It would be generally assumed that after delivering a major independent box office success, despite the many hardships in the way, it would be easier for a creator to find a digital streaming home for their smash hit. And Markiplier, a.k.a, Mark Fishbach, the famous YouTuber, would have also thought the same after stunning everyone with his independent venture Iron Lung that rocked the domestic box office charts. With $50M made over a $3M budget, any streaming service, any digital platform would be lying in wait to gobble it up for their audience. But YouTube is a different case.

Markiplier’s blockbuster just hit a wall with YouTube over its distribution restrictions, and the people are just curious why.

It has really baffled many that YouTube blocked a beloved YouTuber’s massively hit movie from being sold directly on his channel. After years of building an audience on the platform, it only made sense that Markiplier would bring his film, Iron Lung, to YouTube first. But it is not that simple, and he echoed the same in a recent livestream.

“You can’t just take a video and put it up on YouTube and sell it as a movie. You’d think it would work that way… I thought it worked that way because I’m a YouTuber,” said Markiplier about the situation.

Despite being the biggest distribution platform in the world, YouTube is not a distributor, and it is a bizarre fact. It enters into agreements with aggregators, businesses that package, standardize, and distribute material at scale while managing the rights clearances, metadata, and formatting for the movies and TV series that viewers buy or rent. Basically, everything that a platform would not want to manage for thousands of filmmakers.

While this system works for the rest of the world, it just does not work for an independent creator who comes from YouTube with his own audience, his own funding, and distribution. Even after signing with several aggregators, he would have to give up certain rights, which would be a huge downside for the creator.

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So, what did he do as he somehow has to release it digitally, or what is the point then?

Markiplier had to do something to get his movie to his audience, who have been waiting for its digital release. He did what anyone in his shoes would have done: he worked out a compromise. Following what he described as an "arduous legal process" that involved speaking with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan directly, YouTube consented to be Iron Lung's sole digital home. But this is an exception made by the platform, and Markiplier has vowed to change that.

He is going for a new system, one that would allow any filmmaker to access YouTube distribution without the middleman. Markiplier hopes to become an aggregator himself. Iron Lung and Markiplier are outliers in a system that is not fair for independent creators, but the YouTuber and filmmaker hopes to change that, as they will not be the sole outliers for long.

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What do you think of Markiplier's decision to change the system for independent creators? Do you think it would work? Share your thoughts.