The affiliate model that built ecommerce into a trillion-dollar powerhouse has never touched film. That’s about to change.

TL;DR: Affiliate marketing built ecommerce into a trillion pound industry. It’s never touched film. Until now. Hiway, co-founded by veteran sales agent Zach Rothwell, lets producers give fans, influencers and even cast members a cut of revenue for pushing their film, paid out in real time, no CDN costs, no lost data. Raindance is already running it. Producers who capture their own audience walk into a negotiation with leverage that a sales agent actually respects: a hundred thousand email addresses beats half a million disappearing YouTube likes. The catch: syndication only works once you’ve got an audience to syndicate, and it won’t finance your next film. But it does hand curator-minded producers, the ScotFlix and Raindance Releasing types, a new income stream and a public way to prove their taste before their own slate is ready. Building an audience isn’t optional anymore. It’s the wake-up call the Obsession and Backrooms crowd already had.

Last Friday, I hosted a Creative HQ clinic with Zach Rothwell, co-founder of Hiway and head of international sales and distribution at High Fliers Films. Zach came on to talk with Creative HQ producers about a tool that he hopes will bring the same income explosion to cinema that affiliate marketing brought to online retail a decade ago. Our question going in was simple: is this another TVOD gimmick? Or a genuine step forward for producers navigating fragmented audiences?

The trillion-dollar marketing tool that cinema almost forgot

The Affiliate and Partner Marketing Association’s State of the Affiliate Nation 2025 report puts a figure on what most of us only vaguely register scrolling past a TikTok product link: UK brands invested £1.7 billion in affiliate and partner marketing in 2024, up 9% year on year, generating 360 million sales and £2.2 million in revenue every hour. Brands are seeing an average return of £16 for every £1 spent. One in every £7 spent on UK online travel now comes via an affiliate partner. Over Cyber Weekend 2024, the channel drove 13% of all ecommerce revenue in the UK. Nearly 70,000 active affiliates are promoting close to 7,400 brands.

Affiliate marketing reshaped how products get sold, built entirely on the idea that anyone with an audience, however small, could earn a cut for making an introduction. As Zach put it on the call: “we all know that affiliate marketing turned e-commerce into a trillion dollar industry... no one has ever done that for content before. Until now.”

What Hiway actually does

Hiway isn’t a streaming platform. It’s not trying to be the next Netflix or iTunes, and Zach was clear on that point more than once. It’s infrastructure: a backend that sits behind whatever forward-facing distribution you’re already doing, giving filmmakers a way to store, share, monetise and livestream content while keeping ownership of the IP, the pricing, the geo-blocking and, critically, the data.

That last point is the one worth sitting with. Thirty-eight years into running a distribution company, Zach told the group, High Fliers had never held a single piece of customer data. Every platform deal handed the audience relationship to someone else. Hiway was built to reverse that.

The tool getting the most attention on the call, and the one doing the affiliate marketing work, is what Hiway calls content syndication. When you upload a film to Hiway, it sits in your own account as a single source of truth for your content, that can be streamed to any device anywhere in the world. From there, you can grant a third party (a fan, an influencer, a festival, a cast member, anyone) a digital contract to stream and promote your film, at whatever revenue split you choose. That third party gets a unique SmartLink. Viewers believe they’re streaming from the promoter’s site or social page. In fact, the stream is running from the filmmaker’s account the entire time, which means the promoter carries zero streaming or CDN costs, and the filmmaker can see exactly who is watching, where, and when, with payment settled in real time.

Raindance is already running this at scale through Raindance Releasing, where audiences experience streaming from the festival’s platform but the content and the majority of the revenue sit with the producer. It’s early, and Zach was candid that Hiway hasn’t yet found the right word for “syndication” internally, let alone externally. But the mechanism is the same one that turned an influencer’s TikTok into a functioning sales channel for a skincare brand, applied to a film.

Why this matters and why producers should pay attention

One of the most important moments on the call was a story Zach told about a filmmaker he met at a festival who had a trailer sitting at half a million likes on YouTube, and hadn’t sold the film. There was no way to reach any of those half a million people again. Compare that to a producer walking into the same room with 100,000 email addresses captured through owned links. “I think that changes the conversation altogether,” Zach said, “because that’s the data there, and you can target them.”

That’s the shift affiliate marketing already forced in retail: attention matters less than connection. Connection with the audience, not the size of it, is what moves the needle. Zach described the current sales and distribution market in blunt terms: content that might have sold for £100,000 two years ago is closer to £30,000 now. In a market this compressed, a validated, owned, contactable audience is essential. It gives producers leverage, which they rarely have otherwise.

To be clear, Hiway isn’t positioning this as a replacement for sales agents or distributors, and Zach was direct about that too. Companies the size of Amazon or Samsung, aren’t going to rebuild their infrastructure overnight, however much money the technology could save them on delivery costs. Traditional distribution still closes the deals that need a broadcaster’s or a platform’s infrastructure. What changes is the timeline. Instead of waiting to build an audience once a sales agent has secured a deal, producers can start capturing and monetising an audience from the ideation stage, using syndication and pre-sales to generate revenue and proof of demand long before a traditional deal is even on the table.

What if you don’t have an audience yet?

None of this solves the problem most producers actually have, which is that syndication only works once an audience exists to syndicate to. Hiway monetises an audience. It doesn’t build it, and building it is the slower, harder, chronically underfunded part of the job that no platform has yet cracked. There’s also the financing question Creative QH producer Sias raised on the call: the traditional system, punishing as it is, gives producers something a wallet full of email addresses doesn’t, which is leverage against future revenue that a senior lender or an equity partner will actually recognise. A hundred thousand sign-ups is, for most, still not collateral against a $5 million budget. Hiway offers a new way of doing things to an industry that consistently bets on the devil they know. It is a very useful instrument in a much longer, messier transition towards audience-backed cinema. But for the producers looking at the success of Obsession and Backrooms and thinking ‘why didn’t I build a YouTube audience 10 years ago?!’, this may be the financially incentified wake-up call they need to take audience-building seriously.

The part that should interest producers most

There’s a second opportunity buried in this that has nothing to do with your own film. Content syndication doesn’t require you to be the filmmaker. Creative HQ producer Maureen Hascoet’s ScotFlix and Raindance Releasing are both, in effect, acting as syndicators for other people’s work, taking a cut for aggregating and promoting a slate they didn’t produce. That’s not a new business model but it is smart. It’s how a lot of today’s big players in film got started: acquiring small films, taking them to market, and using that revenue to eventually finance production of their own. Did someone say A24 (again)?

Zach drew a comparison to gaming that’s worth repeating to anyone still financing films the traditional way. Game studios routinely build communities, on Discord, on Reddit, before there’s a product to sell. By the time they announce anything, they already have market validation. The games industry is now roughly triple the size of the film industry. Film still tends to work in reverse: build it and they will come. Except, too frequently, they don’t.

You’re a culture-maker now

In 2026, a producer’s reputation is increasingly built on the films they choose to stand behind, not just the ones they make. I made this comparison on the call to the ‘top ten’ and ‘top hundred’ lists that fuel publications like Sight & Sound and The Guardian with sustained traffic. These lists have become genuinely important pieces of IP because they signal the most valuable asset in modern film sales: good taste. A producer who becomes a paid affiliate for a curated slate is making a public, repeated statement about who they are as a curator and a cultural voice. That’s evidence of judgement, built in public, well before your own film exists to prove it. And underneath the brand-building, the practical groundwork is still compounding: audience capture, pricing and promotion, tested and refined on other people’s projects, so that by the time your own release lands, you’re running a marketing process you’ve already stress-tested rather than inventing one under deadline.

Affiliate marketing didn’t replace retail. It sat alongside it and became one of the most efficient channels in the industry, worth £1.7 billion a year in the UK alone. Film and TV have spent a decade watching that model work everywhere except their own industry. Hiway is the first serious attempt to bring it in-house. Whether it becomes the standard or simply forces the standard to change, producers who understand how it works now will be negotiating from a very different position to the ones who don’t.

Great films get shelved every week.

Not because they’re bad. Because nobody knows they exist.

The invisible problem

Independent films rarely fail on quality. They fail on invisibility. Marketing starts too late. Distribution starts without an audience. The two functions that decide whether a film is seen have been kept in separate rooms for decades.

Every filmmaker call ends with the same two questions. How do I reach an audience? How do I actually get paid for my work?

The traditional answer used to be: sign with a sales agent, take an advance, wait for a distributor to package it, and hope. Content that might have sold for £100,000 two years ago is closer to £30,000 now. The wait has got longer. The cheque has got smaller. And in most cases, the filmmaker never sees who bought their film.

What SceneScreens do - www.scenescreens.com

SceneScreens is a social media marketing agency built specifically for independent film. Their team of managers, editors, and content creators works with each project from an early stage. They analyse every film’s themes, hooks, and narrative pull, then build a full social strategy around it.

Twenty to fifty pieces of content per film. Dedicated Instagram pages that become the film’s own world. Collaborations with cast, crew, brands, and charities connected to each film’s subject matter.

Their line: they turn film hooks into social hooks. Reels, carousels, cameos, culture-connected content. The kind of thing algorithms actually reward.

Recent work spans Altitude releases including SIRAT and Nouvelle Vague, plus indie titles like What About Gary?. And they run their own film-culture channels on Instagram and TikTok, so they’re not just producing content, they’re distributing it too.

What Hiway does

Hiway is the infrastructure layer behind self-distribution. One place to store the master file, share it as a link anywhere online, monetise it, and get paid in real time. The film never leaves the filmmaker’s account. Every stream, view, and transaction stays visible in one dashboard.

Filmmakers keep their IP. They keep the audience data. They keep the majority of the revenue.

Raindance is already running a full festival platform on it. Independent filmmakers like David E. Valdez are releasing features direct-to-fan on it. Distributors are using it to embed content into their own storefronts.

The gap the partnership closes

Marketing without distribution goes nowhere. Distribution without marketing goes silent.

Independent filmmakers have been forced to solve both problems on their own, often by trial and error, usually too late. What SceneScreens and Hiway close, together, is the gap between finished film and paying audience.

SceneScreens builds the audience. Hiway captures the sale. Payouts run in real time to the content owner and the promoter. There is no lag between attention and revenue.

What’s coming

Over the next four weeks we’re publishing a joint guide, The 3 Steps to Self-Distributing Your Film, followed by a live webinar for filmmakers and film schools. Both sides bring what we know best. Both sides open the doors we’ve spent years building relationships behind.

The University of Westminster is next on our student-programme roadmap, mirroring the work already underway with US film schools.

The point

Self-distribution isn’t a movement anymore. It’s a business model that works, once the right infrastructure sits underneath it and the right marketing sits alongside it.

For the first time, both are in the same room.

▶️ onthehiway.com

A colourblind cinematographer with 35 years in the business. A 90+-year-old angel who only agreed to a credit if we used a picture of a hawk. A documentary about a youth mariachi band that conquered the world. And a film being released the way films were always meant to be released: straight to the fans.

TLDR

• David E. Valdez, executive producer with 35 years in film, is releasing his debut feature documentary Ugly Little Monkeys – A True American Story direct-to-fan on Hiway.

• The film tells the story of Los Changuitos Feos de Tucson, the first youth mariachi in the United States, founded in 1964. The group launched the international Youth Mariachi Movement and is still running 60+ years on.

• Featuring Linda Ronstadt, Edward James Olmos, and 19 surviving original members.

• Passed on Netflix. Chose Hiway. Free distribution into every Mexican consulate on earth is already lined up.

• Watch direct-to-fan on Hiway.

Stream it now

There are two Davids on this call.

One of us is in the UK, still buzzing from a weekend his son engineered: Foo Fighters at Anfield, a crazy, brilliant night, the kind of gig you don’t come down from for days. The other is in Los Angeles, an executive producer with thirty-five years in the film business and exactly the kind of believer you want beside you when you are trying to change an industry.

David E. Valdez was the very first person ever to use the Hiway. He liked it enough to become an investor. Now he is using it to do the one thing Hollywood spent a century making impossible: release his own film, on his own terms, to the people who actually want to watch it. His film is Ugly Little Monkeys – A True American Story. Its subject is Los Changuitos Feos de Tucson, the youth mariachi band that lit the fuse on a global movement. The story has triumph, scandal, an angel investor who insisted her only credit be a picture of a hawk, and a buyout deal so bad it should be taught in film schools as a warning. We sat down to talk about all of it.

Colourblind at AFI

David Orman: Let’s start at the beginning, because yours is a proper one. Thirty-five years across motion pictures and television. Where did the love come from?

David Valdez: I’ve always had it. I’ve worked as a DP, a camera operator, a first assistant director, a director, in motion pictures and in episodic television. I trained at the American Film Institute and came out with a master’s in cinematography. I have never kept my IMDB page up to date. I know what I’ve accomplished, and others I’ve worked with do too. I’ll share a little secret with you, though. I’m colourblind.

DO: Colourblind. At AFI. For cinematography.

DV: As soon as I graduated, I went to take the membership exam at the American Society of Cinematographers, and the application form included a colourblind test. The moment I saw it I thought, there is no way I’m passing this. So I stood up and walked out. But that never stopped me for a second. I understand the Kelvin colour spectrum, and I also know my filters. In natural light, I could produce a beautiful picture. My first feature was gorgeous.

DO: What was it called?

DV: The Decoy. A western. We shot it on the old mini-DV Canons, the ones that had just come out. Two cameras. It was my joy. And it’s still for sale, packaged with some John Wayne films at Walmart.

DO: A western, shot colourblind on two mini-DV cameras, now sitting next to John Wayne at Walmart. That’s a logline on its own.

DV: And here’s the part that still hurts. The writer-director, a dear friend, Justin Kreinbrink, signed a horrible flat buyout. No residuals. Nothing from any of the sales, ever.

