UPDATE: 12/28: A legally binding, 5-year exclusivity agreement has been executed between Feedbands, LLC and Dash Core.
UPDATE 12/22: New festival artists announced! Combined Facebook reach over 875,000 people – all performing artists agree to post about Dash and it’s benefits.
This proposal is for a powerful entry for Dash into the music space with exclusive platform integration, a music festival, promotion from popular artists, and a projected 28,001 to 41,002 Dash acquisitions:
The First “Only-Spend-Dash Event:
A three-day “Only-Spend-Dash” musical event in the heart of Austin: Free walk-up admission to the general public. Outdoor venue. 15 of the best artists our crowdsource platform has identified out of 3400. 1500 important stakeholders (ceos, engineers, founders, bloggers, musicians in town that week ) will get loaded with Dash to spend in the real world for the first time on beer, t-shirts and vinyl. By selling beer for 25 cents in Dash, we can demonstrate the microtransaction use case and draw in large crowds.
Performing artist’s promotion: Each artist performing at our festival is contractually required to post about Dash and it’s features on their facebook, reaching 500,000 people over 875,000 people. These posts will be boosted to reach the entire audience. Videos of performances will be filmed by a team from *Vice* and tagged and uploaded to youtube. Each performing artist will be contractually required to also talk about Dash and it’s core benefits on stage.
Exclusive Platform Integration:
Deep integration of Dash into Feedbands platform: In a crypto-industry first, we’ll integrate Dash and become the first platform (website and apps) in the world to let musicians easily earn cryptocurrency (dash exclusively) selling their music and merch online. The 3400 artists we serve currently and the new artists that sign up for Feedbands every day will be required to create dash wallets.
Widely Publicize the Launch: To widely publicize the launch of our new crypto-music platform, we’ll enlist enterprise-level PR and we’ll make sure that publicity communicates the advantages of Dash. Goal is to reach an audience of 1 million through placements.
Internet ads and artist signups: We’re going to run an ad campaign across reddit, facebook and google letting musicians know they can easily earn cryptocurrency selling their music and merch on Feedbands. Creating a Dash wallet will be a requirement of the signup process.
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/29003057/dashstage3.jpg
(actual stage size and design for event – Design by Maude Glendon, Chief Design Officer of Feedbands)
How many people will this bring to Dash?
3400 artists currently on Feedbands required to create dash wallets
1500 people at the Feedbands Festival who create dash wallets to spend on beer, t-shirts and vinyl
A percentage of the 875,000+ people who see the performing artists’ facebook posts and buy some Dash online. Conservative estimate 1,000 (0.12 percent) – 10,000 (1.2 percent)
A percentage of the people who hear the artists talk about dash on-stage but did not create a Dash wallet at the event: Estimate: 1000
New artists signing up to Feedbands, as a result of ads and PR (80k budget) who are required to have Dash wallets: Conservative estimate 10,000
People learning about Dash from the PR placements who then decide to buy some Dash: Estimate: 10,000
People learning about Dash from the youtube videos of our artists performances: Estimate: 1000
Fans who create dash wallets to try out paying artists in Dash: 1,000 to 5,000
Founders and CEOs who hear about our initiative and decide to integrate Dash into their business: 1 to 2
Estimate total: 28,901 – 41,902 dash acquisitions
Cost of initiative $500,000
Est. cost per acquisition: $11.93 – $17.30
*full itemized budget posted below*
UPDATE 12/22: NEW FESTIVAL ARTISTS ANNOUNCED! COMBINED ARTIST PROMOTION WILL NOW REACH OVER 875,000 PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK:
Larkin Poe: 300k facebook followers, 900k video views this week, 1.9m post reach this week (signed agreement)
Faded Paper Figures: 24k Facebook Fans (signed agreement)
The Movement: 49k Facebook Fans (signed agreement)
Brad Sucks: 19k Facebook Fans
The Native Howl (inventors of Thrash Grass): 95k Facebook Fans (signed agreement)
The Cool Kids: 240k facebook fans (signed agreement)
Marbin: 146k facebook fans (signed agreement)
Mammoth Indigo: 4k facebook fans
The Vliets: 3k fans
AmyCanBe: 10k fans
Raggy Monster: 4k fans
Royal Jelly Jive: 4k fans
Sea At Last
Ava Marie
Thrown Out Bones
The Acid House
Opusoid
Brother Grand
As stated in the signed agreements, every artist is required to post about Dash on their Facebook. We already have been granted advertiser permissions on all their Facebook pages and will be boosting their posts to make sure the posts reach their entire audience of 875,000 people with the message that Dash is the only cryptocurrency with InstantSend, Transaction fees less than a cent, and a Treasury to fund proposals.
https://youtu.be/Nov5ckns1X0
(video by Maude Glendon, Chief Design Officer of Feedbands)
Strong Pre-Proposal Support In the Forum:
Regarding the festival:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-dash-sxsw-music-festival.18393/#post-151281
Regarding the platform integration:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-rollout-to-thousands-of-independent-musicians.18392/#post-150027
As part of our integration of DASH as the sole form of payment for music and merch between fans and artists on our platform (website and apps), all of our artists now and in the future would be required to create dash wallets to continue selling their music and merch on Feedbandst. Similar, website visitors would be required to create dash wallets to buy music and merch from artists.
