What is LBRY?
It is just a means to share content and giving the ability to have credit assigned and be able to make payments directly to curators or content creators. Like Steemit? Yes. Sort of. Okay not really. While we use Steemit and it has a blogging interface, think of LBRY more as multimedia. Of course you can share multimedia on Steemit and you can share blog posts on LBRY, but when you use each solution for it's best purpose, you start seeing why you should just have an account on both.
LBRY is one of those awesome new fangled decentralized solutions all the Silicon Valley boys talk about, I had signed up for early access to the site I do not even remember when and forgot about it. While out walking this morning I got an email that I was in! For the next hour or so on the new toy, and I have to admit, it is fun, and super simple to use.
How does it run?
Starting up the app I was not taken to some registration screen, I was right away given a home screen with content I could click and check out. It almost reminded me of Netflix. Being curious about publishing content, I went ahead and did a live test post, which you can see here lbry://@cryptocollectibles/bebopandbatman if you have LBRY already. After doing this I noticed I go some extra credits for this, neat!
Off to go check content by others, I looked at the top "comedy" section and found this lbry://WilliamsburgFashion1 with the description of "*Culture*, brought to you by:
✯ American Apparel
✯ Scion
✯ Vimeo
✯ Peet's Coffee
✯ BRKLYNFEST
✯ BrooklynVegan
✯ Fader Fort by Fiat
✯ Converse
✯ FUBU
✯ [adult swim]"
Well, they got my stupid curiosity going with so many random keywords, like a fool I clicked. My first content viewing experience was disappointing. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't a fairly clothed female letting me know she likes to fuck strangers. Okay, it was just stupid, but I guess I didn't lose money, and I felt like this was my own fault going for a poorly described video and a poorly made thumbnail. I did not give up. Somewhere along alt-tabbing back from web browser to LBRY and just clicking around, I found that LBRY had a built in system to earn some free credits by just doing stuff I was doing anyways. Such as, watch some videos!
I did find that video game news giant IGN had content on LBRY already which is cool to see, watched an episode of Linked Together where the new Legend of Zelda is being played lbry://@IGNonLBRY/linked-ep5 The only issue I ran into with LBRY so far, is one video didn't load for me lbry://@CasuallyExplained/casually-successful. I ended up finding the creator of that video, Casually Explained, and checking out more material from him and I am glad I did. He seems to have a successful YouTube channel and has now been sharing the content on LBRY, awesome!
After enjoying that video I realized, that is basically it. You don't have to set up a VPN for this, you do not seem to have to learn the whole background world of crypto currencies or grasp what a decentralization is, you just load it up, enjoy and share content, get paid. Do you want 20 credits off fairly quickly? Claim a channel and grab 5 credits! You were probably going to want to get your username in there anyways, bam. 10 credits for first published post! Easy peasy, bam. Stream a video and get 5 credits! The app is on Windows, Apple, and Linux so far and if you want to get early access use link here here LBRY.io/get?r=lz8SP and sign up!
I use Steemit, Why use LBRY too?
Because they are two separate things, the best part is going to be those of you who see the benefit of both. For you with VLOGs especially, you can provide exclusive paid for content and still offer free content. Make a Steemit post about your new album and be able to link to the LBRY page where people can buy it directly from you! This works for digital artwork as well. I can't even think of the bunch of uses this has for those who want full control of their works at the same time as being able to have it distributed worldwide. Sign up at LBRY.io/get?r=lz8SP and see if LBRY might be something you want to support! As someone who just likes taking in a lot of entertaining content, well, LBRY seems to be a good platform for checking out content of all kinds.
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