DO: And that, right there, is the entire reason we built the Hiway. Hold that thought.

DV: Believe me, I’m holding it.

“I’m colourblind. I walked out of the cinematographers’ exam. It never stopped me for a second.”

Family first, then functional art

From there, I moved into directing. I was first AD on a Nickelodeon kids’ show in Tucson, Hey Dude, which is still airing, and I worked my way up to director with the same company out of Knoxville, Tennessee. I directed forty-six episodes of a show titled Exploring America Side by Side. I loved it. But I’d just married, just had my first child, and I was travelling far too much.

They offered to move me to Knoxville, and said, “We’ve got eight shows, take your pick.” I couldn’t do it. I wanted my kids to grow up here, in Tucson, with their grandparents, aunts and uncles, their cousins, more importantly, their culture. So, I put family first and took the sacrifice.

DO: Most people say “family first.” You turned down eight shows for it.

DV: I did local work for years, then I burned out completely. And, you’ll laugh at this, I became an artist of functional art. Tables, propane lamps, backyard heaters, and wine racks. I can build and fix just about anything. I did that for about three years, and I was good at it. But I always knew I had bigger things on the horizon. In 2018, I wrote, produced, and directed my first short film. A 14-minute, all-Spanish film titled Sin Vergüenza (Without Shame). It won several awards. That was the proof in the pudding, to my wife and to myself, that I could deliver.

The Ugly Little Monkeys

DO: Which brings us to Ugly Little Monkeys. Set it up for anyone who doesn’t know the story.

DV: Los Changuitos Feos de Tucson, the Ugly Little Monkeys of Tucson, in English, was the first youth mariachi in the United States. They started in 1964. The name was chosen by the group’s founder, Father Rourke, an Irish Catholic priest. The members and the parents objected because it was a controversial name, but he insisted it stay. These boys perfected the music and travelled everywhere: New York, Chicago, Washington, Disneyland, Universal Studios. They became internationally renowned. They launched what we now know as the Youth Mariachi Movement, which grew from that one local seed in Tucson into an international sensation. The organisation is still alive after more than sixty years.

DO: And your father was part of it.

DV: My father helped start the group. He passed away in 2022. So this film was personal.

DO: How did the film come about?

DV: An original member of the group published a book titled Bless Me, Father, for You Have Sinned. It’s a personal account of what he experienced and witnessed while being in the group. Not only does he share the happy times, but he also exposes the dark side of Rourke’s alcoholism, uncontrollable behaviour, and unforgivable abuse that many of the kids were forced to contend with. After reading the book, the light bulb turned on. I reached out to my good friend, co-director, and narrator, Enrique Castillo, to ask if he’d be willing to come on board to help tell this incredible true story. Being that we both have extensive feature film working experience, with him in front of the camera and me behind the camera, making a documentary was going to be new territory for us. Starting in 2019, working through the pandemic, we finally finished our long version in 2024.

Did I mention that the surviving nineteen original members we interviewed, as well as the gracious multi-Grammy Award winner Linda Ronstadt and the late Rubén Fuentes of Mariachi Vargas, are in the film? Edward James Olmos was also kind enough to accept Enrique’s request to become an executive producer and to introduce the film. None of this would have been possible without the love and respect these members had for my father. He was a mentor to all of them.

DO: And the originals trusted you because of him.

DV: The original members entrusted Enrique and me with their stories because we gave them our word that we would produce a film they’d be proud of, and told them the film would give them the long-overdue credit they deserve and that the dark accounts would not be exploited. It’s a documentary, and we were not going to sugarcoat their story. We had to address the darkness that took place, but with respect and dignity. Our film is about the music, the magic, the pain, and the triumph these boys experienced that helped change American mariachi music as we know it today. It’s a beautiful story that people should embrace.

“It’s about the triumph, the resilience and the humility of what these boys endured.”

The Linda Ronstadt thread

DO: There’s a Linda Ronstadt thread in here too.

DV: The educational mariachi conference these boys helped start in Tucson, Arizona, is still an annual event. Linda Ronstadt attended the first conference. She understood the importance of her culture, and once the mariachi conference was in full swing, she decided to record her first mariachi album, Canciones de Mi Padre, which remains the biggest-selling non-English album in American history.

Not only did Linda grow up in Tucson, but the original members would perform in her family’s backyard. She remembers seeing them once perform there when she was around eighteen years old. She soon left for California, and the rest is history.

Here’s a little side story that’s not in the film. When the members graduated from high school, you were no longer in the Changos. Some who graduated from the group went on to form Mariachi Cobre, which has been performing at the Mexican Pavilion at Disney World Epcot in Orlando, Florida, for over fifty years. One of the original members, now the director of Mariachi Cobre, Steve Carrillo, recorded a duet with Linda on one of her mariachi albums. We are blessed to have her in our film and are forever grateful to her for agreeing to be interviewed.

The angel and the hawk

DO: Now I have to ask about your angel, because this is one of the great stories.

DV: Her name is Marcia Grand. She and her late husband, Richard, have been family friends since the early seventies. It was during this time that my parents were having dinner with them, and she mentioned she was having trouble with one of her driveway lampposts. My dad told her I was a pretty good handyman. So, she calls me to come take a look. Well, I fixed it, and she said, “Oh my gosh, you’re brilliant.” Thirty years later, I’m still the person she calls when she needs something fixed or remodelled.

Little did she know that I had saved enough money to produce my first short film and had added her name as the executive producer. She fell in love with the film and, to this day, watches it every single month.

DO: That’s a serious habit.

DV: Yes, it is. Well, after watching it several times, she said, “Okay, what’s next? I’d like to be a part of it.” I told her about the documentary. She thought it would be honourable because of Dad’s involvement and her love of the story. Again, had it not been for my father, my relationship with Marcia would never have materialised.

Not to get off the subject, but my father, Joel D. Valdez, became the first and longest-serving Mexican American city manager in the US for a city the size of Tucson before retiring after 16 successful years. He was then hired as the Senior Vice President of Business Affairs at the University of Arizona, where he secured funding to build the most structures in the college’s history.

Had it not been for my father, I wouldn’t be speaking to you today. And to add to that, if it wasn’t for Marcia’s trust, love, and financial support, I wouldn’t be where I am today. She’s truly an angel.

DO: She backed the whole film, sight unseen.

DV: She lives a very private life and doesn’t like her name out there. However, she agreed to have her name on our end credits. More importantly, I begged her to be on our Hiway website, which requires a photo. She said, “Okay, you can use my name, but you cannot use my photo.” She’s a bird lover. I suggested placing a bird of her choice in place of her photo. She said, “If you can find a great picture of a hawk, put a hawk on there for me, and let’s call it a day.” Little did she know, I had surprised her with a beautiful yellow rose.

“You can use my name, but no photo. Find me a great picture of a hawk, and let’s call it a day.”

The Netflix decision

DO: Let’s talk about the part where everyone told you, “Put it on Netflix.”

DV: Friends, left and right, were telling me, “You’ve got to put it on Netflix, or on whatever streaming platform.” So, I did my research and realised that if I put it on any major streaming network, it’s just going to get lost. I’d never see the money I feel this film is capable of delivering. Much less, it’s a documentary, which is extremely hard to get into theatres, and there’s a ton of competition trying for the same distribution.

Then our friend Carl Toole from the London Film Fest reached out and said, “I think I have something for you that you’re going to like.” He introduced me to Zach Rothwell at Hiway, and the penny dropped.

“If I’d gone with Netflix, I’d still have had to spend my own money on marketing, because they’re not going to spend it on me. So, I’d be spending the exact same money I’m spending now, except now I get to see who’s buying and who isn’t.”

DV: Now, I make the decisions as my own distributor. I place it where I want. I set the price per country, based on their economy. This is the only platform I know of where I have a real way to make my money back. Bar none. And it doesn’t get lost.

DO: That’s the whole thesis in one breath. You control your own IP. You keep the data, you keep the relationship, you keep the money.

DV: Exactly that.

Watch the film

Mariachi is a global audience

DO: And this is not a niche audience. Tell people how big mariachi really is.

DV: It’s enormous, and most people outside the culture have no idea. UNESCO named mariachi an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011. The US Southwest alone has thousands of mariachi musicians and hundreds of school programs. There are mariachi groups and devoted audiences across the Americas: Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Brazil. There are groups in Spain, Sweden, Croatia, Egypt, Japan and even China. We’re talking about millions of fans on every continent.

That global reach is built into the release. We have seven mariachi groups from around the world in our film. Because the Hiway handles closed captioning, each of those mariachi directors can promote it in their own country, in their own language, because they appear in it. So that’s free marketing in seven countries, soon eight, because the Mexican consulate here has committed to sending the film to every Mexican consulate and embassy around the world for free screenings. Promotional postcards will be handed out to their guests, telling them where to rent, buy, or share the film with friends and family.

DO: Free distribution into every Mexican embassy on earth. That’s a better global rollout than most studios manage.

DV: And it costs me almost nothing.

Everyone who made it, benefits from it

DO: You’ve done something rare with the money, too. Everyone who made this benefits from it.

DV: I operate the way you operate, fair. My co-director and writers are in it. And the original members are in it. They share in the film’s success because they should. It’s exactly what Ben Affleck has been saying lately: the people who make the work should benefit from the work.

There’s a clause that lets each of the original members donate their share straight back to the Chango organisation strictly for scholarships, and most of them are choosing to do exactly that.

DO: Why does that matter so much to you?

DV: Many of the original members never received scholarship funds, because the priest spent everything. They gave me their time and their trust to bring this out. They deserve to be compensated. That’s how I set up the profit sharing from the very beginning, before we started production.

“The people who make the work should benefit from the work. That’s how I set up the profit sharing from the very beginning.”

Why he keeps telling filmmakers about Hiway

DO: You’re our first-ever user, and now an investor. You also keep telling people about the Hiway. Why?

DV: Because the world needs to know that a better way to distribute your film exists. This is built for independent filmmakers and can benefit from your own work, and most people don’t even know it’s possible yet. So, I talk about it everywhere I go. Not as a favour to you, but as a service to every creator stuck in the old system. Every person I tell is another set of eyes on it, and that doesn’t cost you a thing.

And look at where the industry is. I read an article this morning about Taylor Sheridan slamming the studio executives, how they want so much control now, rewrite after rewrite, when it never used to be that way. You’d hand it to the writer, they’d write it, you’d go and make it.

DO: Is it fear, do you think?

DV: Of course, it’s fear. But you and I both know they don’t make the best decisions. They’ve spent over a hundred million on a film that flopped. You’d think they’d have learned by now.

Meanwhile, here we are, doing it ourselves, and keeping it.

What’s next for the film

DO: And what’s next for the film?

DV: After having a successful run at the festivals, winning many domestic and international awards, it’s now time to establish an international marketing campaign using as little money as possible. We have built a strong audience base; we now have to let them know it’s now available to rent or buy on the Hiway.

We will continue to fulfil requests for free screenings nationwide simply to place eyeballs on the film. Our next free screening will be held in Madison, WI on September 10th. We will be passing out our promotional postcards to guests as they leave the theatre, featuring our ULM website address and a QR code to our Hiway website as well.

It will be interesting to see how many clicks, rentals, and purchases we receive on our Hiway’s 24/7 analytics page. We’ll be able to see these results in real time. If any of your readers want to see what the Hiway site looks like, they can use our link or QR code to visit it.

I want to take this time to thank you, David, your team, Zach, Adam, and Alex, for creating this serious game changer for us little guys. Enrique and I can’t wait to see what our hard work delivers in the coming months.

DO: Honestly, thank you for everything. We really appreciate you.

DV: Love it. Let’s keep going.

Watch Ugly Little Monkeys.
Direct to fans on the Hiway.

Two very different markets. One principle.

Transparency and control for the people who make the content.

That is what connected Raindance Releasing and Scotflix this month. Two communities. Two platforms. Both built on the same conviction: filmmakers should own their audience, see their numbers in real time, and get paid the moment a sale happens.

Neither of them needed a development team, a CDN contract, or months of infrastructure work to get there.

That is the point.

01 · The Launch

Raindance Releasing. Now streaming.

We announced it at Cannes. It formally launched at the Raindance Film Festival. Raindance now has its own direct distribution arm, curated by Raindance, powered by Hiway.

Twenty founding films are streaming now at raindance.onthehiway.com.

Raindance Releasing exists so independent filmmakers can keep their IP, own their audience data, and earn a direct share of revenue. It bypasses the usual gatekeepers and the black-box royalty statements that come with them.

Every filmmaker who submitted to Raindance this year will be invited to release next. Features and shorts. Ed Hubbard is managing the content pipeline, with a plan to work back through a decade of Raindance programming and onboard the catalogue systematically.

In true Raindance spirit, it is a curated home for daring, genre-defying, boundary-pushing cinema.

“Raindance has always championed the filmmakers the industry calls too risky. Raindance Releasing gives them a home where they keep their IP, see their audience and get paid directly. No gatekeepers. No black-box statements. Just daring cinema and the audiences who love it.”

Elliot Grove · Founder, Raindance Film Festival

Are you a filmmaker looking to release on Raindance Releasing? Check out the user guide.

02 · Coming Next

Scotflix. The home of Scottish screen stories.

Maureen Hascoet of Firewalker Pictures came to us with a clear vision: a platform built by Scottish filmmakers, for Scottish filmmakers.

She signed up within 24 hours of our first call. Our team built the first version of the site over the weekend. By Monday, there were 30 Scottish producers on a call. Several had already committed content before the session ended.

That speed is the product working as designed. A streaming platform powered by Hiway needs no tech team, no CDN contract, and no ingest pipeline. The community brings the films. The infrastructure is already there.

