The landscape of the media and entertainment has been changing. Spurred by new technologies, and a nascent independent film movement, more content of more types is being created by more people for more platforms. In addition to 100 years of legacy content, distribution models are more complex, diverse and decentralized than ever.
You can probably see where this is going. There are vastly more parties throughout the world creating and distributing entertainment content–movies, videos, television series, podcasts, games, radio shows, events, and more that haven’t come to be yet.
Long-tail distribution enables venues for legacy or narrowly-focused content: and business models that can offer them, if efficiently organized. Globally-distributed content proliferates different versions offering different languages, edits, and formats.
EIDR is the key to making all of this possible. And manageble.
The entertainment industries have undergone (and continues to experience) a vastly more complex media environment compared to as recently as fifteen or twenty years ago. Gone are the days when a production had to deal with two distributors–one domestic and one for the rest of the world. There are hundreds of OTT channels in the world, each licensing content from potentially dozens of providers.
Distribution can be to theaters, to streaming services, for purchase or download, direct sale or intermediated. As options proliferate, so do opportunities.
That’s a lot to keep track of, and it is the reason that EIDR was created. There is an absolute need in the marketplace for companies in the entertainment supply chain to be able to exchange information about content precisely and efficiently.
EIDR Identification is the vehicle by which this can be done. An EIDR ID can be used to absolutely identify not just a work of entertainment, but its version, language, and edit.
Our mission
The media landscape was, for a long time, dominated by large, concentrated, capital-intensive and unionized companies that could afford to leave a lot of money on the table.
It’s different now. Some people are shooting movies on their iPhone. A podcaster might create a nation-wide show in their living room using mostly free software. Digital cinema has reduced the cost of making video content, and allowed more voices to flourish.
This day was a long time in coming. And it promises that more creative voices will be able to bring their works to the marketplace. And EIDR identification is the essential piece of infrastructure that will allow that to happen.
It is our core mission to be the means by which EIDR identification–and the benefits it enables–be available to everyone: the indies, the little guys, and the millions of visionaries that bring creative products to the world.
Our history
Curt Mayers, the founder of The Title Registrar, has worked on back-end operations for the movie and record industries–as well as more boring sectors like banking and health care–for his entire career.
He provided some early technical support for EIDR, and came to appreciate it’s ability to transform the media industries, and their models of production, cooperation, and distribution. Since most distribution of media is digital, EIDR represented a well thought-out means of automating the back end and supply chain of entertainment products.
Because of EIDR’s membership-based structure, and its API-based service stack, there was no practical way for the many producers, distributors and outlets to participate fully in the EIDR infrastructure. The Title Registrar was created to overcome that, and to provide access to EIDR benefits for the small- and medium-sized enterprises that are now driving the M&E landscape.
Our first version of the Title Manager was released in 2017, and has undergone continuous improvement since then, to make it faster, simpler to use, and more accessible. Since then, we have added bulk services (matching existing catalogs to the EIDR registry, and registering those titles not already in the EIDR registry), and an API resolution service to aid integration automation.
Our Plans
Our vision at our founding was to make EIDR identification universal. Once it is, the media landscape is transformed.
We will be working with studios, distributors, software vendors, trade associations and intermediaries to help spread the word, and set the
groundwork for making the entertainment industry more efficient, more innovative and more diverse.
We understand that what we do is unglamourous and not particularly exciting. We like to analogize it to making concrete: it is uninspiring, but fundamental to creating the modern world–highways, buildings, bridges, canals. Similarly, EIDR is a critical piece of infrastructure: it will set the stage for waves of innovation and globalization that will, ultimately, change everything.