Half your revenue, or more, never comes back.
A traditional distributor typically keeps 50% to 70% of what your film earns. It holds the audience data and pays months after the sale. Hiway changes all three defaults.
Traditional distribution exists because infrastructure used to be expensive and global reach was hard to buy. Neither is true now. A distributor typically keeps 50% to 70%, leaving 30% to 50% for you, often after a long wait. Hiway returns 90% of every sale in real time, with the audience data you earned.
| Feature | Hiway | Traditional distributors |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue share | You keep 90% of every sale | 30% to 50% reaches you, the distributor keeps the rest |
| Payout cadence | Real time, sale to Stripe to your account | Quarterly, a 90 day delay is common |
| Audience data | Yours, exports to CSV any time | Theirs, you receive aggregated reports |
| Rights windows | Your call, editable any time | Locked to a multi-year agreement |
| Relationships and doors | Not offered, you sell direct | A real strength, theatrical, broadcast, platforms |
| International reach | Any destination you bring, syndication-ready | Sub-agents, territory by territory |
| Festival and press tools | Screener Rooms with forensic watermarking | Physical screeners or generic streaming |
| Live and events | Built in | Not supported |
| Reporting | Real-time dashboards, per title and per territory | PDFs, spreadsheets, delays |
| Commitment | Month to month, cancel any time | Typically a 5 to 10 year rights deal |
A distributor earns its cut when it opens doors you cannot. Theatrical bookings, broadcast deals, physical media and territory-by-territory sales agents all run on relationships built over years. If your film needs that machinery, take the deal. Read the grant of rights carefully first.
Hiway suits the rights nobody else is using. Direct sales to the audience you already have, festival screeners, ticketed live events and the territories a distributor left on the table. You keep 90% of every sale, paid in real time, and every buyer lands in a CRM you own.
This is rarely a choice between the two. Hiway is non-exclusive with no minimum term. It usually runs alongside the agreement you have already signed, and covers the rights that agreement never touched.
Not a launch-window rate. 10% on pay-per-view, for as long as you are on Hiway.
Every buyer enters your CRM. Export, email and remarket. The relationship is yours rather than rented.
Revenue, data and reports arrive as they happen. There is no quarterly statement to wait for.
Reprice, re-window and re-territory whenever you want. No lawyer, no renegotiation, no waiting.
Sell direct when you want the margin, syndicate when you want the reach. One dashboard, one payout stream.
Cancel any time and take your catalogue and your audience with you. There is no exit fee.
You do not have to leave a deal to start. Work out which rights you actually granted, then sell the ones you kept.
Most agreements name specific territories, windows and media. Whatever the contract does not name is usually still yours to sell yourself.
The free account is permanent and gives you 5 GB and one piece of media. Enough to run a real title through the whole flow first.
Set price, window and territory per title. A film locked into one territory can still sell everywhere else from the same link.
Every buyer lands in a CRM you own and export to CSV. That list outlives the deal, which a distributor report never does.
When the current agreement ends you will already have the audience, the pricing history and the real numbers. That is a much better position from which to decide what happens next.
Roughly double. A traditional distributor typically keeps 50% to 70%, so 30% to 50% reaches you, often after fees and a long wait. On Hiway you keep 90% of every sale, paid in real time into your own Stripe account.
It gives you the audience. Every buyer lands in a CRM you own and export to CSV, and you set price, window and territory yourself. A distributor gives you reach and relationships instead, and hands back reports rather than the list.
No. Hiway is non-exclusive and there is no minimum term. Most rights holders use it for the rights their distributor does not hold. Direct sales, festival screeners, live events and the territories nobody bought.
When you need doors you cannot open on your own. Theatrical bookings, broadcast, physical media and output deals with the large platforms all run through relationships a distributor already has. That is worth paying for. The audience data is not.
Start free, set your first SmartLink live today, and see what 90% actually looks like.