Scotflix runs as a community. Filmmakers promote each other through Hiway’s syndication tools, everyone earns from every sale, and every filmmaker sees exactly what their work earns, in real time. The money, the data, and the audience stay in Scotland.

Alasdair Ferguson at The National ran the story before we had even launched. Scotflix goes live at the Scottish Screenwriters Festival in September.

“We don’t need permission. We need participation. We don’t need validation. We need cooperation and collaboration.”

Maureen Hascoet · Founder, Scotflix · Firewalker Pictures

On where Hiway fits in: “This is where Hiway comes in and gives people the reins back so that you can actually have a sustainable career in the industry and in Scotland.”

The Innovation

Two platforms. Zero streaming costs.

Raindance Releasing and Scotflix share something no other streaming platforms in the world can claim.

Both carry zero streaming costs, zero content ingestion costs, and zero transcoding costs. Every film streams directly from the content owner’s own Hiway library, so the platform never touches the master.

Their content partners lose nothing by being on the platform. Every partner watches their viewing data live, captures all of their customer data, and gets paid their share of every sale in real time. No black boxes. No waiting on quarterly statements.

This is why a festival and a film community could each stand up a streaming platform in weeks, not years. And why the economics work for everyone involved.

03 · The Community

What the community is saying

Real reactions from real conversations this month. Filmmakers, producers, distributors, and festival teams.

“I love it. Filmmakers can still have their own channel and make 90% of their revenue. The dollars can keep cycling around. We’re making a filmmaker economy.”

Film School Owner

“Finally, someone is actually building what we’ve been talking about.”

Producer

“It’s incredible what you guys have set up. Really just amazing.”

Verticals Producer

“My mind is buzzing with other things I could use this for, not what the original conversation was for. That’s fascinating.”

Creator

“I think it’s the best solution out there that I’ve had a look at.”

Rights Holder

“Honestly, this should’ve been built ten years ago.”

Filmmaker

The pattern in every conversation is the same. Nobody asks what Hiway does. They ask why it didn’t exist sooner.

04 · The Product

What shipped in June

June was the biggest engineering month in Hiway’s history. More than 120 updates shipped, almost all of them focused on hardening the core platform for larger-scale clients, with the protection, controls, and reporting that large catalogues demand.

A brand-new video player

We rebuilt the player from the ground up, with vertical streaming and sequential viewing built in. The player now carries hardware-backed DRM, the same content protection the major studios require, for all of our users.

Collections play like a box set, with episodes flowing straight into the next. A redesigned end screen handles replay, share, and trailers. And underneath, the player reports second-by-second viewing telemetry so your analytics show real watch time in real time.

Syndication evolved

Licensing on Hiway now settles money the moment a sale happens. Set a revenue split with a partner and every sale divides automatically in real time, with a full ledger you can audit. License a single title, a whole collection as one bundle, or attach a deal to a partner’s existing storefront.

Referral links mean a partner can sell your film through their own page and every sale still attributes back to you. If they share CRM data, their buyers appear in your CRM. This is the machinery behind community platforms like Scotflix and Raindance Releasing.

And the rest

→ Territory controls. Decide where each title can be watched, with clear messaging for viewers outside the region.

→ B2B CRM. Import contacts by CSV, tag and segment in bulk, grant access to private SmartLinks, and see the full revenue history of every contact.

→ Honest analytics. Page views and video plays counted consistently everywhere, with country drill-downs, a per-sale transactions table, and per-episode collection stats. Real time, as always.

→ Faster publishing. Upload whole batches in one go, edit with a live preview of your landing page and player, and copy a cast list across every episode in one click.

05 · The Coverage

In the press

TVBEurope published a deep dive on Hiway by Jenny Priestley. What we built, why we built it, and why it matters across the content industry. Read the article.

The National broke the Scotflix story, with Alasdair Ferguson covering what a Scottish-owned platform means for the country’s filmmakers, producers, and financiers. Read the story.

Follow us on Instagram at @on_the_hiway to see how filmmakers are taking their content direct to fans.

06 · What’s Coming

The pipeline

→ AVOD. An ad-supported solution in development.

→ Scottish Screenwriters Festival. September. Scotflix goes live.

→ More platform launches. Names to follow as they go public.

The Hiway is open.

Your Content. Your Fans. Your Money. Your Way.

Sign up at portal.onthehiway.com

Or book a demo and we’ll show you round.

TLDR

• Scotflix is a new Scottish streaming platform launching September 2026 at the Scottish Screenwriters Festival.

• Founded by Maureen Hascoet, director of Firewalker Pictures. Powered by Hiway.

• At least 20 projects at launch. Film, series, verticals and shorts.

• Built to keep the money, the data and the audience in Scotland. Creators keep the IP, the master file, the fan relationship and the revenue.

• The story broke this week in The National. Read the full article, then follow Scotflix and Hiway.

The story just broke in The National.

Scotland is getting its own streaming platform.

Scotflix.

Scottish stories. All formats. Every screen.

Why Scotflix? Why now?

“Scotland has produced brilliant work for decades. What we haven’t had is a home for it that keeps the value here. Scotflix is that home. On our own terms, on our own terrain, with our own storytellers keeping what they build. It launches at the Scottish Screenwriters Festival in September and it’s going to change what Scottish creators can do with their work.”

Maureen Hascoet, founder of Scotflix and director of Firewalker Pictures, speaking to Alasdair Ferguson at the National.

Scotland makes brilliant work. Then hands it to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and the rest. Along with the IP, the audience, the data, and most of the money.

Scotflix is the answer. A curated Scottish home for Scottish creatives, built so the value stays in Scotland.

What launches in September

• At least 20 projects at launch.

• Film. Series. Verticals. Shorts.

• Home for filmmakers, TV shows, musicians, comedians and podcasters.

• Behind-the-scenes content sits alongside the finished work.

• Curated by Scotland, for Scotland.

• Pay-on-demand.

The platform launches at the Scottish Screenwriters Festival, September 2026.

Why Hiway is the infrastructure underneath

Scotflix uses Hiway because Scotflix is built on the same principle we’ve built the whole business around. The people who make the work should benefit from the work.

On Scotflix, powered by Hiway:

• Creators keep the master file. No handover. Less risk of piracy.

• Creators keep the IP. No signing away all their rights in a contract for eternity.

• Creators keep the audience. Fan data captured on every view.

• Creators keep the money. Revenue split in real time, per the digital agreement, straight into their bank the same day someone watches.

Netflix and Amazon Prime work one way. The platform takes everything.

Scotflix works the other way. The creators keep everything.

That’s what “powered by Hiway” means in practice.

Scotflix is the next major platform to go live on Hiway this year.

“A couple of weeks back, Maureen came to us with a simple question. Could Scotland run its own streaming service, on its own terms, to help Scottish filmmakers and financers keep the value in Scotland? We said yes. Now it’s built. Scotflix. A national streaming platform where the money, the data and the audience stay in Scotland. Same principle as Raindance Releasing. Same principle everywhere on Hiway. Your content. Your fans. Your money. Your way.”

David Orman, CEO and Co-Founder, Hiway.

What’s next

More news on Scotflix’s launch in September coming soon.

Follow Hiway if you’re a filmmaker, producer, festival, or distributor who wants to run a streaming service the same way.

The festival starts opens tonight!

For ten days, London becomes the centre of the independent film world. The 2026 Raindance Film Festival runs from 17 to 28 June.

Thirty-four years on from pitching the first edition out of a Soho flat, Raindance has grown into the UK’s largest independent film festival and one of the most respected indie showcases in the world.

This year’s programme delivers what Raindance always has. World premieres of features and shorts from filmmakers you haven’t heard of yet but will. Documentaries, fiction, animation, experimental work. Panel rooms that fill up. Masterclasses that overrun. The Filmmakers Party. The awards ceremony. And the kind of late-night conversations that change a career.

It’s the festival the industry pretends to be too cool for, then quietly admits is where most of the actual deals get done. Maybe even over a few glasses of the bubbly.

We’ll be there for the full ten days.

What’s on, and where to find us.

The full Raindance programme is at raindance.org/festival. A few moments we’re particularly excited about:

• Opening night, Wednesday 17 June. The festival kicks off with the world premiere of the year’s most-talked-about indie feature.

• Immersive World Ecosystem panel. Saturday 20 June, 15:30. David Orman, Hiway CEO, on stage with the people building the next layer of media infrastructure.

• Creative HQ Panel. Thursday 25 June, 16:30. Zach Rothwell on what’s actually working for independent filmmakers right now.

• Filmmaker onboarding clinics. Every day at the Hub. Bring your film, leave with it live on Raindance Releasing.

• The Filmmakers Party. No commentary needed.

• Awards ceremony, Saturday 27 June. The closing-weekend showcase of the year’s best independent voices.

If you’re attending: come and find us.

We’re the team behind the tech that’s powering Raindance Releasing. We’d love to meet you.

Raindance Releasing is the year-round home for your film.

Most festivals are ten days a year. Raindance has spent thirty-four years championing independent filmmakers. The challenge has always been the same. Once the festival ends, the relationship with the filmmaker effectively pauses until next year.

That changes now.

Raindance Releasing is a new streaming platform built into the festival. Films stay live, year-round, available to global audiences from the moment they’re approved. The filmmaker keeps the rights. The festival keeps the curation. Everyone wins.

It’s the first time a major film festival has stood up a global, year-round streaming service of this kind.

And it’s powered by Hiway.

How it actually works.

There’s a piece of technology underneath this that’s worth understanding, because it’s never been done before.

Most streaming platforms work one way. The platform takes your file. The platform transcodes it. The platform stores it. The platform owns the audience data. The content owner gets a quarterly statement, if they’re lucky.

Raindance Releasing flips that. The filmmaker keeps the master file inside their own Hiway Content Library. With one click, they syndicate that title to Raindance. The metadata, artwork, licensing period, territories and commercial terms travel with it automatically. Nothing is re-uploaded. Nothing is transcoded twice. Nothing leaves the filmmaker’s control.

All you need to do is follow the steps in the Raindance-Hiway onboarding guide.

Raindance gets a curated, year-round catalogue without paying a single CDN bill. Filmmakers get a global shop window without giving up their IP, their data or their margin. Both sides see the same numbers, in real time, on their own private, secure Hiway dashboard.

This is what direct-to-fan infrastructure looks like when it’s built properly.

Six firsts. One platform.

Raindance Releasing shipped six mediatech innovations at Cannes 2026. Every one of them is now available to every filmmaker who signs up:

1. Zero streaming cost for the platform. Films stream from the filmmaker’s library. No streaming bill on either side.

2. Full IP control. Master files never leave the rights holder. Remove a film with one click.

3. The filmmaker sets the terms. Splits, territories, windows, data sharing. Per title. Per partner.

4. Real-time revenue, both sides. Automatic splits at the moment of sale. No royalty reports.

5. Both sides capture the audience. Two CRMs, one source of truth. The filmmaker owns their fans.

6. Onboard in minutes. A filmmaker can be live on Raindance Releasing in under thirty minutes.

The platform receives and screens content without ever ingesting it. The media never leaves the content owner’s library. That has never existed before.

How to get your film on Raindance Releasing.

If you’re a filmmaker, the whole thing takes about half an hour.

1. Sign up to Hiway at raindance.s.onthehiway.com.

2. Upload your film once into your own Hiway Content Library.

3. Add your metadata, artwork, subtitles, audio versions.

4. Set your terms: territories, pricing, windows, what you want to share with Raindance.

5. Send the syndication request to Ed at Raindance.

6. Once approved, your film goes live on the platform.

Your master file never moves. You keep the rights. You set the terms. You get paid the moment someone watches.

It works on a Tuesday morning in Lagos. It works at 11pm on a Sunday in Manchester. It works wherever you make your work.

Discover. Be Discovered.

That’s the line under everything Raindance Releasing does. It works two ways.

For viewers, it’s a curated home for independent films you won’t find anywhere else. Films selected by the festival that’s championed indie filmmaking since 1992. Year-round. Watched on any device.

For filmmakers, it’s a year-round shop window with the festival’s audience behind it. Without giving up your IP, your data, or your margin.

That alignment is what’s new. And it’s why every content owner now has a real seat at the table.

If you’re at the festival.

Find us at the Hub. David’s joining the Immersive World (Ecosystem) panel on Saturday 20th June at 15:30. And Zach’s on the Creative HQ Panel on Thursday 25th June at 16:30. We’ll be there to help run filmmaker onboarding sessions across the week.

If you’ve got a film, bring it. The whole onboarding takes about thirty minutes. By the time the festival closes on 28 June, your film could already be live on Raindance Releasing.

If you’re not at the festival, that’s fine too. The whole thing happens online.

Get started here →

Useful links

• Raindance Film Festival 2026 — schedule, tickets, venue

• Raindance Releasing — take a peek at what’s on

• Raindance Releasing — sign up — for filmmakers, the onboarding flow

• Hiway — the infrastructure layer

• David Orman on the Immersive World (Ecosystem) panel — Saturday 20 June, 15:30

• Zach Rothwell on the Creative HQ Panel — Thursday 25 June, 16:30

A festival the indie film world built itself.

Raindance was started in 1992 by Elliot Grove, out of a Soho flat, on a budget that wouldn’t cover lunch at Cannes. The pitch was simple. Independent filmmakers needed a place that backed them. The studios weren’t going to do it. The public broadcasters weren’t going to do it. So Elliot did.

Thirty-four years later, it’s the UK’s largest independent film festival, BAFTA-qualifying for shorts, BIFA-qualifying for features, and one of the most respected indie showcases anywhere in the world. The Raindance Film School trained the people running half the production companies you’ve heard of. The festival has launched careers most of the major studios now sign at fees that wouldn’t have got the films made in the first place.

