LBRY: Q&A

Jeremy Kauffman, Founder, Chief Executive Officer

1+2. Why LBRY/How Did LBRY come to be?

The internet isn’t the wild, free place it used to be. The idea used to be that you put up what you created, and if people enjoyed it, you reaped the benefits. But as a few huge content platforms grew, a new model emerged — hand your videos, pictures, and music over to a huge, faceless corporation, and if enough people view it, maybe we’ll send you some of the ad revenue.

The introduction of middlemen and content censorship were troublesome enough, but after YouTube and other social media platforms started pulling videos and monitoring communications during the Arab Spring, the real price of people handing their content over to third parties became clearer than ever. We wanted to create a way for video personalities, journalists, and creators of all kinds to connect directly with their audience while maintaining ownership of their content, so we built LBRY.

LBRY is both the protocol we created and the app we built on that protocol. Our app allows users to publish content of any kind, set a price (or offer it for free), and connect directly with their audience to promote it. Anyone can build apps on the LBRY protocol.

3. Many similar projects have emerged lately in crypto, what is your closest competitor?

While several ICOs promising streaming media on the blockchain have popped up recently, there’s really no one else building a truly decentralized network that can handle any kind of content. The majority of those companies are putting a blockchain paint job on a centralized service. Our real competitors are YouTube and Netflix.

4. How LBRY will be better than competition (lots of deep pockets)?

LBRY is better than the alternatives because we’re creating a truly decentralized network from the ground up. The big incumbents literally can’t do what we’re doing without giving up their control over their users’ content.

Also, we’re not a one-trick pony — this is a rapidly changing marketplace, and while video streaming has exploded in popularity in the past decade, we have no idea what’s coming next. The flexibility of the LBRY protocol allows us to build whatever apps we need to allow creators to give their fans what they want, no matter what digital package that content comes in.

5. How will LBRY make it better for content creators?

LBRY makes life better for content creators by taking the uncertainty out of monetizing content. Right now, middlemen (cable companies, YouTube, etc.) take about 45% of the revenue from content on their platform. LBRY takes 0%. On top of that obvious benefit, thousands of professional YouTubers are wondering how long their lifestyle will last as the platform’s algorithms pull their advertising (and wreck their revenue) seemingly at random. They’ll never face that uncertainty with LBRY.

Creators have also raised issues with how important YouTube (and Google) search optimization has become — instead of spending time thinking about what their fans want, they’re learning about SEO and creating entirely different content to game the system. When creators and fans work hand in hand, everyone is happier.

6. What about content consumers, no more “free-loaders”?

There will still be plenty of free content on LBRY — just because creators can choose to charge doesn’t mean that they will. We’ve seen a huge number of consumers switch from pirating music and movies to paying a small monthly charge for access to huge selections of media from Spotify and Netflix. We’re taking it to the next logical step and letting them pay a small amount directly to the creators of their favorite shows, songs, and art. Instead of paying advertisers with their time, LBRY users pay creators directly, and everyone (except the middleman) wins.

7. How will LBRY simplify the usage of content viewing?

We’ve made content viewing as simple as possible in the LBRY app — just navigate to the video you want to watch from the home page or the search bar, press play, and watch!

8. Will the app be indispensable to access LBRY?

No. We want to make it the best way to watch video content on the LBRY network, but as we mentioned, we’re open source (check out our GitHub repos) and encourage anyone who’s interested in building a decentralized, free internet to build apps on it as well.

Other people have already launched apps that work on the LBRY network — check out spee.ch, an image/video sharing website that puts the files on LBRY (instead of hosting them on a centralized server like Imgur or Giphy) and lets users pick easy to remember and share URLs.

9. What lays ahead in the short/long term for LBRY?

We’re on track to put out a mobile app in the first quarter of 2018, and we’ll have some very exciting content announcements over the next few months — stay tuned!

10. What is/will be LBRY marketing plan?

Since we’re still in open beta, a big part of our strategy revolves around connecting with people who are active in several booming areas in the streaming media world, from watch along game players to instructional and how-to buffs. Many of these people have seen the living they made on YouTube slip away, and we can offer a real alternative for them to use, today. And, they can bring their audiences with them.

We also have a number of major content acquisition plans in the works that will make people want to take a look at LBRY, and have already gotten some creators with huge audiences on board. We’ll continue to build on this foundation and provide unique, can’t-miss original content to our users.

11. How you planning to create the next wave of hard-core LBRY evangelists?

A huge part of our user base is students who are interested in the newest applications of the principles they’re learning about in school. We’re reaching out to students all over the world who are already interested in and contributing to the LBRY project to get their peers excited about the concept.

We’ve also received very positive feedback from our outreach to entertainment and film industry contacts, and found that there’s just as much excitement about decentralization there as in the tech world.

We’re going to find people who are enthusiastic about this technology on both the development and content production side, and give them what they need to build whatever they can imagine.

12. Plans for other exchanges inclusion?

We’re about to release Shapeshift.io integration in-app, and we’re working to be included on several exchanges.

13. What will the roadmap look like after 2018?

It’s too early to say right now.

Have you downloaded the LBRY app yet? Get it now!

Imagine you have a Youtube channel, and you monetize (or not, because of new Youtube rules) by the content you create and post on Youtube, and one day Youtube decides to suspend/cancel your account for breach of Term and Conditions. Because of what? Something “bad” you said, something BIG CORP, GOVERNMENT didn’t like?

Youtube at any moment instead of giving you XX% of the ad revenue that your channel brings, could arbitrarily give you only X%, and will do it in 2018.

The worse is not the arbitrary change of monetisation rules, is the censorship.

What if your content could:

Bring down a corrupt government? Provide financial freedom through cryptocurrencies knowledge? Bring enlightenment through any topic?

But it is not within the interests of Government or Big Corp.

LBRY will take away the power of Big Brother and Big Corps. to censor and change monetisation rules at will.

Is my opinion that LBRY is an amazing project to support for the sole thing it represents: CONTENT FREEDOM. It is a solid investment, and currently undervalued.

Please DYOR before investing, do not trust anyone to do Fundamental Analysis for you, you are the sole responsible of where you chip in.

If you enjoy the read, follow me on Twitter, its good for Karma.