All existing checkout buttons would be replaced with Buy with Dash buttons, pictured below:
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/15004821/buydash800.jpg
(Website + Integration Design by Maude Glendon, Chief Design Officer of Feedbands)
About Feedbands
Feedbands is a startup that streams music on its website and apps. All music is for sale with 100% of the sales going to artists. Members also vote on the music, and the top voted artists get pressed to vinyl every month. Since we started in 2012 we have released over 50 vinyl records. Two of our artists have been signed to major record labels after their vinyl release with us. One of our artists won the Tiny Desk competition last year.
Although we pass 100% of all music and merch sales directly to the artist, we generate all our profits from our monthly vinyl release, and have been profitable from the first month we launched vinyl (May 2013).
Feedbands has been featured in:
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20055940/Screen-Shot-2017-12-18-at-2.50.25-PM.png
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/11/19/6-vinyl-subscription-services-perfect-for-the-music-lover-in-your-life/#788e73ba774d
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20055948/Screen-Shot-2017-12-18-at-2.50.32-PM.png
https://www.usatoday.com/story/popcandy/2013/06/12/feedbands/2414687/
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20055924/Screen-Shot-2017-12-18-at-2.50.47-PM.png
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/09/feedbands-farm-wants-bands-to-come-play-spend-the.html
Consequence of Sound
https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/01/how-feedbands-is-turning-the-world-on-to-new-independent-artists/
Digital Music News:
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2013/07/31/feedbands/
Analog Planet:
https://www.analogplanet.com/content/subscription-based-vinyl-service-feedbands
Mountain Express
https://mountainx.com/arts/feedbands-farm-and-streaming-service-gets-cooking-in-wnc/
The Vinyl Factory:
https://thevinylfactory.com/news/vinyl-subscription-service-feedbands-launches-farm-to-literally-feed-bands/
Project Team:
https://youtu.be/Gf2KxHbBaGA
Graham Langdon – Founder / CEO of Feedbands.com – [email protected]
Graham Langdon is a 32 year entrepreneur and proud member of Dash Nation who is passionate about music. He has spent over $600,000 in Google Adwords growing his companies (proof) and nearly a million dollars across various forms of internet advertising. Graham is a visionary who regularly brings his visions into reality, an internet advertising veteran, expert split tester and campaign optimizer and a human being who lives with integrity and passion. The decentralized, autonomous structure of Dash’s governance is one of the most fascinating and exciting things Graham has ever seen on the internet and Graham wants to do everything in his power to support and work with DASH long term.
Maude Glendon – Chief Design Officer – Feedbands.com [email protected]
Maude is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and has designed the Feedbands.com website and every page of it. She has also designed all of our flyers, marketing material and ads for the last three years. She is an expert at designing edgy, artistic appealing branding, website design and app design. She’ll be designing signage, web implementations, and everything else we need, design wise. She’s kind of like the Leonardo Da Vinci of design and video, and we’re slightly paranoid that Dash Core will try to poach her.
Nevill Nguyen – CTO – [email protected]
Nevill is our full-stack engineer and sys admin and he is damn good at what he does.
Jerry Ricciotti – HBO Vice’s Director of Photography (http://jerryricciotti.com/) -Ricciotti’s work includes 47 episodes of HBO’s TV Series documentary Vice as managing Director of Photography between 2014-2017. He has also been involved as DP in many other documentary style projects, including Black Market with Michael K. Williams, Woman with Gloria Steinem, Vice News Tonight, and others. Prior to his current role as Director of Photography, Ricciotti had worked as both an editor and producer in other TV series documentaries. Jerry will be the video lead, tasked with recording, editing and producing Dash branded video for all the performance sets of the artists.
Jerry will be our video lead, bringing his team from Vice to shoot and edit all the performance sets from our festival.
High Beam Even Production and Management: https://highbeamevents.com/ High Beam is known for show-stopping live events in Austin.
AMW Group – http://www.amworldgroup.com/ A high powered PR firm who’s clients include the NFL, Audi, Mercedes Benz, Red Bull, Coors Lite, Virgin, Macy’s, and the NBA. They’re going to help us get the word out to the world that there’s a way for musicians to earn cryptocurrency, and why Feedbands chose Dash as that cryptocurrency.
Anthony Fantano – aka The Needle Drop – https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledropAnthony Fantano is the most popular music critic on the internet. With over a million subscribers on his youtube channel, he is a key partner in generating publicity. We’re partnering with him on two activations before our music festival, as well as his personal channel.