The whole thing still runs on the same idea. Champion the people making the work. Cut out the gatekeepers. Trust that the best film in the room doesn’t need a marketing budget to be the best film in the room.

That’s why it’s still the festival the industry quietly takes more seriously than it lets on.

What this year’s edition looks like.

The 2026 programme delivers what Raindance always has, just more of it.

• World premieres. Features and shorts from filmmakers across every continent. The kind of work that doesn’t get made anywhere else. Most of it is being shown in public for the first time.

• The Raindance Film School masterclasses. Hands-on, founders-in-the-room, no-nonsense craft sessions. The reason people fly in from outside the UK just for the week.

• Panel rooms. Industry, finance, distribution, immersive, AI. The conversations everyone talks about for six months afterwards.

• The Filmmakers Party. No commentary needed. You will not want to miss it.

• The awards ceremony. Saturday 27 June. The closing showcase of the year’s best independent voices, and the one ceremony every working indie filmmaker actually pays attention to.

Full programme at raindance.org/festival.

Why every part of the film world should be there.

Festivals are how the industry meets itself. Raindance does this better than most. Here’s what each part of the room gets out of being there for ten days.

If you’re a filmmaker. You meet the people who actually make decisions. Distributors who say yes. Sales agents who reply. Producers who pick up your card. Other filmmakers running into exactly the problems you’re running into. It’s an entire year of networking compressed into a week.

If you’re a financier or producer. The early signals are all here. The directors you’ll be backing in 2027 are showing their shorts right now. The IP that will end up on the slate of every Tier-1 buyer is being shopped in panel-room corridors. Cannes is where deals get announced. Raindance is where they get found.

If you’re a distributor or sales agent. Independent film is back as a category. Direct-to-fan economics are showing up at the box office. Raindance is the festival closest to where those shifts are happening. Walk the floor. Take meetings. The slate for the next three years is in this building.

If you’re a journalist or critic. Some of the year’s most-talked-about films will be shown here first. Filmmakers who are about to be everywhere. Industry conversations happening in real time. The breakthrough stories of next awards season often have a Raindance stamp somewhere on them.

If you’re a buyer or platform programmer. Look at the queue at the awards ceremony. Half the people in front of you in the line are scouting too. That tells you what you need to know.

If you’re a fan of independent film. Watching a film at Raindance is not the same as watching it on a streamer. You’re in a room with the people who made it, the people who will champion it next, and the people whose careers it’s about to change. Two pints in the bar afterwards and you’ll see what we mean.

We’ll be there.
Proud to be a Raindance partner.

This year we’re showing up as the technology partner behind Raindance Releasing - the festival’s new year-round streaming home. It went live in the spring with founding films from the Raindance roster. By the end of the festival, every filmmaker who walks in with a finished film should know how to get on it.

That’s our job for the week. Onboarding. Conversations. Listening. Helping.

Beyond that, we’re here because we genuinely believe in what Raindance does and has always done. The infrastructure layer for direct-to-fan that we’ve built at Hiway only exists because filmmakers told us what was broken. Raindance has been advocating for those filmmakers for thirty-four years. Backing Raindance is backing the people who back the people we built the platform for.

Some specific moments to find us:

• Saturday 20 June, 15:30 — Immersive World (Ecosystem) panel. David Orman on stage with the people building the next layer of media infrastructure.

• Thursday 25 June, 16:30 — Creative HQ Panel. Zach Rothwell on what’s actually working for independent filmmakers right now.

• Every day at the Hub. Filmmaker onboarding clinics. Bring your film. Leave with it live.

If you spot us at the bar after a screening, say hi. Especially if you’re a filmmaker. The whole point of the week is meeting the people making the work.

How to get the most out of the ten days.

A few practical things, because everyone’s first Raindance is a slightly chaotic learning experience.

1. Book your screenings early. The films that sell out are not the ones you think. World premieres in tiny rooms run out the day they go on sale.

2. Go to the panels. Even the ones outside your specialism. Especially those. The 90-minute side-conversations afterwards are where most of the actual value sits.

3. Skip nothing on the closing weekend. Awards ceremony, closing film, the bar afterwards. That’s where the year’s relationships get sealed.

4. Bring business cards. Bring more than you think. Or at least have your LinkedIn QR ready on your lock screen.

5. Talk to filmmakers, not just buyers. The best contacts you’ll make this year are the people next to you in the queue.

6. Sleep is optional, but caffeine is mandatory. Ten days is longer than it sounds.

The week starts Wednesday 18 June.

If you’re already booked: see you there.

If you’re on the fence: get off it. This is the festival. Show up.

If you’re not coming this year: keep an eye on the Raindance Releasing catalogue. By the end of the festival, this year’s best independent films will be live and watchable wherever you are.

Either way, Raindance is the moment that matters in the indie film calendar.

We’re proud to be part of it.

Useful links

• Raindance Film Festival 2026 — programme and tickets

• Raindance Releasing — viewer site

• Raindance Releasing — filmmaker sign-up

• Hiway — the infrastructure layer

TLDR

• Four films in six weeks broke box office records. Backrooms ($80m opening), Obsession ($150m on a $750k budget), Iron Lung (sold-out cinemas), Send Help (weekend #1).

• All four were made by directors who built their audiences online first. Distribution paths varied — A24 took Backrooms theatrical, Focus Features took Obsession, Markiplier ran Iron Lung close to the chest. The audience was already there in every case.

• Audience-first filmmaking is no longer theoretical. It is now the operational model.

• Every major studio is scouting online creators for director slots. Talent agencies are signing creators on audience, not reel.

• The model works for anyone with an audience relationship to build on. Festivals, distributors, indie filmmakers, sports rights holders. Not just YouTubers.

For a decade, the direct-to-fan model has been a talking-point. A panel topic. A “future of the industry” slide. The thing investors nodded along to and studios called interesting and unproven.

Then four films in six weeks put up numbers nobody can argue with.

Kane Parsons started The Backrooms as a YouTube series in his bedroom as a teenager. A24 signed him to direct the feature. The film opened to over $80m domestic, beating major studio blockbusters in the same weekend. Variety, Yahoo Entertainment, CBS News Los Angeles and the BBC all ran the same headline.

The headline writes itself. The story underneath is bigger.

Four films, one model, all working

The Backrooms (Kane Parsons / A24) opened to over $80m domestic. The biggest debut of the weekend. Yahoo Entertainment and News8000 led with the number. The Hollywood Reporter went underneath it: YouTube created Hollywood’s new generation of directors.

Obsession (Curry Barker / Focus Features) cost around $750k. It grossed over $150m globally. Metro called it one of the most profitable films of all time. Two-hundred-times return on a film a studio greenlight committee passed on.

Iron Lung (Markiplier) sold out cinemas on a YouTube-only marketing push. No prime-time spot. No traditional press cycle. Just the audience the creator already had. The Times of India and Bleeding Cool covered the home release.

Send Help topped the weekend chart on a fraction of studio spend (Hollywood Outbreak).

The Seattle Times ran the cleanest framing in their headline. A YouTuber’s film beat Melania at the box office. Here’s how.

The “how” is the same in every case. The audience was built direct, long before a single studio got involved. The film converted what the relationship had already earned.

The audience was built direct. The distribution was the choice that followed.

This is the part the industry coverage keeps almost saying and stopping short of.

The reason these films perform is not that YouTubers got lucky. It is that creators who spent years in direct conversation with millions of fans walked into a film release with the audience already built, primed, and converted. Every video in the back catalogue was a piece of marketing. Every comment was a focus group. Every subscriber was a presale.

That is the direct-to-fan audience model. Not a slogan, not a pitch deck. The actual mechanism behind the actual numbers.

How they then chose to distribute varied. A24 took Backrooms to cinemas. Focus Features took Obsession. Markiplier ran Iron Lung closer to himself. Each of those decisions was made from a position of strength, because the audience relationship belonged to the creator first.

What the creator brings is the relationship. The relationship is the asset that beats the marketing budget, beats the cinema chain, beats the gatekeeper. The film is the thing the relationship monetises. The distribution route is the next decision, not the first one.

This is the inversion the industry has been calling “interesting” for ten years. Backrooms, Obsession, Iron Lung and Send Help moved it from interesting to operational.

The era is here. And it’s spreading.

Four films in six weeks is not a fluke. It is a pattern with hundreds more behind it in the pipeline.

Variety flagged this in their feature. Every major studio is now actively scouting online creators for their next director slate. Talent agencies are signing creators on the strength of their audience, not their reel.

The model the industry called experimental for a decade has become the model the industry is racing to operate inside of.

But here is the thing. The model is not “be a YouTuber.” The model is own the audience relationship before you need it. Then choose your distribution from a position of strength. That is reproducible. That is coachable. That is something a festival, a distributor, a documentary maker, a music artist or a sports rights holder can do.

The Backrooms made the door open. The next two posts in this series cover how everyone else walks through it.

Ready to Self Distribute?

For a decade, direct-to-fan distribution has been a talking-point. A panel topic. A “future of the industry” slide. The thing investors nodded along to and studios called interesting and unproven.

Then four films in six weeks put up numbers nobody can argue with.

Kane Parsons started The Backrooms as a YouTube series in his bedroom as a teenager. A24 signed him to direct the feature. The film opened to over $80m domestic, beating major studio blockbusters in the same weekend. Variety, Yahoo Entertainment, CBS News Los Angeles and the BBC all ran the same headline.

The headline writes itself. The story underneath is bigger.

Built for the direct-to-fan era.

Hiway is the infrastructure that puts the audience, the data and the revenue back in the hands of the creator.

Get Started Now

Take a test drive

Streaming sold itself on simplicity. Press play. Watch the film.

The viewer sees a button. The rights holder sees a logistics operation that quietly eats every margin streaming was supposed to deliver.

Distrotech is the term for the layer beneath the play button. The pipes, the encoders, the metadata, the reporting. It is where the actual cost of being on every platform shows up.

And almost nobody talks about it in public.

The Bandwidth Bill Nobody Reads

Every minute a film streams, someone pays for the bandwidth. That cost sits with the CDN. The CDN bills the platform. The platform passes some of that cost back into the deal.

For a single mid-tier title that reaches reasonable scale, CDN egress can run into six figures a year. For a catalogue holder with hundreds of titles, the maths gets serious quickly.

The bill is invisible until it is not. A successful release that surprises a small platform can wipe out the upside in the contract. The film does well. The economics do not.

Most rights holders never see the line items. They see a smaller share of revenue and assume that is just how the platform negotiates.

It is not. It is the cost of moving the bytes.

Every Platform Wants the File in a Different Shape

You finished the master. You signed the deal. Now the work begins.

Every platform has its own delivery specification. Codec. Bitrate. Container. Frame rate. Colour space. HDR metadata. Loudness target. Closed caption format. The list runs to twenty pages on the major platforms.

You build a transcode pipeline. You re-encode the master for each destination. If the platform changes its spec, you re-encode again.

For an independent producer with one film, this means hiring a post-production house for six weeks and writing a cheque you did not budget for. For a distributor managing a slate, it means a dedicated ops team and a transcode farm running around the clock.

The cost is real. The cost is recurring. The cost rarely shows up in the press release announcing the platform deal.

Metadata Is Where Time Goes to Die

Then come the assets that travel alongside the video.

Title metadata in multiple languages. Synopsis in long and short form. Cast and crew credits formatted to the platform’s internal taxonomy. Genre tags from a closed list that does not match anyone else’s closed list.

Artwork in eight aspect ratios. Subtitles in twenty languages. Audio stems in stereo, 5.1, Atmos, descriptive audio. Trailers cut to platform-specific durations.

Every platform has its own portal. Every portal has its own template. Every template breaks if you change one field.

A delivery to a single major platform can take three weeks of work from someone who does this for a living. A delivery to ten platforms can take a quarter.

The clock starts at signing. The platform will not pay until delivery is accepted. The interest cost on the production loan keeps running.

Two Operations Teams. One Delivery. Months of Back and Forth.

The cost is not only on your side.

The platform runs an ops team too. They receive your files. They run QC. They flag the metadata field you formatted incorrectly. They send the package back. You fix it. You resend.

This loop - flag, fix, resend - can run for weeks on a single title. Multiply it by every platform, every territory, every release window on a full slate, and you have hundreds of hours of skilled labour on both sides of the table, spent on a handshake that should have taken an afternoon.

The combined ops cost of getting content onto streaming platforms is one of the industry’s least visible and most expensive problems. Humans are still doing most of it by hand, in 2026, because the systems were never designed to talk to each other.

Both sides know it is broken. Both sides budget for it anyway. Neither side built the layer that would fix it - because fixing it meant solving a problem that sat between them, and nobody owned the middle.

The Data Does Not Come Back

The film is now live. The viewers are watching. The platform knows everything about them.

You know almost nothing.

You get a monthly report. View counts, sometimes by territory. A revenue line. A statement showing the platform’s calculation of your share. No names. No emails. No retention data. No insight into what drove the spike on day nine.

You cannot email those viewers when your next film comes out. You cannot build a community. You cannot price-test. You cannot do anything that resembles a modern audience relationship.

You delivered the content. The platform kept the audience.

Payment Comes Back in a Hundred Pieces

The revenue arrives slowly. Monthly statements from each platform. Different currencies. Different reporting cycles. Different definitions of a qualifying view.

A distributor with thirty titles across ten platforms in fifteen territories is reconciling hundreds of statements every month. Manually. In spreadsheets. With one full-time finance hire whose only job is to chase missing payments and challenge platform calculations.

The administrative cost of getting paid eats further into a margin that was already thin.

The Fix

The infrastructure problem has always been the same. Storage is in one place. Encoding in another. Delivery in a third. Payments in a fourth. Reporting in a fifth. None of these systems talk to each other. All of them charge.

