR? Yes, says Mugavero. They are focused on traditional video content, but they have VR apps. Traditional video content can be streamed into VR headsets, and Mugavero sees an opportunity there, especially for the gaming industry.
What are the NFTs used for? What is the Web 3.0 experience in Rad?
“There are different ways people want to sell video content,” says Mugavero. He remembers the days when you could buy a collector’s edition DVD for a higher price, and he sees how blockchain technology can make this kind of thing possible. Content creators can sell video content as a one-off, one-in-a-thousand or unlimited.
Going further, Mugavero paints a picture of a future where creators can be paid royalties if the characters they create as NFTs are used in content. He says the opportunity for intellectual property rights and community building is enormous.
Wuckert notes that one of the biggest problems in the space is that everyone has their favorite blockchain, and they want to join apps on them, which are essentially walled gardens with a few thousand users. He asks how Rad bridges the gap. Mugavero says the only companies making money right now are digital currency exchanges, and he feels Web 2.5 is the real opportunity. The whole reason OpenSea came about is so you could pay with dollars, he reminds us, pointing out that consumers don’t care if the platform is on BSV or Solana as long as it’s easy to use.
“Content is crucial,” Wuckert agrees, but he emphasizes that BSV is the only one capable of distributing it on a large scale. However, he notes that it is a difficult path, and those building applications do not always know this. It requires sales, he points out. Mugavero agrees, but he says that all the technical stuff must be in the background. The user cannot even experience a gas charge or fluctuating price once, or they will never use the service again.
Having the right to stream content on the chain (because you’ve bought the right) is hugely beneficial, notes Mugavero. Having it as such will allow anyone to go to any platform that streams content and play what they have purchased the rights to, no matter where they are in the world.
What makes Rad different that others can learn from?
Wuckert asks Mugavero what the company is doing that others can learn from in terms of managing expectations, marketing, how the business works, etc.
Mugavero says that from a distribution service, if you open everything completely in a decentralized way, you end up with the worst of the worst content. If someone can upload something, you get some gems and a lot of junk. While people care about the freedom that comes with that kind of completely open network, most potential customers don’t. They want quality content.
Mugavero also says that the way content businesses work today is that companies like Disney own the content and rent it to you. He wants to get out of the way of the creators and fans and let them connect directly. Rad will also buy into the projects on its platform, and actively support artists. He points out that this is a completely different attitude to how streaming services work today.
Did Mugavero and the Rad team know how to solve the problems inherent in the streaming business model today? Yes, he says. They saw the fragmentation into dozens of different streaming services happen in real time. He says this is Rad’s competitive advantage; if the big services tried to compete with them, they would fundamentally destroy their business models.
See: Live Streaming and Blockchain
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