This is what the Austin streets look like during our “Only-Spend-Dash” event:
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/15011844/austin.jpg
The event will be held during another festival, which spans the entire city of Austin and draws a hundred thousand founders, ceos, engineers, journalists, bloggers, filmmakers and musicians into the streets. We are currently in talks and engaged in the process of making our event an official SXSW event, but at this time cannot guarantee it. By having an event open to the general public, people will not need tickets to enter.
The location:
Here is a satellite view of the lot where we will hold the event. It is the size of an entire city block. We have already negotiated the the lease and their lawyers have prepared the lease agreement. This is a perfect outdoor, walk-up, free admission location right in the heart of Austin.
https://dsd7huazccen8.cloudfront.net/vinyl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20144848/lot.jpg
A Sample of the Confirmed Performing Artists for the “Only-Spend-Dash” event:
We’re bringing in top talent from all over the world. In the last five years, 3400 artists have submitted their music to Feedbands. Our members have streamed it, voted on it, and determined these artists are the best. The collective Facebook Fanbase of our performing artists is approximately 500,000 over 850,000.
Larkin Poe
https://youtu.be/JE8s3wbb1_0
Raggy Monster
https://youtu.be/6kxVLtkVjYs
Faded Paper Figures
https://youtu.be/oprfr8XR_D8
These are just a handful of the confirmed artists. We’ve already received signed commitments from 10 artists and are expecting five more this week. This will be a memorable event in music history.
What is an “Only-Spend-Dash” event?
An “Only-Spend-Dash” or OSD event is an event where all commerce inside the gates happens in Dash. People can only spend dash, hence the designation “Only-Spend-Dash.” To our knowledge, this would be the first “Only-Spend-Dash” event ever. Imagine the possibilities of larger OSD events in the future. Weeklong events with hundreds of food trucks and vendors and musical groups, and all the commerce all week long happening in Dash. That is the greater vision.
Quick Poll: Who here has actually spent Dash in the real world?
Even Dash’s most fervent supporters have not spent Dash in the real world. We cannot wait to start making real world Dash transactions to start happening. Feedbands is proud to create an environment where so many people will use Dash in the real world for the first time.
This is not a giveaway
We are of the opinion that giving away Dash cheapens it. People will be paying for the equivalent amount in Dash. People will purchase a Dash hat, bumper sticker, t-shirt or pin for $1, $5, $10, or $20 and that will come with the equivalent amount of Dash sent to their wallet. We’ll have a dedicated team of 6 people helping to download dash wallets, explain how it works, and get them loaded up.
5 Year Exclusivity until 2023
UPDATE: Dash Core’s lawyers are drafting a legally binding exclusivity agreement and we will be signing it immediately upon receipt and confirming in the comments.
Feedbands will make DASH the exclusive crypto accepted on it’s site and apps for payments to artists for music and merch for 5 years. This means that until January 2023 DASH will be the only form of payment accepted for music and merch sold by artists on Feedbands. We reserve the right to re-evaluate this partnership in 2023 as the cryptocurrency space will likely have evolved much in 5 years and we ultimately want to be an effective platform for our most important stakeholders: musicians.
How can the DASH network trust Feedbands to do what it is promising?
Internet based businesses live and die by their reputation. Feedbands has an excellent reputation and is a company that has been in existence for 5 years and yet you won’t find a single complaint about us on the internet. People love us. We release awesome vinyl records for awesome artists. Every month, thousands of customers trust us to deliver the t-shirts and vinyl when we charge their credit card. Every month, the artists we work with trust us to have taken all the necessary steps with all the appropriate vendors to get their vinyl records and t-shirts made. They trust us to pay them. So far, we haven‘t let anyone down, and we don’t intend to start. We might not have a track record in the Dash community yet, but we have a track record on the internet. Five years of stellar history in the music industry is evidence that DASH can trust Feedbands, and it’s founder/ceo submitting the proposal, Graham Langdon.
In addition, we have already put in over 100 hours putting this proposal together, analyzing our code base, determining the necessary steps to make the payment integration, coordinating with High Beam on event production, coordinating with Roadyway on stage and sound rentals, confirming artists and getting signed commitments from them, determining the most effective setups to deliver maximum impact, visiting the site of the event, mapping the site usage and stage placement, negotiating a rental agreement for the lot, working with key promotional partners on a promotional agreement.
In addition, the following agreements have already been worked out by our key partners and vendors, and will be executed upon closing of funding:
Venue Rental Agreement
Stage and Sound Rental Agreement
High Beam Event Production Estimate
AMW Group PR Agreement
Anthony Fantano AKA NeedleDrop Agreement (youtube music channel with 1.2 million subs)
Proof that these agreements have been executed will be posted on the Dash forum prior to January 31st.
Why a music sales platform?