Hiway is the layer that connects them. One system to ingest the master. One pipeline to deliver to every destination, including direct-to-fan. One ledger for every payment, in every currency, across every territory. One source of truth for the data the platforms keep for themselves.

The point is not to replace streaming platforms. It is to make putting content on them — and selling it directly alongside them, run on the same set of pipes. Without the duplicated ops cost on either side. Without the lost audience relationship. Without the months of integration work for every new deal.

Content owners keep their IP. Their audience data. The majority of their revenue.

The distrotech tax is real. It does not have to be permanent.

Book a demo

You’ve logged in. You’ve had a look around. That means you’ve already seen what Hiway for you.

Now let us show you what happens when you actually put it to work.

We’re hosting a live walkthrough on Tuesday 2 June at 5PM UK for everyone who’s explored Hiway but hasn’t yet uploaded content. In 45 minutes, we’ll take you from “logged in” to live and monetising.

WHAT WE’LL COVER

45 minutes. No slides. Just the platform, live.

→ How to upload and organise your content in minutes

→ Setting up your first pay-per-view, rental, or bundle

→ Building your audience page and driving traffic to it

→ What your dashboard tells you and how to use it

→ How to set up your Screener Room to help finance your project

→ How to use your cast, crew, fanbases and influencers to market your film

Your questions answered in real time. Bring them.

Spots are limited. Reserve yours now.

See you Tuesday,

Book your spot

Marche du Film step and repeat, Cannes 2026

Here is the wrap.

TLDR

→Hiway debuted publicly at the Marche du Film, Cannes 2026.

→Six mediatech innovation firsts launched with the platform.

→David Orman closed the 16th International Film Finance Forum. The room broke into applause.

→Raindance Releasing announced. A streaming service that screens content without ingesting it.

→Two flagship channels live: Shambles and All The Rage by Kin London.

→Screener Rooms running daily on the Marche floor.

→New customers signed across festivals, distributors and rights holders.

→Press coverage including The Hollywood Reporter Day 6 cover.

→The next phase is already moving.

01 · THE WINSTON BAKER STAGE

Greenlight and Global

David Orman joined the closing panel of the 16th International Film Finance Forum on Friday 15 May. Greenlight & Global, on the new rules of independent film and direct-to-fan distribution.

The audience response was the moment of the week. When we explained what Hiway does and how it works, the room broke into applause.

Our thanks to Amy Baker, Katie Witkowski, Maria Soccor and the Winston Baker team for the platform, and to fellow panellists Laura Lewis, Tristen Tuckfield and Nick Vallelonga for the conversation.

02 · THE ANNOUNCEMENT

Raindance Releasing. A world first.

The headline of the festival. Raindance, the independent film festival founded by Elliot Grove with its global filmmaker community, partnered with Hiway to launch Raindance Releasing. A streaming service that receives and screens content without ever ingesting it.

The media never leaves the content owner’s library. No upload. No transcoding. No metadata transfer. The platform carries zero streaming costs because the stream always originates from the content owner’s Hiway account. The content owner stays in full control of their IP throughout, sets their own revenue split, and collects payments and analytics in real time.

Our thanks to Elliot Grove, David Martinez, Olly Hermon Taylor and Ed Hubbard, and the Raindance team for the trust and the partnership, and for an incredible Villa Party.

INDUSTRY FIRSTS

Six mediatech innovations in one launch

1.Zero streaming costs. The stream originates from the content owner’s Hiway account. No CDN bill. No hidden cost in platform margins.

2.Full IP control. Master files never leave the rights holder’s library. No duplicate uploads. No transcoding. No physical deliveries.

3.The rights holder sets the terms. Revenue split, analytics shared or not, customer data shared or not. Per content owner. Per partner. Per deal.

4.Real-time revenue, both sides. Platform and rights holders collect their share of every sale automatically and directly, in real time. No royalty reports 90 days late.

5.Two databases, one truth. Both sides collect viewing analytics and audience data in real time, simultaneously. Each builds its own database.

6.Launch in a day. A streaming platform stands up through Hiway in days, not quarters. Raindance can now invite its independent filmmaker community to onboard in minutes.

“Rights holders make the content. Platforms keep the audience, the data and the margin. The economics had to change. We built the infrastructure to give it back.”

DAVID ORMAN · CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, HIWAY

03 · THE FLOOR

Screener Rooms on the Marche

Hiway’s Screener Rooms ran daily on the Marche floor. Buyers, sales agents and festival programmers walked in, watched content from the rights holder’s own library on the spot, and walked out with the data trail to prove it. No file transfers. No watermark anxiety. No follow-up email chains. The product sold itself in the room.

04 · THE CHANNELS

New launches

Two flagship channels went live during Cannes.

→ Shambles by Rodini Films · shambles.onthehiway.com

→ All The Rage by Kin London · alltherage.onthehiway.com

New customer signings landed across festivals, distributors and archive rights holders. Names to follow as launches go public.

05 · THE COVERAGE

Press from Cannes

The Hollywood Reporter ran the Raindance Releasing story on its Day 6 Cannes cover. International film trade picked up across Variety, Deadline, Screen International and TBI Vision. The UK media business desks covered the founder angle. The full clip list is going up on the press page this week.

The Hollywood Reporter · Cannes Day 6 cover

06 · WHAT’S NEXT

The next eight weeks

Cannes momentum feeds directly into a series of launches over the next eight weeks. New festival partnerships. New distributor integrations. A second wave of channel launches from rights holders we met on the Croisette. Expect the next News from the Hiway before the end of June with the detail.

Thanks to every person who walked into a Screener Room, sat at a meeting, or pulled us aside at the villa. You made this Cannes.

ONE MORE THING

Hiway is not another streaming service.
It’s the infrastructure that lets every rights holder build their own.

It’s how rights holders market direct to their fans. Watch this space.

Book a demo

See you on the Croisette next year.

🎬 Raindance × Hiway

Press Release

CANNES, FRANCE, 17 MAY 2026

Raindance, the UK’s largest independent film festival, today launched its own OTT streaming service, powered by Hiway. The platform lets Raindance monetise its community’s catalogue year-round, hold on to full audience ownership, and operate with effectively zero streaming infrastructure costs.

The launch was announced live at the Raindance Filmmakers Party at the Marché du Film, Cannes 2026. The service is live globally from launch.

Raindance chose Hiway for one reason. The same things the festival gets, the filmmakers get too. Every producer on the platform keeps their IP, captures their own fan data, and takes their share of revenue in real time. That alignment is the whole point.

How it works

Content always stays inside the producer’s own Hiway Content Library. Through Hiway, producers syndicate their content directly to Raindance, without moving the media. The metadata, artwork, licensing period and commercial terms carry through automatically.

Audiences book and watch through a Raindance-branded platform. Filmmakers track every view and every sale in real time. Revenue splits land automatically, for both Raindance and the Filmmakers, with no royalty report lag and no surprise reconciliations.

It is the first time a major film festival has launched a fully branded OTT service in days, with no streaming-cost burden, no multi-quarter buildout, and the kind of transparency content owners have been asking for.

“This is the future of festivals. We are no longer just a 10-day event. Our films, our filmmakers and our audience are on Raindance year-round.” Elliot Grove, Raindance Founder

What’s included

The Raindance OTT service offers year-round access to the festival catalogue, with TVOD (PPV and rentals) and branded collections. Filmmakers and rights holders keep full control of their content and IP. Revenue splits are automated and trackable in real time.

The platform also opens up new commercial models for the festival, including premiere bundles, alumni passes and partner co-productions. Raindance can syndicate selected films to partner platforms without losing the audience relationship.

Why it matters

Festivals mostly operate on a 10-day window of intense activity. A Hiway-powered Raindance OTT changes that. The festival now has a year-round revenue line, a year-round audience relationship and a year-round content business. The platform keeps the Raindance community in front of audiences every month of the calendar, not just the ten days of the festival.

The point is the model works both ways. The festival wins. The filmmakers win on exactly the same terms. The audience stays close to both. Nobody is trading control for distribution.

“Raindance picked Hiway because what works for the festival also works for the filmmaker. We’ve changed the economics of streaming, giving creators the control and transparency they’ve been calling for.”

David Orman, CEO and Co-Founder, Hiway

About Raindance

Raindance is the UK’s largest independent film festival, founded in 1992. It champions independent voices in cinema and runs year-round programmes for filmmakers including the Raindance Film School.

www.raindance.org

About Hiway

Hiway is the direct-to-fan infrastructure layer for the creator economy. It gives content owners one control panel to store, share, distribute, monetise and track their content. Founded by Zach Rothwell, Adam Greenwood and David Orman. Powering independent film, creators, festivals, film schools and enterprise content libraries. www.onthehiway.com

Media contact

Hiway: hello@onthehiway.com

Raindance: press@raindance.org (to confirm)

— ENDS —

Ready before Cannes? Sign up now for your free Screener Room here

Screener Room Here

Every year, thousands of projects arrive at Cannes.

Sales agents and buyers wade through hundreds of submissions. They chase broken links, manage expired passwords, and sit through screenings of films they already know nothing about. Then they make decisions worth millions of dollars based on gut instinct, festival buzz, and a thirty-second pitch in a hotel lobby.

That is not a market. That is organised chaos with a dress code.

The surprising thing is not that bad acquisition decisions get made. The surprising thing is how little information changes hands before they do.

The Buyer’s Problem Is Not Too Few Films. It’s Too Little Signal.

A senior acquisitions executive at a major distributor recently told me they receive more than 400 screener requests ahead of each major market. They have time to watch perhaps 40 of them properly.

The selection process for those 40 is not purely editorial. It is partly logistical. Which links worked. Which arrived with context. Which came packaged as a professional proposition rather than a folder of attachments forwarded from someone’s Gmail.

The film that gets watched is not always the best film. It is often the one that was easiest to take seriously.

That gap between quality and presentation is where distribution technology has the most immediate impact.

Filmmakers Are Flying Blind Too

The data problem runs in both directions.

A filmmaker sends twenty screeners ahead of Cannes. Two buyers respond. Were the other eighteen even opened? Did anyone watch past the first ten minutes? Was the link forwarded to someone who watched it three times and said nothing?

Without answers to those questions, every follow-up conversation is guesswork. You are negotiating without knowing whether the other person has seen your film, how much of it they watched, or how interested they actually are.

That is not a negotiation. It is a performance with no audience feedback.

The screener, which should be one of the most information-rich moments in the entire sales process, currently tells you almost nothing. A file was sent. That is all you know.

What Distribution Technology Is Changing

The shift from file-sharing to controlled streaming changes the information available to both sides of the table.

When a screener is delivered via a SmartLink rather than a download, the filmmaker knows who opened it, exactly when they watched, how far they got, and whether they came back for a second view. Every engagement is logged. Every contact who watches is captured automatically.

That data changes every conversation that follows.

Instead of opening a meeting with “did you get a chance to look at it?”, you walk in knowing they watched the full cut twice. Instead of following up blind, you follow up with context. The filmmaker who arrives at Cannes with screener analytics is operating with information that simply did not exist in the traditional workflow.

For buyers, the experience improves too. A branded screener room that arrives with full EPK materials, financial information, and clean playback on any device signals something important about the project before a single frame plays.

It says this team understands what professional distribution looks like.

Proof of Audience Is Becoming Part of the Pitch

There is a broader shift happening alongside this.

Buyers are increasingly interested in evidence of demand, not just editorial quality. A film with an existing fanbase, documented viewing data, and proof of direct-to-fan revenue is a different conversation to a film with a strong review and no audience validation.

This is partly driven by the streaming era, where platforms trained the market to think in terms of data. But it is also a rational response to risk. Acquisition is expensive. Proof that an audience already exists reduces the uncertainty.

The filmmakers building direct-to-fan platforms before they go to market are arriving at acquisition conversations with something genuinely new: evidence. Ticket sales from digital releases by territory. Audience data from screener views. Email lists of fans who have already paid.

That is leverage. And it is only available to the people who built the infrastructure to capture it.

What a Professional Screener Looks Like in 2026

The standard has moved.

A professional screener now means: branded viewing environment, no third-party logos, EPK materials alongside the film, access that expires on your terms, viewing analytics on every engagement, and automatic CRM capture of every contact who watches.

It means the buyer gets a clean, professional experience. You get data.

Hiway Screener Rooms were built to deliver exactly this, with the Cannes market specifically in mind. Every view is tracked. Every contact lands in your CRM. Access is controlled and revocable. The screener becomes a business tool, not just a file.

The films that get serious attention at Cannes this year will not just be the best films in the room. They will be the ones that arrived most professionally, with the most information behind them, and the clearest evidence that someone on the other side of the table knows what they are doing.

The market has always rewarded preparation.

What has changed is what preparation looks like.

Ready before Cannes.
Set up your Screener Room

FAQs

What is a film screener room and how does it work? A screener room is a secure, branded online environment where filmmakers share their work with buyers, distributors, and financiers. Unlike a WeTransfer link or download, a screener room streams the film from a controlled source, tracks every view in real time, and captures each contact automatically into a CRM. Access can be set to expire, restricted by territory, and revoked at any time.

Why do filmmakers need screener analytics at Cannes? Screener analytics tell you who opened your film, how long they watched, and whether they came back. That information transforms every buyer conversation from a guessing game into an informed negotiation. Knowing a buyer watched your full cut twice before the meeting is a different starting point to knowing nothing at all.

How do you send a secure screener to distributors without risking piracy? Secure screeners stream via a SmartLink rather than a downloadable file, which means the content never sits on a buyer’s hard drive. Access is password-protected, time-limited, and revocable. Every view is logged, so if content leaks, you can trace exactly where it came from. Watermarks can be applied per viewer for additional protection.

