Hendrik Hey’s MILC Positions Itself as the Standard for Digital Media Infrastructure

Media moves fast, but the systems behind it are still stuck in the past. Licensing is fragmented, cross-border deals take months, and intermediaries eat into revenue while slowing down distribution. Creators are left chasing contracts instead of audiences. Studios are forced to manage rights with PDF attachments and legal back-and-forth when audiences expect on-demand content. The gap between content creation and management has grown wider with every new wave of digital innovation.

This is the gap Hendrik Hey, founder of MILC (Media Industry Licensing Content), set out to close. His company has built a live, Web3-powered infrastructure designed to modernize how intellectual property is created, licensed, and monetized. At the core is the Rights Marketplace, a system that brings media rights into the blockchain era, ensuring transparency, speed, and enforceability across borders. More than a single platform, MILC has become a blueprint for how media can finally operate at the pace of digital culture.

From Fragmented Systems to a Unified Model

For decades, media ownership has been defined by fragmentation. A single piece of content might have one owner in Germany, another in Spain, and a third in the United States. Each territory meant another round of paperwork, more intermediaries, and higher costs. Independent creators were particularly disadvantaged, left unable to compete with studios that had the legal and financial power to navigate those hurdles.

MILC’s Rights Marketplace was designed to end this. By tokenizing intellectual property – whether film, television, music, or gaming – MILC makes rights traceable and tradable in one global system. Tokens minted on the platform are tied to legal frameworks, giving them enforceability in practice. They aren’t speculative collectibles. They are real digital assets with rights attached.

This opens new possibilities. Rights holders can fractionalize ownership, raising capital on their terms. Creators can license directly to distributors without waiting for intermediaries. Studios can execute complex cross-border deals in hours rather than months. Smart contracts automate royalty flows. Metadata stored on-chain removes errors and disputes.

The system is already live. According to MILC’s investor memorandum, the Rights Marketplace manages an IP library valued at €30 million, with €15 million from its Series B round allocated to its expansion. “MILC is the infrastructure layer where immersive content lives, evolves, and, crucially, earns,” says Hey. “We are not just building a platform. We are architecting the protocol that will power the immersive content economies of the next decade.”

Redefining Ownership and Monetization

The real innovation is not only in how rights are managed but in how value is distributed. Traditional systems placed control in the hands of intermediaries. MILC shifts that control back to creators. Tokens minted on the platform represent actual rights that can be sold, licensed, or traded directly.

For filmmakers, this means the ability to raise funding by selling partial ownership of their projects. For music labels, it means licensing globally with built-in royalties that execute automatically. For investors, it means access to revenue streams grounded in real intellectual property, not speculation.

The secondary market is just as transformative. Once rights are tokenized, they can be resold or re-licensed with clarity. Smart contracts ensure royalties flow instantly and accurately. That eliminates the costly audits and long disputes that have defined entertainment law. Transparency is no longer the exception but the default.

The economic potential is vast. Industry forecasts project the global intellectual property licensing market will grow from USD 340 billion in 2024 to USD 580 billion by 2030. Even a modest slice of that market would represent enormous potential for MILC’s infrastructure. 

Beyond Media: The Foundation for What Comes Next

The Rights Marketplace is the centerpiece, but it doesn’t stand alone. It plugs into MILC’s broader infrastructure tools for AI-assisted production, immersive metaverse distribution, and compliance-ready token frameworks. Together, they form the backbone of a digital ecosystem that extends far beyond film and television.

Already, MILC’s model is being piloted in other sectors. Live events are testing tokenized licensing. Education platforms are exploring how to secure digital learning rights. Even sustainable energy systems are leveraging similar blockchain-based approaches to track and manage resources transparently. These early projects demonstrate how MILC’s model can serve as a cross-industry standard wherever ownership and transparency are critical.

Europe provides the right conditions for this work. Frameworks like GDPR, MiCA, and the AI Act ensure that innovation comes with accountability.

There’s more to come. MILC is preparing to announce new partnerships that extend its reach across industries and borders. These deals, still under wraps, hint at a next phase that will move from pilots to scaled deployments. If the early projects are any indication, MILC’s infrastructure will not remain confined to media. It will set the tone for how tokenized rights and decentralized systems shape entire industries.

About MILC

Hendrik Hey is the Founder of MILC (Media Industry Licensing Content), a pioneering company in the blockchain and metaverse space, with a strong background in media and content. MILC operates a real live metaverse platform that serves not only the media industry but also various industrial use cases. The company also focuses on Web3 consulting, aiming to support complex real-world industries on their way into Web3. MILC is a sister company of European media giant Welt der Wunder, which Hey founded over 25 years ago.