One question that people reasonably have is what is the value of a platform that sells music for musicians when Spotify and Pandora and Apple already have impressive market dominance.
The reason is because artists are still struggling. None of the dominant platforms have made the economics work for the artist. A recent Digital Music News article detailed how a million streams earned an artist less than five thousand dollars. In the days of radio, a million plays on the radio would have translated to a hundred thousand dollars and would be considered a hit.
We see cryptocurrency as a gamechanger for musicians. Their income is shrinking disproportionately and the more of their earnings they can earn in cryptocurrency, the greater their ability to reach financial freedom through their art. This is the dream of every musician, and the path to it has been looking darker and darker as streaming companies have evaporated their radio earnings and replaced it with little in return.
At the same time, there are a massive number of fans out there who want to support independent musicians materially, and choose to purchase their music and merch directly, either through their online storefront or at the merch table at one of their shows. This is the segment of the market where Feedbands feels it can make the most impact, and where cryptocurrency is most important.
How can Feedbands help Dash?
Dash needs people using Dash for real world commerce and Dash needs companies that are going to stand up, right now, and perform deep integrations of Dash and in doing so show the world all the reasons why Dash is the ideal payment provider. Feedbands is going to drive Dash adoption by generating publicity in the tech, music and cryptocurrency space as the first company to switch to accepting only Dash. We’re also going to use our music, t-shirts, vinyl and beer to draw people into an environment where they can get Dash wallets and spend it.
Dash also needs adoption across industries and spaces. The crypto-industry moves fast. There are only so many opportunities to be first. This is a genuine opportunity to be first in the music space, and it’s exciting, and we have the budget to pull it off.
The festival and web integration all at once:
We believe that executing these two initiatives simultaneously can exponentially multiply the effectiveness and power of the initiative. Erecting a stage on one of Austin’s busiest streetcorner, during a time of year when there are so many ceos, founders, engineers, bloggers journalists and filmmakers packed in the streets, not only gives us a huge draw and test bed to get important stakeholders using Dash in the real world, but it gives us a greater voice to announce to all the musicians in Austin that week that Feedbands is “the simple and easy way for musicians to earn cryptocurrency selling their music and merch online.” Together, these two initiatives will give the dash community compounding benefit.
If we simply integrated payments but did not deliver powerful messaging, no one would know or care. If we threw a festival and let people use dash, but our website was still using dollars, it would feel like we weren’t really behind it. By marrying these two initiatives, each one becomes logarithmically more powerful.
Ryan Taylor’s Open Letter:
In his open letter found here:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/an-open-letter-from-evan-and-ryan-regarding-dash-marketing.15537/
Ryan Taylor said that in terms of marketing proposals:
Here are the areas we feel marketing aligns most closely with our goals:
General awareness: Industry events and trade shows, general branding, and communicating our vision and mission to general audiences
Features: Many digital currency users are unaware of Dash’s features and benefits. Increasing awareness of our instant payments and low transaction fees are examples of messages that can increase awareness for what makes our product unique.
Business partners: Advertising the services of our business partners (assuming they approve of the campaign) both encourages the use of the Dash network and provides incentives for merchants to integrate with Dash and continue utilizing it. For example, advertise that using Dash can you get 15% off Amazon gift cards at Bitcart. We could also advertise to businesses the benefits of integrating with Dash.
Use-cases: Build awareness of specific use-cases, like speed-sensitive transactions.
Each of the above drives the actual use of our ecosystem forward, while avoiding the hype of investor-targeting advertising.
We feel our proposal is aligned with the goals of the dash core team. It is educating important stakeholders, it is forming a new business partnership with deep integration, and is creating real world use cases for people to get and spend dash.
Feedback from the Forum
We have submitted many posts to the Dash community on the forum and have received positive feedback. More than a one-time event, the entire Feedbands company is also working towards integrating and accepting Dash and making Dash the preferred, and in some case exclusive, payment option on it’s website.
Suggestions we’ve received includes:
Instead of accepting cash in exchange for Dash, we’ll be selling DASH branded hats for $20 and give $20 worth of DASH into their wallets
Making sure all transactions happening within the festival grounds are occuring in DASH. No dollars accepted for beer, t-shirts, or vinyl.
Make this an official part of the SXSW festival. We have engaged the SXSW organization in talks to make our event an official part of the SXSW festival but we do not know if it will be possible. The event’s status as official vs unofficial will not materially impact the visibility or attendance of the event due to our location, stage size, sound system, and promotional budget and partners. We will have no problem distributing 1500 Dash wallets to important stakeholders as an unofficial event, and there are compelling use cases for why we will be even more effective as an unofficial event: we will have complete control over our venue, location, stage size, and signage -all things that the SXSW completely controls with all official events.