What should a professional film screener include for Cannes? A professional screener should include the film itself in high quality, a full EPK (electronic press kit) with stills, synopsis, and credits, financial information for co-production or acquisition conversations, and director or producer notes. All of this should sit within a branded environment that reflects the film’s identity, not a generic third-party platform.

How can direct-to-fan data help when pitching to film buyers? Buyers are increasingly interested in proof of audience, not just editorial quality. If you have already released your film direct-to-fan in select territories, you arrive at acquisition meetings with real data: paying viewers by market, watch-time analytics, and evidence of demand. That reduces the buyer’s risk and strengthens your negotiating position significantly.

Meta description: The Cannes film market runs on gut instinct and broken links. How distribution technology is changing what information buyers and filmmakers have at the point of acquisition. (160 chars)

Suggested hashtags: #Cannes2026 #FilmDistribution #DistroTech #IndependentFilm #ContentTechnology #FilmMarket #Cannes #Hiway

TL;DR

• Hiway Screener Rooms are live now, built for Cannes. Branded, secure, fully tracked screening environments with your logo, stills, look book, and financials all in one place.

• The film screener hasn’t changed in twenty years. WeTransfer links expire, files leak, and you have no idea if anyone actually watched.

• Every view is tracked in real time. You know who opened it, how long they watched, and whether they came back. Every contact lands automatically in your CRM.

• You leave Cannes with a database. Not a pile of business cards.

TL;DR

• Production companies get a free Hiway Screener Room for Cannes 2026.

• Up to £500,000 in match funding available, in partnership with High Fliers Films.

• Sign up at portal.onthehiway.com, no payment required under 5GB.

• Submit by adding cannes@onthehiway.com as a recipient on your Screener Room.

• Pitch deck required. First come, first served. Spots limited.

Screener Sign Up

Real money for real projects at Cannes 2026

Cannes is almost here, and we’re doing something we’ve never done before.

In partnership with High Fliers Films, Hiway is offering a small number of production companies attending Cannes access to match funding of up to £500,000.

Real money. For real projects. Subject to script approval and partnership criteria.

How to get involved

1. Secure your free Hiway Screener Room before Cannes.

2. Use it at the market.

3. Apply for the match funding partnership.

Why you need this

You know what Cannes looks like without the right tools. Screener links sent into the void. Follow-ups that go nowhere. No visibility on who actually watched. You leave with business cards and guesswork.

Hiway changes that.

Every time you share a screener, you see who watched, when they watched, and how long they stayed. Every contact lands in your B2B CRM automatically.

Upload once. Share anywhere. Track everything.

No charge unless you upload more than 5GB of content. Sign up at cannes.s.onthehiway.com using your email and skip the payment section. Spots are limited.

Step 1: Sign up to Hiway

Head to the Hiway portal and create your account. It takes a couple of minutes. For the Cannes offer there is no payment page. You’ll only be prompted to pay if you later upload more than 5GB of content.

Step-by-step

1. Enter your email. Go to cannes.s.onthehiway.com and select ‘Sign up’. On the first box, you only need to enter your email address and receive the OTP. Use the email you use for Cannes business so all your market contacts land in one account.

2. Verify with the OTP. Check your inbox for the one-time passcode and enter it to verify. Codes are valid for ten minutes.

3. You’re in. You’ll land straight in your Hiway dashboard, ready to upload your first screener. No payment page, no subscription to pick.

Already have a Hiway account? Sign in at portal.onthehiway.com and jump straight to Step 2.

Step 2: Upload your trailer, showreel or film

Upload once. Share anywhere. This is the file your buyers, financiers, and sales agents will watch, so use your best quality master.

How to upload

1. Open your content library. From the dashboard, go to Content in the left sidebar and click ‘Upload’.

2. Drag in your file. Drop your trailer, showreel, or feature file. Hiway handles transcoding automatically. Upload your highest-quality master and we take care of the rest.

3. Let it process. Processing runs in the background. You can continue setting things up while it finishes.

Your content stays secure

• No downloads. Viewers watch in-browser only.

• No uncontrolled sharing. Access is fully permissioned.

• Revoke access at any time from the dashboard.

Step 3: Add metadata, artwork and documents

Buyers skim fast. Good metadata and artwork turn a screener into a package, one they’ll remember when they get back to their office.

What to add

1. Metadata. Production company, director, cast, logline, synopsis, genre, running time, stage of production. The more you add, the more professional your Screener Room looks.

2. Artwork. Upload a key art / poster image and a landscape hero image. These appear on your Screener Room and in any link preview when you share.

3. Pitch deck and other assets. Open the Assets tab and add your pitch deck under ‘Other Assets’, plus any one-sheets, press packs, or supporting documents. Buyers can download these alongside the screener, and the pitch deck is required if you want to be considered for match funding.

Step 4: Complete your business profile

Your business profile is what buyers see when they click on your production company. It carries from screener to screener. Set it up once and it’s done.

Fill in

• Company or production company name.

• Logo and banner image.

• Short bio or ‘about’ line.

• Website, social links, and any credits you want visible.

• Primary contact for incoming buyer enquiries.

Step 5: Create your Screener Room

A Screener Room is a secure, private space where named buyers, financiers, sales agents, and partners watch your content. One link, fully tracked, invite-only.

Follow the wizard

1. Open Screener Rooms and click ‘Create Screener Room’. You’ll be taken through a five-step wizard: Details, Content, Recipients, Limits, Geo Blocking.

2. Details. Name your screener (e.g. ‘Cannes 2026 Buyer Screener’) and add any internal notes. This is what you’ll see in your dashboard.

3. Content. Attach the film, trailer, or showreel you uploaded. Your metadata, artwork, and pitch deck flow through automatically.

4. Recipients. Screener Rooms are private by default, there’s no public/paywalled switch. Instead, you add the email list of people who are allowed in. Paste in your buyer emails one by one or via CSV.

5. Add cannes@onthehiway.com. If you want to be considered for the match funding partnership, add cannes@onthehiway.com to the recipient list. That’s how you submit. There’s no separate form.

6. Limits and Geo Blocking. Optionally set view limits, expiry dates, or restrict by country. For most Cannes use cases you can leave these open and click through.

Your screener, your rules

• Only recipients you’ve added can watch. Others who open the link are blocked.

• Revoke or add recipients at any time from the dashboard.

• No downloads. No uncontrolled sharing. Every view tracked by name and email.

Step 6: Test it, then share at the market

Before you send a screener to your first buyer at the Croisette, send it to a colleague. Five minutes now saves an awkward “can you resend” later.

Test and roll out

1. Send to a colleague first. Share the link with someone on your team. Confirm the video plays, the artwork looks right, documents download, and the email-gate behaves correctly.

2. Import your Cannes contacts. Bring your buyer list into the Hiway CRM by CSV import or manually, whichever is faster for you. This is who you’ll be sharing with at the market.

3. Start sharing. Send the Screener Room link from your meetings, email follow-ups, WhatsApp threads, anywhere you’d usually send a screener. The analytics do the rest.

What you leave Cannes with

Not business cards. Not guesswork. A live database of every buyer, financier, sales agent, and partner who actually engaged with your film, and the data to prove it.

Who watched

Every viewer by name and email, captured at the moment they pressed play.

When they watched

Timestamps for every session, so you know which meeting triggered the view.

How long they stayed

Watch-time per viewer. You’ll see who leaned in, and who bounced at minute two.

You keep that data. For this project and the next. Your content stays secure throughout. No downloads, no uncontrolled sharing, fully permissioned.

The match funding partnership

In partnership with High Fliers Films, we’re making up to £500,000 available in match funding. This is an opportunity for producers with the right project at the right stage.

How to submit

1. Create a Hiway Screener Room for the project you want to be considered for.

2. Make sure your pitch deck is attached under Assets > Other Assets on the content.

3. Add hello@onthehiway.com to the Screener Room recipient list. That’s your submission.

4. We’ll review and come back to you if it qualifies for a conversation.

First come, first served.

Don’t forget the pitch deck. Applications without a pitch deck attached to the Screener Room won’t be considered. Add it under the Assets tab on your content before sharing the room with hello@onthehiway.com.

Real money. For real projects. Subject to script approval and partnership criteria. Email hello@onthehiway.com for the full Terms and Conditions.

Sign Up Now for Your Free Screener Room

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be attending Cannes to use the free Screener Room?

No. Anyone can use the free Screener Room in the run-up to Cannes. The offer is open to production companies whether you’re on the Croisette or not.

Do I need to create a Hiway account to apply for the match funding?

Yes. Applications are accepted in the form of a Hiway Screener Room link. Create your account, upload your project, attach your pitch deck, and add hello@onthehiway.com as a recipient on the Screener Room. That’s your submission.

Is it really free?

Yes. There’s no payment page during sign-up for the Cannes offer. You’ll only be prompted to pay if you upload more than 5GB of total content, which is enough for most trailers, showreels, and feature-length screeners.

What counts toward the 5GB limit?

Only the video files you upload to your content library. Artwork, pitch decks, documents, and metadata don’t count. Hiway handles transcoding behind the scenes. You upload one master, we take care of the rest.

Can someone download my screener?

No. All viewing is in-browser only. There are no download buttons, and the video stream is signed per-viewer. Every view is tracked by name, email, timestamp, and watch-time.

How do I control who can watch?

Screener Rooms are private by default. Only the email addresses you add as recipients can open the screener. You can add, remove, or revoke access at any time from your dashboard.

What should I attach to be considered for match funding?

A pitch deck is required. Upload it under the Assets tab (Other Assets) on your content, alongside your trailer or showreel. The stronger the package, logline, synopsis, cast, stage of production, key art, the better.

When is the match funding deadline?

The deadline will be announced the week of the Cannes Film Festival. In the meantime, capacity is limited and projects are reviewed on a rolling, first-come-first-served basis. The earlier you get your Screener Room and pitch deck in front of us, the better your odds. We’ll confirm if your project qualifies for a conversation once we’ve reviewed the room you’ve shared with hello@onthehiway.com.

Can I apply with more than one project?

Yes. Create a separate Screener Room for each project, each with its own pitch deck attached, and add cannes@onthehiway.com to every room you want us to review.

What happens after Cannes, do I lose my Screener Room?

No. Your account, content, Screener Rooms, and CRM contacts all stay with you. The Cannes offer is about giving you a running start. The platform is yours to keep using for your next project.

What file formats can I upload?

Hiway accepts standard master formats (ProRes, H.264, H.265, MXF, MOV, MP4). Upload your highest-quality master and Hiway transcodes automatically for smooth streaming.

Who is High Fliers Films?

High Fliers Films and its Partners are Hiway’s match funding partner for this initiative. They bring the capital alongside Hiway’s platform and distribution tools. Final funding decisions are made by High Fliers, subject to script approval and partnership criteria.

Still have a question? Email hello@onthehiway.com and we’ll come back to you.

Support and contact

We’re building Hiway with people like you. Use it at Cannes. Break it. Tell us what’s missing. If you’re investing time and money to be there, you should come back with something real.

Hiway Team

For the Cannes offer, Screener Rooms, match funding, or anything else.
hello@onthehiway.com

Product Support

For technical issues with uploads, Screener Rooms, or account access.
support@onthehiway.com

See you on the Croisette.

The Hiway Team

TL;DR

• Hiway Screener Rooms are live now, ready for you ahead of Cannes.

• Branded, secure, fully tracked screening environments with your logo, stills, look book, and financials all in one place.

• The film screener hasn’t changed in twenty years. WeTransfer links expire, files leak, and you have no idea if anyone actually watched.

• Every view is tracked in real time. You know who opened it, how long they watched, and whether they came back. Every contact lands automatically in your CRM.

• You leave Cannes with a database. Not a pile of business cards.

The Screener Is Broken. So We Built A New One. Just In Time For Cannes.

You spent two years making your film.

You agonised over the grade. You obsessed over the sound mix. You paid a designer to make your pitch deck look immaculate.

Then you sent the film itself on a WeTransfer link.

Think about that for a second.

The document you use to ask someone for money looks better than the film you’re asking them to watch. That’s backwards. And in a market as competitive as Cannes, where a buyer is choosing between your project and fifty others they received this week, how you present your film is part of whether they take it seriously.

First impressions don’t start in the room. They start the moment someone opens your screener.

Why the screener process hasn’t changed in twenty years

Links expire. Files corrupt. Watermarks get stripped. You have no idea whether anyone actually watched it, how far they got, or whether they forwarded it to someone you never intended to see it.

That’s not a distribution strategy. That’s guesswork with a deadline.

We built something different.

Hiway Screener Rooms give you a branded, professional screening environment that looks as good as the film inside it. Your logo. Your stills. Your look book. Your financials. All in one place, under your control, with full tracking on every single view.

You’ll know who opened it, when they watched, how long they stayed, and whether they came back. Every buyer, distributor, financier and sales agent who engages lands automatically in your CRM.

You leave Cannes with a database, not a pile of business cards.

What a Screener Actually Needs to Do

A screener is not just a file. It is a business communication.

It represents your film, your company, and your ask. It needs to arrive securely, play reliably, and tell you something useful when it does.

At minimum, a professional screener should tell you: who opened it, when they watched, how much they watched, and whether they shared it onward.

That data changes every conversation you have with a buyer. Instead of following up blind, you follow up knowing whether they watched ten minutes or the full cut. That is leverage.

It should also expire on your terms, not the platform’s. And it should carry your branding, not a third-party logo that makes it look like you cobbled it together.

The Hidden Cost of Unsecured Screeners

Beyond the workflow problem, there is a real rights risk.

Unsecured links are forwarded. Files are downloaded. Watermarks are removed. Films end up on piracy sites before their release date because someone in a distribution chain passed a link to someone they should not have.

This is not theoretical. It happens regularly, and independent filmmakers are the most exposed because they rarely have legal infrastructure to pursue it.

