{"id":4791,"date":"2017-03-20T21:19:12","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T01:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/hitrecord-paving-the-way-for-crowdsourcing-in-entertainment-industry\/"},"modified":"2017-03-20T21:19:58","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T01:19:58","slug":"hitrecord-paving-the-way-for-crowdsourcing-in-entertainment-industry","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/hitrecord-paving-the-way-for-crowdsourcing-in-entertainment-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"HitRecord: Paving the way for crowdsourcing in entertainment industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the class on Tongal, I left the room with a question \u2013 would the big advertisers or entertainment companies let these creative artists succeed? Do these artists even stand a chance picking the alternate route, which is quite different from the traditional path? How will Tongal eventually monetize its content? I guess my understanding was incomplete until I watched the Oscar-nominated (and almost Oscar-winning) movie \u201cLa La Land\u201d. It gave me a quick sneak-peak into the life of an entertainment artist in Hollywood and what struggles or compromises they must go through, to become a star one day!<\/p>\n

One platform which is trying to make the dreams, of these up and coming artists, reality is HitRecord. Founded in 2005 by Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his brother Dan, the project initially started with the intention to seek feedback on the brothers\u2019 projects; however, later they saw immense potential in creating a social media platform where they can collaborate with artists on creative projects. This not only gave them the flexibility to work on versatile subjects and inexpensive access to creative talent but also introduced them to the opportunity of monetizing this valuable network.<\/p>\n

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The crown jewel of HitRecord called \u201cHitRecord on TV\u201d was launched in early 2014 as a variety series show. In today\u2019s age where consumers are continuously looking for new TV content, HitRecord capitalized on the \u201creality show\u201d trend and runs each episode on a specific theme e.g. high school, games, future, etc and encourages artists to come up with innovative concepts around the theme. The first episode of the show had contributions from 426 HitRecord artists and all of them got paid. With the massive content crowdsourced from its loyal creative artists, HitRecord launched Season 2 of the series in 2015 and has been trending high. Joseph does not enjoy the profits alone \u2013 all creative artists who contribute to the TV episodes receive payments for each piece of work assuming per episode revenue of $50,000. Channels and advertisers quickly recognized the value and started offering competitive rates for the 2nd<\/sup> season.<\/p>\n