Official vs. Unofficial SXSW Event:
We are currently in talks with SXSW to make the event official. There are a number of pros and cons to each type of event. Because SXSW spans the entire city of Austin for ten days, there are no entry and exit points for people attending other than the city of Austin itself. SXSW does not charge to make musical showcases official. Official events get listed in the official guidebook, but they give up a certain amount of control. SXSW controls the venue location and stage for official events, and they also have to evaluate and approve each artist playing. You also need tickets/badges. By having an unofficial event, it can be open to the general public, we can be in full control of the location, the stage and the signage. The foot traffic in Austin will be so overwhelming that we will easily hit our quota of 1500 Dash wallets distributed. So in either case, the event will not be materially effected. The process to become official takes time and we cannot guarantee it’s outcome, but in order to put on the event, we need to get pieces moving immediately. For example, the permitting deadline for amplified sound outdoors in Austin for that week is mid January.
Stakeholders
Dash community
The people in Austin the week of our “Only-Spend-Dash” event: the people building the companies of tomorrow: founders, ceos, engineers, filmmakers, journalists, tech evangelists and bloggers.
The 3400 artists who sell music and merch on Feedbands who will need to create DASH wallets to accept payment for music and merch on our website moving forward
The new artists who sign up for Feedbands and submit music every day who will need to create DASH wallets to accept payments for their music and merch on Feedbands
The music fans who purchase music and merch on Feedbands who will now have to pay in DASH.
Partner Artists playing our festival
Recording artists and musicians around the world who would like to earn cryptocurrency who will now have a simple and easy way to do so via Feedbands.
Anyone who is made aware of Dash via our publicity efforts.
Key Deliverables
The “Only-Spend-Dash” Feedbands Fest in the heart of Austin during peak festival season. Will take place in the parking lot on the corner of E 6th street and Navasota Street. This is an extremely visible, highly desirable location right next to Hotel Vegas, one of the most popular spots in all of Austin. Foot traffic during those days is expected to be in the tens of thousands per day due to the massive South by Southwest event happening in Austin at the same time but not affiliated with this event officially (though we are in talks to make that happen but cannot guarantee it yet.)
Promotion of the event leading up to the event via facebook ads, flyering and our youtube partner theneedledrop with an audience of over 1 million people and the collective audience of our performing artists which is in the hundreds of thousands. All promotion will communicate Dash’s benefits: “See ______ artist at the Feedbands Dash Showcase and buy .25 microbrews and $5 vinyl and pay in Dash – the only cryptocurrency with instant transfers, transfer fees less than a cent, and a treasury to fund it’s expansion.”
Social Media Promotion on behalf of the participating artists about their DASH showcase, reaching hundreds of thousands of fans of our artists on Facebook. “Come see us in Austin at this time/date/location and pick our record up for DASH, the cryptocurrency with transfer fees less than a penny, instant transfers, and a treasury governance structure.” The artists performing have a collective audience of hundreds of thousands of fans on Facebook, and we will reach all of them.
Completed and edited videos of the full sets of each artists, branded with DASH and it’s core features of instantsend, sub-cent transaction fees, and a treasury to fund expansion, tagged and uploaded to Youtube for fans of these artists to see for years to come.
Integration for Dash to be the exclusive and only way for people to pay artists for music and merch on the Feedbands.com website and apps.
Rapid iteration based on feedback post-launch. There will be thousands of artists and fans signing up for dash wallets for the first time. We’ll be getting a ton of feedback on the functionality, usability and design of our new payment gateway and we need to incorporate that feedback quickly through development and design to ensure the best experience.
Internet Advertising: We must deliver the messaging far and wide after our event, that the world now has a way for musicians to easily earn cryptocurrency selling their music, that the cryptocurrency we chose is Dash, and why we chose Dash. We feel the most effective channel to deliver messaging would be facebook, Google, and the reddit subchannels /r/wearethemusicmakers and /r/music. We would like to spend $1000 per day across Facebook Reddit and Google for the month after launch to effectively lock ourselves into the public mindshare as *the platform* for musicians to earn cryptocurrency selling their music. We can be first here and we need to move fast. This won’t happen without delivering messaging via Facebook and Reddit. Proposal owner Graham Langdon has personally spent over $600,000 on adwords alone over the last few years and has literally built his career on split testing, optimizing and delivering results-driven internet advertising.
PR – we’re not going to rely on internet advertising alone. We want legacy media coverage, print media coverage, newspaper and magazine coverage for our crypto-music platform. So we’ll be working with AM Group who’s clients include Mercedes Benz, Audi, Red Bull, the NBA, the NFL, and Nokia just to name a few.
The Feedbands Website and apps integration:
Feedbands will completely position itself as the simple and easy way for Musicians to earn Cryptocurrency selling their music and merch online, and that sole cryptocurrency will be DASH. No such service currently exists in the world.
The Feedbands platform already exists and has been evolving over five years.