A properly built screener has permissions baked in. Access can be revoked. Views are logged. If something leaks, you know exactly where it came from.

Free Screener Room

What the New Screener Looks Like

The shift is from file-sharing to controlled streaming.

A SmartLink, rather than a download, means the film streams from a secure source rather than living on someone’s hard drive. You control who has access, for how long, and what they can do with it. You see every view in real time.

The sales agent gets a clean, professional viewing experience. You get data.

Both parties benefit. The film is protected. The conversation that follows is informed.

Platforms like Hiway are building exactly this layer, replacing the cobbled-together screener workflow with a single system that handles secure sharing, analytics, and access control from one place.

Screener Room Demo

The Buyers Are Ready for This

Sales agents and distributors do not want to receive WeTransfer links either.

They are managing hundreds of submissions and spending time chasing broken links and misidentified files. A clean, trackable screener that arrives via a branded link, plays immediately, and includes full EPK materials alongside the film is not a nice-to-have. It is a competitive signal.

It says your project is professionally managed. That matters at the point of sale.

The screener is often the first impression a buyer has of your entire operation. Make it count.

The film industry is twenty years behind where it should be on distribution technology.

The screener is the most obvious place to start fixing that.

The internet promised creators independence. The streaming era took it away.

For the past decade, filmmakers, rights holders, and content creators have been handed a deal that goes like this: give us your content, we’ll give it reach, you’ll get a fraction of the revenue, and you’ll never find out who actually watched it. That’s not distribution. That’s tenancy.

Hiway was built to fix that. And as of today, it is open to everyone.

The Platform Is Ready

We have rebuilt Hiway from the ground up.

The new interface is faster, cleaner, and significantly more powerful - designed around one principle: you should be able to upload your content, define your commercial terms, and start reaching your audience anywhere in the world, without handing control to a third party.

One control panel. Every tool you need. From secure B2B screeners through to direct-to-fan monetisation, audience analytics, and real-time payments - all in one place.

This is not a beta. Content is already being distributed. Revenue is already flowing. Platforms are already live.

SIGN UP TO THE HIWAY NOW

Who Hiway Is Built For

If you create content, own rights, or distribute to an audience, Hiway was built for you.

Filmmakers and production companies can release directly to audiences, manage screeners for buyers and press, and build a direct relationship with fans — while retaining full control of their rights and revenue.

Film festivals can run on-demand platforms, sell passes, and build year-round engagement with their audience - rather than earning for two weeks and going dark for the other fifty.

Sports rights holders, federations, and clubs can stream directly to fans globally, understand their audience, and communicate with them without routing everything through third-party infrastructure.

Content creators and influencers can monetise content, retain up to 90% of revenue, and stop handing their audience relationship to platforms that use it against them.

Industry organisations and publishers can launch white-label streaming destinations to activate and monetise content libraries they already own.

What Is Already Happening on Hiway

The platform is not theoretical. It is being used today.

Winston Baker has launched its film finance platform on Hiway, creating a paywalled destination for its global industry community. Elevate Film School has partnered with Hiway, bringing direct-to-fan infrastructure to the next generation of filmmakers from day one. Production companies are actively uploading and managing film libraries — using Hiway for B2B rights management, screeners, and D2C releases within a single system.

And this week, xfm launched on Hiway: featuring Ricky Gervais, Oasis, Damon Albarn, The Libertines and more - now streaming directly to fans via Hiway infrastructure.

This is not just independent content. Established cultural brands are building on the platform.

Three New Features Now Live

Screener Rooms

You can now create secure, password-protected screener rooms directly within your Hiway account — presenting projects to distributors, buyers, and investors in a controlled, trackable environment.

Built in time for Cannes and the festival circuit, this is already being used by production companies preparing market materials. Invite-only access. Expiry controls. Full analytics on who watched what, and for how long.

Social Distribution Tools

You can now post your Hiway content directly to your social channels from within the platform. Every viewer who arrives from social builds your audience database. Every transaction provides evidence of demand — both increasingly important when engaging with financiers and partners.

Create SmartLink clips or MP4 social clips directly from your content library in seconds.

Syndication and Affiliate Distribution

Hiway allows you to activate your wider network by enabling collaborators, affiliates, influencers, and partners to distribute your content. Through simple digital agreements, partners can share SmartLinks or embed your content within their own platforms — earning a commission on every view or sale they generate.

You retain ownership of your content and your audience data. Revenue is automatically split and distributed in real time. Your network becomes your distribution channel.

Why Now

For most organisations, going direct to fan has been difficult because of the cost, complexity, and time required to build streaming infrastructure. Hiway removes these barriers entirely.

There is no infrastructure cost to get started. No development cycles. No technical team required. You go live in minutes, under your own brand, with payments flowing directly to your account.

The Premier League recently announced direct-to-fan streaming in Singapore as a test market. Major rights holders are exploring exactly the model Hiway was built to deliver. The advantage right now is early. That will not last.

Upload once. Distribute anywhere. Track everything. Get paid instantly.

REQUEST A DEMO

What Does Hiway Actually Do?

Hiway is a content operating system. One account gives you every tool you need to manage your content from creation through to distribution and monetisation — without giving control away.

Upload your content once. Set your pricing, access rules, and territories. Hiway generates a SmartLink that handles delivery across multiple formats: pay-per-view, rental, subscription, gated access, or free-to-view.

Your audience pays you directly, with revenue flowing into your account in real time. Every viewer interaction builds your audience dataset — giving you ongoing insight and control that no platform will ever hand you.

In short:

• Store and manage your entire content library in one place

• Share secure screeners with buyers, distributors, press, and investors

• Launch direct-to-fan releases via PPV, rental, passes, or subscription

• Set territory-by-territory pricing and access rules

• Own every data point — viewer identities, watch time, transaction history

• Get paid instantly, directly to your bank account

Your content. Your fans. Your money. Your way. On the Hiway.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hiway

What is Hiway and how is it different from streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon?

Hiway is not a streaming platform. It is the infrastructure that content owners use to run their own content business — storing, distributing, monetising, and tracking their content — without giving control to a third party. Think Shopify for content, not Netflix for viewers. Netflix acquires content and owns the audience. Hiway gives you the tools to own your audience yourself, keep your revenue, and retain your IP.

How much does it cost to use Hiway, and what percentage of revenue do creators keep?

Hiway is designed so that content owners keep up to 90% of revenue generated through the platform. There is no infrastructure cost to get started and no large upfront investment required. Revenue flows directly into your bank account in real time - there are no delayed monthly payouts or opaque reporting windows. Visit onthehiway.com for current pricing details or book a demo to discuss your specific use case.

Can I use Hiway to send secure screeners to distributors and buyers?

Yes. Hiway’s Screener Rooms allow you to create secure, password-protected private screening environments directly within your account. You can share projects with distributors, buyers, investors, and press - with invite-only access, expiry controls, and full analytics showing who watched, how much they watched, and when. This replaces insecure Vimeo links or email attachments with a professional, trackable B2B delivery system.

Who is Hiway built for - is it only for independent filmmakers?

Hiway is built for anyone who creates content, owns rights, or distributes to an audience. This includes independent filmmakers and documentary makers, film festivals, sports rights holders and federations, music rights owners, content creators and influencers, production companies, distributors, archive and catalogue rights owners, and industry organisations and publishers. If you currently rely on third-party platforms to reach your audience and feel you are losing revenue, data, or control in the process — Hiway was built for you.

TL;DR

• For years the media industry assumed that discovery happened on platforms. Get your content onto a big streaming service and the algorithm would eventually surface it to the right audience.
  
  

• That is no longer how most people discover what to watch. Increasingly the journey begins somewhere else entirely, inside conversations, communities, social media feeds, or through AI assistants that understand exactly what someone is looking for.
  
  

• As discovery spreads across the internet rather than sitting inside a single platform, the most effective distribution strategy changes as well.
  
  

• Instead of building one destination and trying to pull audiences towards it, creators can place their content wherever those conversations are already happening.
  
  

• The key is doing this while still keeping control of the rights, the revenue and the relationship with the audience.

Here’s a question worth sitting with.

When did you last decide to watch something because a platform recommended it to you?

Now think about the last five things you actually watched. Where did you first hear about them?

A conversation. A post. A forum thread. A friend. An AI that understood what you were in the mood for.

Recommendations from friends and family remain the number one way people discover what to watch. For under-35s, social media now ranks above everything else - 68% of Americans aged 18 to 24 say social media is where they find their next watch. Attest

The platform’s algorithm - the one content owners have been chasing, paying to optimise for, and building release strategies around - isn’t even in the top two.

The Discovery Map Has Redrawn Itself

The old model was simple. Build great content. Get it on a platform. Let the platform surface to the right audience.

The problem is that the model handed all the power to the platform. They controlled the algorithm. They decided what got promoted. They owned the relationship with the viewer.

And even when it worked, 53% of younger viewers say they get better recommendations from social media than from the streaming platforms themselves. Deloitte Insights

The platform’s discovery engine was never as powerful as it claimed to be.

Now AI is accelerating the shift further. Daily AI search users in the US doubled from 14% to 29% in just six months through 2025. eMarketer Gartner projects that by 2028, half of all online searches will involve an AI assistant. Superlines

These aren’t people typing keywords into Google. They’re having conversations. Describing a mood, a theme, an interest. And AI is answering with specific, relevant recommendations - drawn from wherever the content lives, not from what a platform chose to promote.

AI search compresses the entire discovery-to-purchase journey into a single interaction. What used to take days now takes hours. eMarketer

The audience is already out there. They’re already searching. The question is whether your content shows up when they do.

The Shopfront Model Is Broken

Most content marketing is still built around one assumption: create a destination, then drive people to it.

Build a website. Build a social following. Buy ads. Run a campaign. Bring the audience to you.

That model made sense when distribution was centralised. When there were a handful of platforms, a handful of outlets, and a clear pathway from promotion to view.

That world is gone.

56% of younger viewers watch a film or show after discovering it through a creator or community online. Deloitte Insights They didn’t go looking for it at the content owner’s shopfront. They found it in a conversation, on a forum, in a community they already trusted.

The content that travels is the content that wins.

Decentralised Distribution: Take the Content to the Fan

This is the thinking behind Hiway’s syndication tool.

Not “build a better destination.” But “put the content inside every relevant conversation, across every relevant platform, wherever the audience already is.”

The model is straightforward. A content owner creates their content on Hiway. They set their pricing, their rights, their territories. Then, instead of waiting for the audience to find them, they syndicate - pushing the content out to media sites, fan forums, blogs, social channels, niche communities, and independent publishers who are already talking to exactly the audience they want.

Each of those distribution points gets an affiliate fee for every sale or stream they generate. The incentive is real. The alignment is direct. A film finance blog, an indie film forum, a genre-specific YouTube channel - they all have a reason to surface your content to their audience because they earn from it when they do.

No platform politics. No promotional budget spent on algorithm games. The content goes to where the conversation is happening.

What Makes This Different

The critical difference isn’t just the distribution model. It’s what the content owner keeps.

With every traditional platform deal, you hand over three things: your audience data, your revenue share, and meaningful control over how your content is presented.

Hiway’s syndication flips that.

Wherever the content is streamed - on a blog, embedded in a newsletter, hosted on a partner site - the rights stay with the content owner. The audience data flows back to them. The payment goes directly to their account, in real time.

A fan discovers your documentary through an interview they read on a film finance site. They click. They watch. They pay. You know who they are. You keep the revenue. The site that sent them your way gets their affiliate cut.

That’s decentralised distribution with centralised control.

Why This Matters More in the AI Era

AI discovery changes the value of being everywhere.

When a viewer asks an AI for recommendations - “what’s the best recent documentary about independent film finance?” - the answer is drawn from what’s available, what’s well-described, and what’s accessible. Not from what a platform chose to feature.

Content that exists in multiple places, with consistent metadata, attached to communities and conversations across the web, has a compounding advantage. It’s findable. It’s citable. It shows up.

Content sitting behind a single platform’s paywall, waiting to be surfaced by their algorithm, does not.

Visitors referred by AI platforms spend 68% more time on the pages they land on than visitors from traditional search. SeaRanks The intent is higher. The engagement is deeper. These are not casual browsers. They are people who specifically wanted to find something like what you made.

Be in the places AI looks. Be in the communities where your audience already is. Let them find you through the conversations they’re already having - and give every platform, blog, and forum that hosts those conversations a reason to point toward your content.

The Infrastructure That Makes It Work

None of this is possible without the right foundation.

Syndication at scale requires a single source of truth for your content. Rights have to be clear and consistent across every distribution point. Payments have to reconcile accurately against every affiliate relationship. Audience data has to flow back to you, not fragment across every platform you syndicate to.

That’s what Hiway is built to do. One master. Infinite reach. Full control at every point.

You don’t have to choose between scale and ownership. Decentralised distribution, with the data, the revenue, and the rights always pointing back to you.

The audience is already out there. They’re already searching.

Go to them.

Introduction

Every week there’s a new headline. “SaaS is dead.” “AI agents will replace your software stack.” Satya Nadella said it in December 2024. Palantir’s CEO said it again in early 2026, wiping $300 billion in market cap from Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow in a single day.

The tech press loves a funeral.

But here’s what nobody is saying: the debate is about the wrong layer.

They’re arguing about the shop front when the value is in the warehouse.

What Is Actually Dying (And What Isn’t)

Nadella was right, but not in the way most people interpreted it.

What’s dying is the interface. The dashboard. The multi-tab, multi-login, navigate-between-four-systems-to-complete-one-task experience that made SaaS feel like progress but was always just friction with a monthly invoice.

AI agents don’t need a GUI. They talk to APIs. They don’t log in — they orchestrate. The software behind the interface, where the data actually lives, is not going anywhere.

