TLDR
→Hiway is now fully self-service. Sign up, upload, price, publish, get paid. No call, no demo, no permission needed.
→Scotflix launches 12 September. Written, directed, shot or produced in Scotland? Upload your titles before launch: scotflix.s.onthehiway.com
→Raindance Releasing is open to every filmmaker, features and shorts. The marketing campaign starts now. Release yours at raindancereleasing.com
→Bully Lifestyle TV went live on its own domain, our first fully white-labelled network.
→QPR: The Four Year Plan is streaming worldwide, excluding the UK, and Ugly Little Monkeys is heading into every Mexican consulate on earth.
Until this month, every single customer was onboarded by one of the team. A call, a screen share, a walkthrough, a follow-up.
That stopped in August. People now arrive on the Hiway on their own, sign up, upload, set their own prices and territories, publish their own links and take their own money. We find out they exist when the platform tells us.
The results speak for themselves. More companies joined this month than in any month since we opened at Cannes.
Here is August on the Hiway.
01 · SELF-SERVICE IS LIVE
You can now do all of it yourself.
Sign up at portal.onthehiway.com. Upload your film, your series, your match footage, your back catalogue. Decide what it costs, in which country, in which currency, and whether it is a rental, a purchase, a subscription, a private screener or free. Generate a SmartLink and put it wherever your audience already is.
Someone watches. You get paid into your bank the same day. You see who they were, where they were and how much they watched, while it is happening.
Nobody in that sequence had to approve anything. Certainly not me.
→ Start now at portal.onthehiway.com. Or book a test drive and we will walk you round it.
02 · THE DEADLINE
Scotflix goes live on 12 September.
Scotflix launches at the Scottish Screenwriters Festival, and everything live by 12 September goes in as founding content. Founding filmmakers and founding content partners get named as such and carried in a launch push The National and the Scottish trade press are already circling.
If you have a Scottish-connected feature, short, doc or series, it belongs here. And if you hold an archive, this is the ask I most want you to act on. A Scottish writer, director, cast member, crew, location or story is enough to qualify. It costs nothing to place titles, the master never leaves your account, and every sale settles back to you in real time with the audience data attached.
A dormant title that earns is worth considerably more than a dormant title that does not.
→ Head to scotflix.s.onthehiway.com if you have content you want to submit ahead of launch.
Scotflix · launching 12 September
03 · NOW OPEN
Raindance Releasing has its own front door.
Raindance Releasing has moved to raindancereleasing.com, and it is now open to the whole independent filmmaker community. Features and shorts, from anyone, £12 a month.
That £12 is not a slot on a platform. It is the whole stack underneath one. Content storage. A password-protected, tracked Screener Room. Your own CRM of industry contacts and paying fans. Embeddable SmartLinks so your content can live on your own website. Live analytics you can share with financiers on a single link. Same-day payments. All non-exclusive, so nothing stops you signing a distributor tomorrow morning.
The marketing campaign starts now. Everyone live before it runs sits inside the audience it brings.
→ Release your film at raindancereleasing.com. Roughly half an hour from clicking to live. For details head to the user guide.
Raindance Releasing · raindancereleasing.com
04 · DOGS
Bully Lifestyle built its own television network.
bullylifestyle.tv went live this month. Their domain, their branding, their wallet, their checkout, their episodes behind their own paywall. To a viewer there is no Hiway anywhere on the screen. We even built our first e-commerce feature to sell the Bully Lifestyle book. Underneath it, every payment lands in Bully’s own account.
This is the shape of the next twelve months. Not one destination everybody crowds onto, but thousands of sharp, owned platforms built around audiences that already exist. If you have a catalogue and a following, the same thing is now available to you.
→ Want your own branded destination? Email us at hello@onthehiway.com and you could be live today.
Bully Lifestyle TV · bullylifestyle.tv
05 · FOOTBALL AND MUSIC
The Four Year Plan · Ad Hoc Films
Mat Hodgson’s QPR documentary, four years of boardroom cameras inside a club fighting its way to the Premier League, is now streaming worldwide direct on Hiway (UK viewers continue on Sky Sports). Ad Hoc Films is donating a share of proceeds to QPR in the Community Trust, automatically, on every sale. One title, global availability, territory-by-territory pricing, no infrastructure to build. Every rights holder reading this should look at the mechanics.
→ Watch: watch.onthehiway.com/2faugti3we
Ugly Little Monkeys · David E. Valdez
The story of the first youth mariachi in the United States, with Linda Ronstadt and Edward James Olmos. David was the very first person to use the Hiway. He skipped the streaming deal, became his own distributor, prices country by country, and the Mexican consulate is now distributing the film to consulates and embassies worldwide.
“If I’d gone with Netflix, I’d still have spent my own money on marketing. So I’d be spending exactly what I’m spending now, except now I get to see who’s buying and who isn’t.”
DAVID E. VALDEZ · EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
→ Watch: watch.onthehiway.com/gq7x6th3ny
→ Full interview: onthehiway.com/blog/ugly-little-monkeys-meet-david-valdez
06 · THE IDEA
Film never adopted affiliate marketing. Syndication fixes that.
UK brands put £1.7 billion into affiliate marketing last year and got back sixteen pounds for every one spent. Film never joined in because the plumbing did not exist. Now it does. Grant anyone a digital contract and a unique link at a split you choose. They promote your film to their audience, the stream never leaves your library, and the money splits automatically in real time. You do not even have to be a filmmaker to earn from it.
→ Pick three people with a following on social media, send them a digital contract, and see what happens. Full write-up from Zach’s Creative HQ session: onthehiway.com/blog/creativehq-clinic-with-hiways-zach-rothwell
07 · THE NETWORK
Three new marketing partners joined this month.
Creative HQ has taken Hiway into its producer community as the ownership layer under the work. MySmash Media made the introduction that became Scotflix, an entire national platform from one email. And SceneScreens, a social agency built for independent film, is partnering with us to help independent filmmakers market their content.
→ Reply with “webinar” for the date and the guide. And if you run a community, a festival or a school, tell me. We will build something together.
08 · WHAT’S COMING
A brand new interface, next month.
Rebuilt around the six things you actually come here to do. Store, manage, collaborate, market, monetise, track. Alongside it, a site builder for your own destination, custom domains, and branded wallets your customers top up and spend inside your world.
→ The people who get the most out of next month are the ones with content already loaded this month.
09 IN THE PRESS
The Scotsman announced the launch of Scotflix today. Read the story.
FOCUS London interviewed Zach to find out how a chance meeting at their event was the first step to the creation of Hiway. Read the interview.
The Scotsman · Scotflix launch coverage
10 BEFORE SEPTEMBER
Three things worth doing
→ Get your Scottish-connected titles into Scotflix before 12 September and go in as founding content.
→ Put your film on raindancereleasing.com before the marketing starts.
→ Load your library into Hiway now, so you are ready when the new interface lands.
And one small thing that helps everyone. Follow us on Instagram at @on_the_hiway and tag us when you post about your content. We will push it out to our followers.
The Hiway is open, and these days nobody has to open it for you.
Your Content. Your Fans. Your Money. Your Way. On the Hiway.
Sign up or book a demo and we will show you round.
See you next month.
David Orman
CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, HIWAY