Feedbands.com currently sells music and merch for over 3000 artists and a handful of new artists who sign up every day
Those 3000 artists will all need to create DASH wallets to continue accepting payment for music and merch on our website
Dash will be the only form of payment for music and merch being sold by artists on our website
Our vinyl record releases will still be sold accepting all forms of payment. Dash will be accepted for this contingent upon Ultracart developing integration not covered in this proposal. These transactions are directly between people and Feedbands, and do not include the artist in any way.
Scope of engineering work required:
Feedbands currently offers a full feature suite for artists to sell their music and merch, set their prices, and for customers to purchase and checkout. If the items are digital, they are transferred to the customer immediately upon successful payment. If the items are physical, the artist is notified of the sale and the shipping information is provided which the customer enters. There are a myriad of options for artists to create different item types, like T-shirts with multiple sizes, upload images, and have all the items available on their profile. All of these layers will need to be integrated with DASH as we handle digital sales and physical sales with shipping charges in different ways , and the system will need to perform conversion rates in real time so that the artist can set the price in USD and the site converts it to the appropriate amount of DASH in real time, to avoid price fluctuations in DASH skewing the price in USD.
In addition, DASH payments will need to be integrated across our Android and IOS apps.
All of this will require streamlined design as well as engineering, and will additionally require informational portals for the visitors who don’t know about DASH or how to signup and get DASH, and informational portals for the artists to signup for DASH wallets.
That said, we are confident that we have enough time to complete this work prior to thefestival event on March 15th where we will make the announcement repeatedly for three days.
Risks:
Fluctuation of DASH Currency – LOW RISK
Almost all of the DASH received in month 1 will be immediately liquidated and dispersed to vendors for event related rentals and leasing including the venue, stage, flights and lodging for artists, the event production company contract, and other things that need to be paid for immediately, and to get the design and engineering team going. For the artists, we are booking their transportation and lodging, and paying them only once their set is complete. For design work and engineering, we’ll be paying our staff weekly to complete this work, just like any other company.
If the price of Dash fluctuates down in February or March, we will still be able to have the event as planned, and we will compensate for downward fluctuations by reallocating the marketing budget. If Dash were to lost a significant amount of it’s value ~ 50% or more, major aspects of the plan would need to change.
Artists don’t show up: LOW RISK
Artists only get paid after their set is complete, and all their lodging and transportation will be covered by us, so they only get paid if they show up. Every artist in the world wants to play in Austin that week and we have had great enthusiasm from all the artists we’ve reached out to. They’re excited about it!
People don’t show up – LOW RISK
Our stage will be utterly massive. Our signage will be visible around the entire perimeter of the event space. The event space will be in the very heart of Austin during an event that draws nearly a hundred thousand important stakeholders to the streets of Austin. People are going to be aware of, and want those craft microbrews for .25 cents. They’ll want to come see the music. They’ll be curious to spend some crypto in the real world. We’ll be promoting, flyering, internet advertising, and promoting through the artist’s own channels to hundreds of thousands of people. In addition, our venue is next to the most popular spot in East Austin. Foot traffic alone past this spot is in the tens of thousands.
Equipment failure – LOW RISK
We are contracting with a professional equipment rental company, roadway productions, for the Stage, Sound, Lighting and backline.
People don’t sign up for Dash Wallets at event – Low Risk
Every effort and attention to detail will be made to make this process easy. People will purchase a DASH branded hat from us for $20 and get a Dash wallet loaded with $20. That said, it might be too inconvenient for people to download the DASH wallet on their phone, but we don’t believe this will be a significant barrier. We will try to mitigate this by making it fun and easy, and actively promoting this space as a “crypto space” and drawing in crypto enthusiasts through a myriad of promotion and get people excited to spend crypto in the real world. In addition, 25 cent microbrews is a hell of a draw, as are $5 t-shirts and $5 vinyl of the incredible artists performing in front of them.
Artists don’t sign up for DASH wallets – Low Risk
Cryptocurrency is hot right now. It’s also expensive. Everyone is wanting to get more of it. Feedbands will position itself as the simple and easy way for the artists on our site to earn Cryptocurrency by selling music and merchandise on our site. It will be the only way people can pay artists for music and merch on our site.
Customers on the Feedbands site don’t sign up for DASH – Medium Risk
By requiring customers on our site to sign up for DASH wallets and get DASH to be able to purchase music and merch, we run the risk of creating a barrier that results in abandoned carts. We believe this risk will lessen over time, and we are willing to take on that risk in order to position ourselves well for the crypto-future. We believe that through iteration, split testing, and excellent design and engineering the risk can be lessened. Still, it will be a challenge getting people to adopt and spend dash for music and merch on Feedbands, but we know a percentage of people will do it, and that percentage will go up over time.
There are additional ways we can mitigate this risk. Similar to how we are selling hats at the event that come loaded with DASH, we can sell other items on our site that come loaded with DASH wallets, like vinyl. The customers on our Feedbands site love vinyl, and if we give DASH away with vinyl, we’ll sell more vinyl and people will get DASH that they can use to buy more music and merch from our artists.
