Do media assets for media and entertainment (M&E) production companies need to be available globally? The answer from industry thought leaders is a resounding, “Yes.”

Storj surveyed 500 M&E leaders in the US and UK to gather insights on the changing M&E landscape (see full report - no wall). 41% of respondents said it is “very important” to access media via media asset management (MAM) or collaboration tools in multiple global regions. Another 36% rated global availability as “important.”

These findings highlight that while many media productions and post-production work will remain hybrid, global access to media files is critical.

M&E vendor perspectives on media access.

When asked what regions M&E companies need media access, Eric Tang, Co-founder of  Livepeer, responded, “It’s global. I think Covid opened up people’s willingness to having a remote workforce. Now you have access to a global talent pool is better for all companies but it also increases the requirement for access in all regions.”

Tang added that previously some (M&E) companies “only needed access to data within a few locations, maybe on-prem, but now they need global access.”

Floyd Christofferson, VP Product Marketing at Hammerspace, shared his perspective on what regions need access to media. “Earth. Anywhere in our solar system is a likely candidate for that data,” says Floyd Christofferson. “We’ve got customers, for example, that may start with a project in London, but run out of resources. But there might be a team sitting in Cape Town, South Africa or Melbourne, Australia or in L.A. They need to be able to respond and respond quickly because their customers are not going to wait around for them (production companies) to figure it out.”

Benefits of global accessibility for post-production.

Survey respondents weighed in on the benefits of global access. Specifically, the top 4 benefits indicate it accelerates collaboration, allows post teams to work with the best talent, saves money, and helps meet deadlines.

Mattia Varriale, Sales Director, Backlight, highlights the benefits of global media access. “The benefits are a distributed workforce and also a distributed customer base. You can have customers all over the world, whether you’re a US company with customers in Europe or vice versa. This opens up possibilities for both your business and your customers.”

Watch the full interview video featuring M&E technology thought leaders for more compelling insights.

Global media access is simple with the distributed cloud.

As productions and post-productions go global, M&E companies are increasingly shifting assets into the cloud. However, many studios and post-production houses have quickly become frustrated by hyperscaler costs and configuration challenges.

The distributed cloud offers a single global region of cloud storage at the price of a single region of other providers. This makes it a simple and affordable solution for global collaboration. Using a global network of tens of thousands of nodes, distributed cloud storage allows remote production teams to upload from any location, enabling editors around the globe fast access to media files.

Storj also offers Object Mount, the NAB 2025 Product of the Year for cloud storage and compute. Object Mount enables post-production resources to view and edit files in any object storage with the ease and speed of local desktop access.  

Get more insights in the report 5 Ways the distributed cloud solves hybrid media workflow issues (no wall). Or visit storj.io to learn how Storj is drastically improving media workflows and budgets. To learn more about globally global collaboration for M&E, visit https://www.storj.io/solutions/global-cloud-storage-and-file-access.