If a studio wanted to re-release a film a few decades ago, they’d pull the reel from a vault, clean it up, and send it out into the world. Today, that same film might exist in half a dozen digital formats, scattered across servers and hard drives, mislabeled, duplicated, or missing key metadata. And if the metadata is wrong? It might as well not exist.
This is content decay, the slow-motion disappearance of media in the digital age—not because it’s been deleted, but because it’s been mismanaged into obscurity. And while streaming services chase the next big hit, the real crisis is happening behind the scenes. Studios are losing track of their own libraries—not because they don’t have them, but because they don’t know how to find them.
That’s where Dan Goman comes in. As the founder of Ateliere Creative Technologies, Goman has spent years arguing that metadata isn’t more than an administrative detail, determining whether content is able to remain valuable or will ultimately get lost in a fragmented archive. His company’s platform, Ateliere Connect, acts as a cloud-based control center for digital archives, restoring order to fragmented metadata and ensuring content remains accessible and ready for distribution. It’s a simple idea with huge implications: If studios want to make money off their content, they need to be able to find it first.
How the Industry Lost Control of Its Own Content
For an industry fixated on revisiting its past, Hollywood has a surprisingly careless approach to preserving it. If a film was shot on 35mm in the 1970s the chances are the physical reels still exist in a climate-controlled vault somewhere. But if a movie was produced digitally in the early 2000s there’s a decent chance it’s sitting in an outdated format, effectively inaccessible due to missing metadata or obsolete storage systems.
The shift to digital promised a seamless, future-proof way to store and manage content, but has instead simply introduced a new set of problems—ones the industry still hasn’t figured out. Unlike physical archives that remain static once preserved, digital collections require constant upkeep. Files need to be reformatted for new technology, metadata must be updated, and entire storage systems need to evolve with modern infrastructure, otherwise content gets trapped in a digital no man’s land.
Dan Goman has seen this play out firsthand. In his work helping studios modernize their archives, he’s found that the problem isn’t just technological—it’s structural. “Studios spent years assuming that going digital meant content would take care of itself,” he says. “But digital isn’t an endpoint—it’s a constantly evolving system. If you don’t invest in its upkeep, you lose control of your own library.”
The Cost of Metadata Neglect
The idea that a studio could lose track of its own content sounds absurd until you see how digital archives actually work. A studio might own thousands of films, but without clean, structured metadata those assets become functionally invisible. No one knows which version is cleared for distribution, which rights have expired, or whether a 4K remaster even exists, and if a piece of content can’t be found, it can’t be monetized. Back catalogs are more valuable than ever in the market today, and that’s money left on the table.
The problem isn’t just lost revenue—it’s wasted time. Licensing and distribution teams routinely spend weeks manually tracking down assets that should be accessible in seconds, and entire workflows stall because one file is missing the right metadata tag. Even when the right version is located there’s often no guarantee that it’s formatted correctly for the platform requesting it. A simple licensing deal—one that should take a few clicks—turns into a tedious, multi-department hunt through old servers and outdated spreadsheets.
Without a metadata system that identifies and eliminates redundant assets, studios also end up paying for the same content multiple times. Disorganized archives fill up with unnecessary files, inflating storage costs without adding value, and at a certain point it’s not even an archive—it’s a digital junkyard, full of assets that no one can effectively use.
Solving the Content Decay Crisis
As they currently exist, content libraries are sprawling, fragmented across aging systems, and riddled with inconsistencies that make even the most valuable assets hard to track. “If studios want to make money on their content, they need a single source of truth—a centralized, structured metadata hub that allows them to see and act on their entire catalog instantly,” says Dan Goman.
That’s exactly why Goman and his team built Ateliere Connect—a cloud-native media supply chain solution designed to cut through the chaos of fragmented archives and give media companies a centralized metadata hub, ensuring content stays organized and instantly accessible for distribution. Lionsgate, the independent studio known for blockbusters such as the Saw and Hunger Games franchises, partnered with Ateliere to streamline its metadata management. In centralizing its metadata, the studio was able to identify additional sales opportunities and enhance the speed of global content delivery. Rather than overhauling existing systems, the industry can achieve similar efficiencies by integrating tools that optimize and automate archival workflows.
One of the biggest barriers to fixing content decay is infrastructure bloat—studios are running on a tangled mix of old and new systems, each with its own quirks, storage formats, and security rules. Instead of forcing studios to rip everything out and rebuild, Ateliere Connect works with what’s already there. Its API bridges the gap between legacy databases and modern cloud-based solutions, allowing metadata to sync without disruption.
That integration is crucial because the industry isn’t dealing with a static archive—it’s constantly in motion. Every new deal, licensing agreement, or format change adds another layer of complexity. Without a centralized metadata system that updates in real time, the entire process slows down, creating more delays, confusion, and missed opportunities.
Storage isn’t just expensive—it’s inefficient when mismanaged. Studios end up paying to house multiple copies of the same asset, often with slight variations that make retrieval even more complicated. Ateliere’s FrameDNA technology eliminates duplicates, reducing storage costs while preserving metadata integrity. That means no more wasted space, no more redundant files clogging up servers, and no more uncertainty about which version is the definitive one.
But the real game-changer? Automation. In an industry that still relies on manual workflows to process, package, and distribute content, automating metadata tagging and distribution is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Ateliere’s automated workflows cut down processing times from weeks to minutes, ensuring content is always ready for licensing, streaming, or syndication without bottlenecks.
The Real Power in Hollywood Is in Distribution
Hollywood loves to talk about the art of making movies, but at the end of the day, studios aren’t in the business of filmmaking—they’re in the business of monetizing content. And right now, many of them are failing at that business. Not because they lack valuable IP, but because they can’t efficiently access, manage, or distribute what they already own. Their archives are stuck in outdated, siloed systems, slowing them down at a time when speed is everything.
The Hollywood of the future isn’t about who owns the most content—it’s about who can move the fastest. A massive film library means nothing if it’s buried under bad metadata, inaccessible files, and manual workflows that take weeks instead of minutes. The studios that thrive will be the ones that can license a title instantly, deliver it globally without friction, and optimize their archives for continuous revenue generation. Those that can’t? They’ll be stuck watching their competitors close deals first.
Dan Goman has been making this point for years: Cloud storage isn’t enough. Studios need to stop thinking of it as a passive vault and start treating it as an active, intelligent system. The real advantage isn’t just in storing content—it’s in using metadata, automation, and real-time distribution to make content instantly sellable. Lionsgate figured that out early, and their success with Ateliere proves that this isn’t just a theory—it’s the future. The only question is how long other studios will wait before they catch up.