Budget:
The Only-Spend-Dash Austin EVENT:
Performing artists: flights, lodging, food, and payment: $70,000 for 15 bands @ $4500 per band.
Venue rental: $29,000 (agreement attached) – includes a huge parking lot at corner of E 6th Street and Navasota for 5 days, from March 14th to March 18th. The event will run from March 15th to March 17th, and we’ve included one extra day on either end for setup and breakdown.
Roadway Productions stage and sound total: $12,259.31
(quote attached)
High Beam Event Production Budget: total: $83,569 (quote attached)
Event Permits, Event Security + Staffing, Catering, Stage Banners, Event Tenting, Basic Event Furniture, Event Lighting, Port-a-johns + Hand Sanitation Stations, Supplemental Fencing + Branded Scrim, Entrance Truss, Trash Services + Onsite Cleaning, Internet + Onsite Communication
Video crew, filming, editing, video production: $20,425
For three days of production:
$8,100 – On location production crew – three camera crew with equipment included
$3,000 – High quality sound specialist with recording equipment
$450 – Per diem – Daily food and travel costs
$3,000 – Director of production
$1,500 – Day of editing for next day streaming of sets
$2,000 – Post production editing for month later releases of band/Dash profiles
$2,500 – Round trip flights for crew
Camera and crew managed by HBO Vice’s Director of Photography Jerry Ricciotti (http://jerryricciotti.com/)
Ricciotti’s work includes 47 episodes of HBO’s TV Series documentary Vice as managing Director of Photography between 2014-2017. He has also been involved as DP in many other documentary style projects, including Black Market with Michael K. Williams, Woman with Gloria Steinem, Vice News Tonight, and others. Prior to his current role as Director of Photography, Ricciotti had worked as both an editor and producer in other TV series documentaries.
For the production of video for the proposed project, Ricciotti will direct three camera crew (also currently part of the production team at Vice) and one sound specialist to create a day-after series as well as a month later release. Both series of videos will be available on all of our social platforms as well as on our website. The finished videos will include entire live setlists for every Feedbans band that plays at the event as well as more intimate profiles on at least three of the bands in which band members discuss the importance of Feedbands’ transition to a Dash-only system.
The videos will also be Dash-Branded and communicate Dash’s features.
Alcohol: $6,000 for 40 kegs
Note: This might seem like an absurd number to spend on alcohol, but actually it is a precise calculation. We are not giving this beer away for free, we are selling beers for 25 cents to demonstrate Dash’s ability to send micropayments without crippling transfer fees. We want people to sign up for the Dash wallets so we need to give them something good: 25 cent beers. And we are trying to sign up 1500 people. If the average person has five beers, we will need 7500 beers. There are 125 pints in a keg, so 7500 divided by 125 is 60. We need sixty kegs to not run out. The average keg of local microbrew is $100, so we need $6000 for 60 kegs to be fully covered for the event.
Dash Branded Swag: $4,0000 for 1500 bumper stickers, t-shirts, hats, lapel pins to sell people and get them loaded with DASH wallets.
Dash Staff: $1890 for 6 people. The Dash Staff will be responsible for assisting people in creating their dash wallets and distributing dash to them. We estimate that one staff member can successfully assist one person every 5 minutes. We are planning to assist 500 people per day. The music will run from 5PM to midnight each day, giving us 7 hours of event or 420 minutes. Divide those minutes by 5, and each dash staff member can assist 84 people in a night. If we want to assist 500 people per night, we will need a dash staff of 6 people. 6 people for 7 hours for 3 days is 126 staff-hours, times $15 per hour is $1890
Dash to distribute on-site: $28,000 (allows us to distribute $20 in dash to 1500 people or 500 per day). NOTE: this is not a giveaway. We feel giveaways cheapen Dash. People will be giving us money, technically in exchange for a hat, t-shirt, bumper sticker or lapel pin. Those items will come with an equivalent amount of Dash loaded to their Dash wallet.
Remaining Dash: If there is remainder DASH from this allocation that is not distributed to people at the event, we will reallocate it to the post-event internet advertising budget and keep the community posted.