IDC put it well: SaaS is being disrupted by evolution, not decline. The question isn’t whether software dies. It’s who controls the data layer when the interface disappears.

For content owners, that question matters more than any other.

What Content Owners and Rights Holders Actually Need

A filmmaker finishes a feature. A production company produces a season of content. A distributor or aggregator acquires a library.

At that moment, they have one fundamental need: a secure place to store what they own, share it with the right people, and get paid for it.

That is not going away. AI doesn’t change the fact that content exists, that it has value, and that someone needs to manage where it goes and who sees it.

💡 “Content is king. Ownership is power. Infrastructure is leverage.”

What AI does change is what you can do with content once it’s stored. That’s where most of the industry is still asleep.

Why Secure Content Storage Remains a Subscription Market

The SaaS tools losing ground are the ones built around interface complexity: dashboards, seat licences, and workflows designed for operations teams navigating multiple apps.

That model doesn’t map onto content at all.

Content doesn’t have users. It has rights holders. It has audiences. It has revenue events. The need to store that content securely, maintain the rights chain, and control who accesses what, that is a permanent infrastructure requirement. It’s not going to be replaced by an AI agent.

The agent needs somewhere to work from.

The API Economy Doesn’t Kill the Data Layer. It Proves It.

Here’s what the “SaaS is dead” conversation is actually describing: people are moving away from monolithic software products with locked-in interfaces, and building bespoke systems instead. They’re calling APIs directly. They’re stitching together the specific capabilities they need and wrapping their own interface around them.

That’s not the death of software. That’s software maturing.

This is what protocols like MCP - the Model Context Protocol - are actually doing. Despite the hype, MCP isn’t a new kind of technology. It’s a standardisation of how AI agents talk to services. Think of it the way USB standardised how peripherals connect to computers: it didn’t invent anything new, it just meant everything could finally plug into the same socket.

APIs have always been the capability layer underneath every piece of software you use. What’s new is that AI agents can now discover and use them without a developer wiring each one up by hand. That changes who can build on top of your infrastructure - but it makes the infrastructure itself more important, not less.

And it raises a question that nobody making the funeral announcement seems to be asking: what are all those APIs pulling from?

Data. Content. Assets. Financial records. Rights. Audience relationships.

Every agent, every integration, every automated workflow needs somewhere to pull from. A source of record. A place where the master version lives and the permissions are set correctly and the revenue history is accurate.

That place doesn’t disappear when the interface does. It becomes more important.

Because now it’s not just a human logging in to check something. It’s an AI agent making decisions based on what’s there. It’s a distribution partner pulling a file at 3am. It’s a payment system reconciling against a rights record it trusts because it’s clean and current.

💡 The easier it is to connect to your system, the more indispensable your system becomes.

For content owners, the API economy is not a threat. It’s the argument for getting your house in order. The cleaner your data layer, the more valuable every integration becomes.

Build the foundation. Let the agents come.

The End of One Size Fits All

There’s a subtler shift happening underneath the automation story that’s worth paying attention to.

Today, the way you interact with any software is defined by the company that built it. Their design team decided what your dashboard looks like, what reports you can run, how you navigate your own data. The API - the raw capability underneath - has always been more powerful than the interface sitting on top of it. But until now, only developers could use it.

AI changes that equation. For the first time, a non-technical user can interact with the capability layer directly, describing what they need in plain language, and having an AI agent query, structure, and present it.

The vendor’s UI doesn’t disappear. It becomes a starting point. A template. A demo of what’s possible. And then you reshape it to how you actually work.

The SaaS UI was never the product. It was the vendor’s best guess at what you needed. AI means you no longer have to accept someone else’s guess.

This is what “the interface is dying” really means. Not that interfaces go away, but that the era of one-interface-fits-all is ending. The software vendor’s job shifts from “build the experience” to “build the foundation and let every customer have their own.”

AI as the Interface for Content Management

Right now, most content owners use storage the way people used filing cabinets. Drop it in. Label it. Hope you find it again.

That model is over.

The next generation of content infrastructure is not just a place to put things. It’s a system that understands what you have, who it’s for, how to reach them, and what the content is worth. An AI interface layered over a content library doesn’t just organise it, it activates it.

Think about what that looks like in practice:

You upload a film. The system reads the metadata, identifies the audience segments most likely to engage, suggests the right distribution windows, and generates the marketing materials. It sets up a SmartLink with the correct rights controls and payment terms already baked in. You review. You approve. You distribute.

Not across six different tools. One system.

This is the version of AI disruption worth paying attention to. Not the one that kills your software stack. The one that makes your content work harder without you surrendering ownership to get there.

Why Hiway Is Built for This Moment

This is exactly the infrastructure question that Hiway was designed to answer.

Hiway is not a platform in the traditional sense. It doesn’t compete with Netflix, Amazon, or any content destination. It sits underneath all of them. The rails, not the train.

Hiway gives content owners a single source of truth: one place where the master file lives, rights are recorded, audience data accumulates, and payments flow back in real time. That foundation is what makes an AI layer genuinely useful. Without it, AI has nothing to work with. With it, AI becomes an accelerant for distribution, marketing, and direct-to-fan monetisation.

The data moat is the defence. The audience relationships. The rights chain. The revenue history. Those don’t move, they compound.

In Practice: Winston Baker Goes On Demand With Hiway

Winston Baker has been the world’s leading entertainment finance conference producer since 2008. Their events at Cannes, the European Film Market, and the Venice Biennale have featured the biggest names in film finance - from senior executives to award-winning filmmakers.

Their content library, every panel, fireside chat, and keynote from over a decade of sold-out events, is genuinely valuable. But until recently, it wasn’t working for them.

After seeing a demo of Hiway, the team asked a straightforward question: could they use the platform to re-launch their on-demand content hub?

The answer was yes.

Create an account. Upload the content. Set pricing, metadata, and territories. Done.

Winston Baker didn’t get a white-label version of someone else’s product. They got their own. Hiway’s infrastructure is built so that every client’s experience can be different, shaped to their content, their audience, their brand, because the capability layer underneath is designed to be composed, not configured. The same foundation, but never the same front door.

Winston Baker owns their audience data. Payments go directly to them, in real time.

That’s the principle in practice. The interface is theirs. The infrastructure is shared. And nobody had to accept someone else’s guess about how their content should be presented.

👉 View the Winston Baker streaming hub:
winstonbaker.onthehiway.com

What Content Owners Should Do Right Now

Stop worrying about which SaaS tools AI will make redundant.

Start asking:

→ Where does my content actually live?
→ Who controls that environment?
→ Do I own the audience data it generates?
→ Can I see, in real time, what’s performing and what’s being paid?

If the answer to any of those is “I’m not sure” or “it’s spread across a few places”; that’s the problem to fix.

Get your content under one roof. Build the data layer now. Let the AI interface sit on top of something real.

The debate about SaaS dying is a debate designed for enterprise operations teams. It has very little to do with content ownership.

Your world is content. Rights. Audiences. Revenue.

That infrastructure isn’t being disrupted. It’s being built.

TLDR:

• Your audience lives in Discord servers, WhatsApp groups, Reddit threads, and private communities that ads can’t reach.

• Hiway’s syndication tool lets you distribute your content directly to partner platforms with automated revenue sharing, shared viewer analytics, and full IP control.

• Your partners earn a commission. You keep your data. Everyone knows exactly what’s working.

See it in action

Every marketer knows the problem.

You build something good. You launch a platform, a website, a content library. You drive traffic, run ads, chase algorithms.

And still, the right people never seem to find you.

That’s not a content problem. It’s a distribution problem.

The Audience Has Scattered

Your audience isn’t sitting in one place, waiting to discover you.

They’re in Discord servers debating their favourite shows. Reddit threads sharing niche recommendations. WhatsApp groups passing links to things they love. Signal channels, Telegram communities, private newsletters, niche blogs.

Dark social. Closed groups. Micro-communities that algorithms can’t map and ads can’t reach.

These pockets of people are having conversations that are directly relevant to your content right now. And you’re not in the room.

The traditional answer has been to build a better funnel. Drive people to your destination. Optimise the landing page. Reduce drop-off. Improve retention.

But that assumes your audience will make the journey to you.

Most of them won’t.

Bringing the Content to the Audience

The shift isn’t about better acquisition tactics. It’s about flipping the model entirely.

Instead of pulling audiences to your destination, you distribute your content to theirs.

You meet fans in the communities where they already spend time. You give partners, sponsors, affiliates, and friends the tools to embed your content directly into their platforms, sites, and channels. You remove the friction of discovery entirely.

This is what content syndication is supposed to be. Not scraping and republishing without credit. A structured, contractual relationship between content owners and distribution partners, where both sides benefit, both sides get the data, and every piece of content carries a traceable, verified link back to its source.

How Hiway Syndication Works

From your Hiway library, you can now set up content syndication contracts directly with partners.

A partner could be a media brand. A sponsored platform. A niche blog. A community site. A streaming partner in a territory you’re trying to crack.

They embed your content into their platform using a unique SmartLink. That link is traceable, trackable, and verifiable, so you always know exactly where your audience has come from, and who drove the view.

You decide the terms. You set a revenue share. You agree the commission. The payments are automated: after the Hiway transaction fee, revenue splits according to the contract you’ve already agreed inside the system. No chasing. No manual reconciliation. No disputes about numbers.

Both parties get access to shared viewer analytics. Both parties see the audience data. Everyone knows what’s working.

And because every piece of content lives in your Hiway library, you never lose control of your IP.

Want to see how syndication contracts works in practice?

Incentivising the People Already in the Room

The real power of syndication isn’t just distribution. It’s alignment.

When you give a partner a commission for placing your content, you’ve given them a reason to promote it. Actively. To their audience. In the communities and conversations you couldn’t reach alone.

That Discord moderator who loves your work? Now they have a financial reason to share it.

That niche publication whose readers are your perfect audience? Now they have a business model for featuring your content.

That affiliate in a territory you’re trying to grow? Now they’re a motivated distribution partner.

You’re not just finding fans. You’re recruiting advocates who already have the trust of the communities you want to reach, and rewarding them for bringing your content to those conversations.

The New Era of Content Marketing

Marketing used to mean bringing people to your door.

The smarter model is meeting people where they are, rewarding the people who know those communities best, and letting the content travel on your terms.

Your IP stays protected. Your data flows back to you. Your revenue is tracked and split automatically.

You’re not chasing audiences across the internet. You’re building a network of motivated partners who carry your content into the places that matter, all connected through a single system you control.

That’s not a campaign. That’s infrastructure.

Ready to build your syndication network?

If you’ve got this far thanks, please share far and wide!

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

- The Hiway Team

The Single Source of Truth Solution You’ve Been Waiting For

For years, content creators have been trapped in a fragmented distribution cycle. Every platform requires a different version of your content. Every deal demands unique encoding, custom graphics, and separate uploads. You end up managing dozens of copies scattered across various providers, each with its own walled-off analytics and payment systems.

Industry analysts predict that 2026 is the year content owners finally confront this hidden cost. The solution? Centralized distribution. At Hiway, we built the platform that lets you “ingest once, publish everywhere.”

Upload Once, Distribute Everywhere

Hiway’s single source of truth starts with one simple principle: you upload your content once to your library.

• One master file. One version. One source.

From that single piece of content, you create unlimited SmartLinks. Each link streams from that same source but can be configured for entirely different purposes, audiences, and business models.

The Concept: Your film sits safely in your Hiway library. You create 100 SmartLinks pointing to it. Each link has unique settings, yet they all pull from the same high-fidelity master content.

SmartLinks for Every Use Case

Hiway transforms your workflow by giving you a specialized tool for every stage of your film’s life:

• B2B Collaboration Links: Share with financiers, co-producers, and agencies. Grant secure access with full control over permissions and viewing rights.

• Industry Distribution Links: Provide sales agents and aggregators with a single link containing your video, audio tracks, subtitles, posters, and EPK materials—all in one place.

• Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Links: Publish straight to your fans. Make it free to build your fanbase and capture data, or monetize with Pay-Per-View for transactional rentals and purchases.

• Content Package Links: Bundle multiple films together. Create your own mini-streaming service with curated content packages tailored to your specific audience.

You Command the Terms

Every Smart Link is completely customizable. You aren’t just sharing a video; you are sharing a business deal.

• Set your own pricing and payment terms.

• Define territories and licensing restrictions.

• Control the split: Decide exactly who gets paid and how much.

• Enable affiliate partnerships to expand your reach.

• Capture data: Every view provides comprehensive audience insights.

The Power of Unified Data

In traditional systems, if one platform gets a million views and another gets a million, you rarely see the full picture in real-time.

With Hiway, you see 2 million total views attributed to your single source of content. Because every view, unique visitor, and data point flows back to one master record, you finally understand your content’s true performance.

Track Every Distribution Path

Each Smart Link includes unique trackable codes, allowing you to see exactly:

1. Where your content is being shared across the internet.

2. Which distribution channels drive the most engagement.

3. Which partners are delivering the best results.

All Revenue Flows to One Source

Just as all views aggregate to your single source of content, so does all revenue. Every rental, purchase, or subscription transaction connects back to your master record. From there, you can distribute earnings to investors and partners based on the terms you set.

No more reconciling payments across multiple platforms. No more fragmented financial reporting. One source of content, one revenue stream, complete transparency.

Built for 2026 and Beyond

The media industry is shifting toward creator-owned platforms and direct audience relationships. Hiway gives you the infrastructure to own your distribution strategy without sacrificing your reach.

You’re in command:

• Upload once

• Create unlimited SmartLinks

• Capture complete analytics

• Receive direct payment

One piece of content. Infinite possibilities. Total control.

Ready to see it in action?

Take a test drive on the Hiway: onthehiway.com/get-a-demo