Treasury Proposal: Content Curation System to acquire 'Mainstage' EDM Artist

This thread is to discuss the viability of using $35k of treasury funds to build a system that guarantees a ‘mainstage’ EDM artist’s launch on the Rally Network in the next ~6 weeks (basically as soon as dev is done). I do really believe that the way for Rally to get a real hold on the market, and make a meaningful (and repeatable!!!) splash, is to have really dope use cases and tools for Creator Coin. As Ray was saying on the community call two weeks ago, we have the ammo to test some dev concepts, and to make it even better this project has a lot of add-on benefits.

Please excuse some of the vagueness here, as I’ve tried to outline one of those concepts below without compromising the partner artist’s identity.

Our target launch is early-ish March so my plan is to put this prop up Weds 6PM if no massive pushback.

[BEGIN PROP]

Treasury Funding Proposal - Creator Coin Content Curation System

Rally has come across an exciting opportunity to pair development priorities with a mainstream music artist that puts Creator Coin at the center of their next major marketing push. To make full use of this rare chance, Business Development seeks approval from the Community Treasury to fund the development of a Creator Coin Content Curation system.

For the uninitiated, being a mainstream music artist means that you’re getting sent MANY demos (music tracks/projects) from unknown artists all the time. However, after taking a look at the market the Rally team has identified that there is no good/established system for the management and curation of these tracks. This is where our opportunity lies - to create a Content Curation system that will have applicable use not only for record labels and music artists, but also for streamers, and esports teams to organize songs and video clips for contests within their communities.

We believe that this project will put Rally at the forefront of new creators’ minds when considering new ways to grow their businesses - and strengthen our position in providing cool additional tools for our community to engage with using Creator Coins.

Development for this project consists of providing an initial build, after which the artist will be responsible for ongoing costs/hosting and maintenance:

  1. Concepting and UX of the system, including multi-page submission flow.
  2. Creation of a ‘media manager’ CMS for artists to receive and approve submissions for public display on a webpage of the artist’s choosing.
  3. CMS functionality to support the organization of submitted/approved tracks being assigned to various playlists designated by the artist.
  4. Submission flow to allow user submissions to be tied to a Creator Coin donation, for favorable placing on the media playlists.
  5. Front-facing media manager/playlist functionality to allow for ANY Rally user to donate Creator Coins to improve the standings of approved tracks/media.

Time required and budget to complete this project have been informed by both internal and external fullstack engineers, averaging approximately the following per chunk of the project:

Concepting ~16 hrs
Design (+Revisions) & Figma Walkthrough ~20 hrs
Frontend ~40 hrs
Backend ~100 hrs

Taking an average agency rate of $175/hr, total estimated budget is $30,800. Accounting for a ~15% contingency/scope brings us to a total of $35,000.

To justify this spend, we’re using Portugal. The Man’s performance on the Rally network as our primary reference point. Since officially launching on 1/14, $PTM has generated $20,000 in direct buys into their coin (no converts, treasury grants, or rewards counted) from approx. 200 unique users. These users were motivated by a sheer love of PTM, with the only immediately announced deliverable being exclusive Discord access to unlock their Fan-generated video archive.

Taking these numbers into account, we need a way to estimate the relative impact of the artist in question. The most relevant comparisons are demographic, social reach, and monthly plays.

Behold! Handwavey voodoo magic social reach comparisons (written as generalized multiples vs. PTM to maintain hidden artist identity):

Twitter: ~2x Followers
Instagram: ~3x Followers
Twitch: N/A (PTM doesn’t stream - this artist does, and they game!)

The first use of this app will be used for a multi-month (min. 3 mo. commitment) program to find new tracks for up-and-coming artists to get signed to their record label. This artist, when previously running a similar promo, would receive ~150 submissions per week. This will be run 3 times per month for approx. 400 monthly submissions with a monthly ‘grand finale’ where the artist chooses tracks to sign and reveals winners.

In addition to the above, the artist plans to relaunch their Discord, livestream, and podcast all in support of their coin launch (with a ‘maybe’ of exclusive merch drops).

Taking the above into account, we believe it is safe to assume the artist in question will perform at least as well as PTM over their first 30 days on name and social reach alone. Add in the monetization potential from up from artists and fans promoting tracks using the artist’s coins - plus other exclusive stream/access benefits (podcast q’s, private streams, dj sets, song requests) - and we have a killer opportunity to grow interest in Rally.

[Quantitative Goals over 90 day period]
400+ Unique Account Signups & Buys
3 Add’l Creators to use product (12 in 180 days)
$50,000+ monetization through buys & donates

[Qualitative Goals over 90 day period]
Mainstream press recognition for pioneering unique music+crypto usecase
Data gathering of new demographic

To honor the relationship with the artist that inspired the concept, this system will have an exclusive usage window for 30 days before being opened to add’l Rally creators.

A ‘Yes’ vote will approve $35,000 from the Community Treasury to be used for development of this Creator Coin Content Curation system, and to lock in 1 top-tier artist.

A ‘No’ vote will make this prop GTFO.

[END PROP]

Thx for taking the time to read! Happy to answer any and all questions.

1 Like

Should we not see how our Investment in the music industry with Portugal goes then address other adventures. There seems to be a lot of infrastructure we need to build. Rally is still working out the kinks in rewards, CCs and vaults. If we cannot get those straight how can we move to bigger projects like this.

You’re totally right - there’s a lot of infrastructure and other pieces being built, and the timeline of this project lines up quite nicely with those network improvements.

Which Portugal investment are you referring to? To my knowledge, we haven’t invested any treasury dollars to PTM aside from their initial $PTM coin grant.

Don’t forget how big the music industry is, and varied across genres too - EDM is much better aligned with gaming as well (and the Twitch audience in general).

$RLY Grant - Josh Katz Music Agency… I stand corrected it was this proposal that passed unless I am confusing the purpose.

I would like to see the data on our other type of Creators contributions.

If we do build something should we not explore a “cookie cutter” solution, so we can apply it to every Creator and get a better bang or our Rally. We can have a basic platform and then have add ons for specific types of Creators.

This also begs to ask the question… do we have a checklist for holding projects accountable for their progress/failure.

Ah you said the ‘investment in the music industry with Portugal’, so I had thought you meant them specifically. Yes I’m excited to see the outcome as well - but we still have funds available to deploy and so we should use them. The more irons we have in the fire, the better, IMO!

Which data are you interested in, what do you mean? Please be specific with requests like that, it’ll save us back-and-forth so you can actually get the answers you want.

Yes, cookie cutter solutions are great. How do you define cookie cutter, though? Maybe we’re losing something in wording because I stated this product is applicable to every creator category on the platform in the second paragraph.

“applicable use not only for record labels and music artists, but also for streamers, and esports teams to organize songs and video clips for contests within their communities.”

The checklist for holding projects accountable varies each project (as you’ve heard from others in the community) and are outlined in every proposal. Please review above the quantitative and qualitative metrics - if you have any concrete recommendations or specific feedback I’m all ears.

I’ll message you on Discord so you can ask other questions there instead - let’s keep this thread focused on the prop and the dev build.

This is an excellent idea. My only feedback is that the incentive structure needs to be aligned with all parties involved so that the donation isn’t perceived as a bribe.

Totally agree on alignment of incentive structure - it’s being positioned essentially as ad space to be able to spend coin to boost a track to increase the odds of it being played onstream.

Thx all for the feedback (and in DMs on Discord and other group talks) - submitting this to Snapshot now.

1 Like