A complete platform offering artists essential tools for funding and promoting their work
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Crowdfunding Platform for Musicians

A complete platform offering artists essential tools for funding and promoting their work

About the client

The client is a technology-driven startup with a strong background in the music industry. Their primary focus is on empowering young and talented musicians, allowing them to fund their projects without heavily relying on intermediaries.

Details

  • Location:USA
  • Date:2024

Our team collaborated closely with the client to refine their idea for a music crowdfunding platform. We provided assistance in creating the solution architecture and selecting an appropriate tech stack to meet their project needs.

Business opportunity

Having deep expertise in the music sector, the client discovered that many artists struggle to fund their music production due to high costs. Moreover, the music industry frequently suffers unequal revenue distribution and opaque copyright management.

  • Entry barriers

    Many artists find it hard to bring their music to life. This struggle extends beyond just initial stages of production, encompassing the equally challenging process of promotion.

    When an artist approaches a label for help with production and promotion, they often face expensive quotes, making it financially difficult to proceed. This issue hinders artist’s ability to reach broader audiences and directly limits their careers.

  • Inequitable revenue distribution

    Another problem is that the prevailing revenue model often leaves artists only with a small fraction of the earnings from their work, while intermediaries, such as large record labels and streaming platforms, capture significant portions of the income.

  • Project idea

    To combat these challenges, the client wanted to create a platform that would allow easily setting up crowdfunding campaigns, enabling fans to contribute to artist’s projects financially. This platform should enhance collaboration between artists, record labels, and music fans.

    While having a general idea of their project and core platform features in mind, the client was searching for an IT consulting firm that would help them finalize their vision to ensure effective solution implementation. After reviewing our projects, they entrusted our team with this mission.

Project goals

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Work done

  • Finalized required functionality and product roadmap
  • Assessed the technical feasibility of the client’s idea and developed a high-level architecture for the project
  • Advised on the suitable tech stack
  • Prepared technical documentation allowing for immediate development

    Solution

    The solution is a music crowdfunding platform that links artists, record labels, and fans. It lets record labels and musicians set up crowdfunding campaigns for their projects, thereby allowing fans to directly support their favorite artists. In exchange for their contributions, fans would receive a share of the streaming revenue, benefiting both artists and their supporters.

    The solution will mainly focus on copyright transactions, talent support, and crowdfunding.

    Got an idea? Let’s make it a reality.

    Details

    Crowdfunding platform for musicians

    The future platform will enable record labels to manage their artists’ portfolios, invite new artists, and create crowdfunding campaigns for various projects, such as albums, video clips, and concert organization, all in a single place. This will help streamline and simplify the process of bringing new music and entertainment ventures to the public.Furthermore, it will offer portfolio statistics and analytics dashboards, thereby providing record labels with a 360-degree view of all their projects and eliminating the need for switching between multiple systems and documents.

    The client’s platform will allow talented artists to swiftly receive funding and support, thus addressing the challenge of the traditional gatekeeping of the music industry.Using the platform, artists will have a chance to create and manage crowdfunding campaigns with ease, tracking balance, project status, and revenue amounts. This will not only democratize access to funding and promotion but also create a more inclusive and diverse music ecosystem.

    Users will be able to participate in crowdfunding and directly support artists they listen to through the platform. They will have the opportunity to support specific projects (such as tracks and performances) as well as purchase copyrights and merchandise.To ensure complete visibility into all the campaigns a user participates in, we suggested the client add user dashboards. These dashboards will display all relevant statistics, including lists of artists or labels a user follows, records of crowdfunding campaigns they have participated in, purchase history, and more.

    User roles

    Admin user role

    Admin

    Invites artists and record label representatives to the platform, initiates KYC/AML verification process, manages and tracks all projects submitted for moderation and all content on the platform, as well as publishes news and updates.

    Record label user role

    Record label

    Selects and invites artists, creates projects for crowdfunding, and tracks analytics.

    Artist user role

    Artist

    Lists their projects, requests a certificate of copyright ownership, creates crowdfunding campaigns, tracks revenue, and views analytics.

    Fan user role

    Fan

    Subscribes to various artists and projects, listens to tracks, participates in crowdfunding campaigns to support favorite musicians and projects, and purchases copyright ownership and merchandise.

    Technologies and tools

    Concentrating on the business side of the solution, the client required guidance to define the core technology stack for their platform's architecture. Our team created a high-level architecture for the solution and suggested relevant technologies for project implementation.
    • Node.js
    • Nest
    • Kubernetes
    • Grafana
    • Sentry
    • Elasticsearch

    Microservices-based architecture

    We recommended a microservices-based architecture for the platform to guarantee its scalability, especially considering the anticipated high volume of concurrent users and the diverse functionality required.

    Furthermore, the use of microservices will ensure quicker updates, enhanced reliability, and ease of maintenance.

    Application management

    To manage and orchestrate these microservices, we suggested employing Kubernetes, an open-source solution for automating the deployment, management, and scaling of application containers.

    This choice was driven by the technology’s ability to provide a robust, production-ready environment that can handle the dynamic nature of the platform, ensuring seamless scalability and high availability to accommodate the platform's growth and the fluctuating demands of its user base.

    Server/container monitoring

    For seamless server/container monitoring, we recommended the following set of technologies:

    • VictoriaMetrics & Gafana

      This combination will allow for efficient handling of metrics collection and analysis.

    • Promtail & Loki

      For efficient log collection and storage, we chose Promtail and Loki. This pairing ensures seamless integration and efficient log processing capabilities.

    • Sentry

      For code errors and warnings management our team selected Sentry. It provides real-time error tracking and aggregation, which helps in identifying and debugging issues swiftly.

    • Elasticsearch, APM, & Kibana

      This combination of tools will ensure powerful searching capabilities, performance monitoring, and data visualization.

    User roles

    Comprehensive crowdfunding capabilities

    Comprehensive crowdfunding capabilities

    Advanced analytics dashboards

    Advanced analytics dashboards

    Intuitive portfolio management

    Intuitive portfolio management

    Convenient revenue tracking

    Convenient revenue tracking

    KYC/AML verification

    KYC/AML verification