ArtistX

Inspiration

Would you invest in Drake if you knew him before he was famous? In the U.S., over 2 million arts (musicians) graduates exist, but less than 10% earn their primary income as artists, facing significant income disparities from streaming platforms like Spotify, where only 28% earning over $10,000/year are independent artists. Today, there are more and more up and coming artists who could be the next big thing, but it is notoriously difficult to make a successful career out of it. However, there is a demand, as people are continuously looking for undiscovered artists and their novel music. We wanted to provide a platform where people could discover using Spotify API and support their favorite rising artists to make people's dreams come true. Fans, crucial for artist success, find limited ways to influence or financially support their favorites directly, with 40% wanting to but unsure how, underscoring the need for platforms that facilitate better artist-fan engagement and support.

What it does

ArtistX is conceptualized as an Initial Artist Offering (IAO) platform, allowing fans to invest directly in an artist as an individual, rather than in their artwork. Each coin on ArtistEQ is linked to an artist and has a value correlated with key metrics like monthly Spotify listeners, number of album streams, etc. Fans are incentivized with dividends based on the future growth of these statistics, alongside other exclusive benefits like concert tickets, ArtistX coin-holder monthly mixers, and governance on items such as concert locations, merchandise designs, etc.

How we built it

The platform operates on Caldera, XRPL Ledger by Ripple and Algorand along with React Frontend. We built smart contract on solidity to facilitate governance tokens for fans like voting rights according to invested proportion and deployed them on caldera Caldera to lower transaction fees and increase speed. We also deployed an Automated market maker on ripple which provides liquidity to the pool 24/7. We used Algorand for issuance of tokens and new artist coins as well as facilitating Buy/Sell.

Challenges we ran into

We had a problem figuring out how to integrate multiple blockchain Ledgers but were eventually able to sort it out with the help of mentors.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We managed to create a AMM driven by an algorithm that provides 24/7 liquidity eradicating order-book system.To complete a proof of concept, we did interviews of 50+ stakeholders namely Artists and Fans from a Music Club at Berkeley . The survey helped us get first-hand inputs on the problems faced by these stakeholders.

Origami (Artist): “ I have been trying to pursue music as a full-time profession but I’m unable to do so because of low income to support family, healthcare expenses, low revenue from digital music.” Divyesh Murugan (Fan): “ I go to Cornerstone to specifically see this jazz artist and know the potential they have and wouldn’t mind supporting them financially.”

What we learned

We learnt how to built on cross function chains while reducing transaction costs for our users and increasing speed in Peer to Peer Decentralised transactions.

What's next for ArtistX

We want to actually put artists on the platform to start making an impact for them. In the long run, we'd like to expand to all types of artists, not just musicians.