Power to the Creator
Agora is a suite of web services and client tools that seamlessly tracks and automates creative rights and finances and enables creators to store, manage, and monetize their work. Combining an intuitive front-end user experience with a sophisticated back-end infrastructure, Agora grants musicians, filmmakers, writers, photographers, and journalists the freedom to control their own work, finances, and distribution. Ultimately, Agora has the power to revolutionize the creative industries, providing a new form of value chain management that fully leverages the Internet and connected devices.
The current distribution value chain is a 20th century leftover, and to the extent it has been Internet-enabled, it still emulates a paper-based value chain that empowers gatekeepers and robs artists of the fruits of their work. Aside from taking money out of the artists hands, it also removes the feedback loop between consumers and creators, which artists thrive on to make better art. Agora transforms content creation and distribution to seamlessly connect creator to consumer, thereby increasing margins for all, and putting creative control in the hands of the creator.
There is a strong community component to Agora. The creative process is driven by collaboration, yet artists often struggle to meet collaborators, agents, managers, etc. Using a patented reputation engine and matching algorithms, Agora connects creators with other creative collaborators, distributors, and industry professionals.
Targeting the taproot of a global industry worth over 2 trillion dollars in 2021, Agora’s creator-centric platform works for all content types and performs key functions: (1) governed media sharing; (2) secure media storage; (3) creative marketplace linking artists and distributors; (4) copyright management; (5) automated contracts; (6) royalty payment processing. To draw some similarities, it operates like Google Drive for creators (store, share, manage your work), combined with a copyright office (ensure that your work is protected), a distributor (get your work in the right hands), and a payment system to boot. Agora is content centric, providing a community-based matching system that allows creators to find the best collaborators and businesses to find the best creators for their audience.
When it comes time to distribute a creative work, Agora generates and manages all needed metadata and, using a unique, patented digital signature systems based on distributed ledgers, handles the injection of the digital work into the media value chain. The artist and related parties gain total transparency and perfect reporting on how and where and when their work was consumed. The link between the artist and consumer is tight and feedback works at the speed of the Internet without distortion from intermediaries.
Importantly, Agora gets to scale by targeting the top of the funnel - from children taking flute lessons, to budding songwriters writing in their bedrooms, to amateur photographers and film school students. We see this as one of our core differentiators as many other companies in the graveyard of creator economy startups have targeted semi-professionals and professionals, a factor that has ultimately limited their scale.
Founded by Albhy Galuten and Steve Richards and working with a team of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Agora will transform content creation and distribution to seamlessly connect creator to consumer, thereby increasing margins for all. For more information, please contact albhy@agora.media or steve@agora.media.