10 IPADS to process DASH on-site: $800 x 6 = $4,800
Event Publicity:
Partner Announcenemts – NeedleDrop Youtube Channel: $6000
Facebook campaign: $5000 – our facebook campaign will specifically target:
people in Austin interested in Cryptocurrency OR technology OR apps OR are in a band, age 21+
Messaging will let them know there’s a stage where they can get cryptocurrency and spend it on drinks, t-shirts, and vinyl
Design, Development and Integration Across Website and Apps
PRE-EVENT
Dedicated Pre-launch Engineer: integration and deployment for dash across website, android app, ios apps and linkage of Dash wallet to artist accounts: $40,000 ($100 per hour, 40 hours per week, 10 weeks)
Dedicated pre-launch designer: web design, app design, signage design, marketing material design, payment flow design, checkout process design, front end + backend design across website, ios and android apps: $20,000 ($50 per hour, 40 hours per week, 10 weeks)
Dedicated project manager, team lead and quality assurance taked with simultaneously managing the design and integration of DASH as well as the coordination of the event festival, overseeing the DASH training, coordinating with all the artists for lodgings and airfare bookings, etc as well as coordination with promotional partners and activations. : 40 hours per week, 10 weeks, $75 an hour: $30,000
POST-EVENT
Dedicated post-launch engineer: dedicated engineer to make rapid bug fixes, and continued iterations based on feedback over a period of two months across website, ios and android apps: $32,000 (100 per hour, 40 hours per week, 8 weeks)
Dedicated post-launch designer: feedback based tasks aimed at increasing communication, messaging, understanding across our website, ios and android apps. People are going to be confused when we first launch this. We will listen to whatever confusions and problems they have, and continue iterating the design for two months based on that feedback. $16,000 ($50 per hour, 40 hours per week, 8 weeks)
Dedicated project manager, team lead and quality assurance across the design and integration as we iterate rapidly based on feedback, designing and launching the followup internet advertising campaign, split testing, optimization, : 40 hours per week, 8 weeks, $75 an hour: $24,000
Internet Advertising: $30,000 We feel the most effective channel to advertise this announcement would be facebook, google and reddit including the reddit subchannels /r/wearethemusicmakers and /r/music. We would like to spend $1000 per day across Facebook Reddit and Google for the month after launch to effectively lock ourselves into the public mindshare as *the platform* for musicians to earn cryptocurrency selling their music. We can be first here and we need to move fast. There are already other projects on the ethereum blockchain that have not gotten off the ground tet. We can’t get there without delivering messaging via Facebook and Reddit.
Proposal owner Graham Langdon has personally spent nearly a million dollars worth of ad spend across Google, Facebook and Reddit over the last decade, and can confirm this with masternodes and has already posted proof in the forums. He has literally built his career on split testing, optimizing and delivering results-driven internet advertising, and will be montitoring, optimizing, and split testing the campaign daily.
Because Feedbands passes 100% of the sales of music and merch directly to the artist, we would never be able to finance an advertising campaign like this on a product that generates zero revenue for us. It does, however, generate users and an industry foothold for Dash.
PR: $50,000 (quote attached): We have the chance to be the world’s first platform to let musicians earn cryptocurrency and internet ads alone are not going to cement us in people’s minds. We want to pull out all the stops and take on enterprise-level PR to get the message out. Feedbands founder and CEO Graham Langdon will make himself available for TV interviews, newspaper and magazine interviews. The goal here is to get legacy media coverage in TV, newspapers and magazines and our partner AM World Group is up to the task. Their clients include the NFL, the NBA, Audi, Mercedes Benz, Red Bull, and Nokia just to name a few.
Total Budget: $506,053
Current Price of Dash: $944.12
Total Budget in Dash: 536 DASH
Split over two months: 268/mo
Documentation:
Venue Rental Agreement
Stage and Sound Rental Agreement
High Beam Event Production Estimate
High Beam Snapshot
AMW Group PR Agreement
Anthony Fantano AKA NeedleDrop Agreement
Signed Agreements from Artists so far:*
Larkin Poe
The Native Howl
The Cool Kids
The Movement
Marbin
Faded Paper Figures
Scott Dunbar
AmyCanBe
The Vliets
Brother Grand
The Acid House
Ava Marie
Sea At Last
We also have verbal/email agreements from the following artists but haven’t received the contract back yet:
The Floozies
Royal Jelly Jive
Opusoid
Raggy Monster
Brad Sucks
Be Calm Honcho
Mammoth Indigo
*Note that we are not just getting these artists to show up and play, they are all also agreeing to update their social media accounts promoting DASH as well, generating another wave of publicity for DASH.
Questions
What if the value of Dash goes up?
We will plow any increase in price back into internet advertising to continue solidifying Feedbands and DASH as the crypto payment solution for musicians. Proposal owner Graham Langdon has spent over $600,000 in Google Adwords growing his companies (proof) and nearly a million dollars across various forms of internet advertising. He is an expert split tester and campaign optimizer and will deploy surplus budget effectively to make Dash the cryptocurrency used by musicians and will report back to the community.
Will you keep the Dash community updated?
Yes, we will post a weekly update in the Dash forum.
Can I come to the festival?
Yes! It will be 100% free to attend and open to the public. The more people from Dash Network come to the festival the better. I look forward to meeting you.
Do people spend Dash in the real world?
Very few people, even the most fervent dash supporters, have spent Dash in the real world. This proposal creates an entire music platform for people to spend Dash on the internet, as well as a test-bed music festival where people buy t-shirts, beer and vinyl for Dash.
[Less…]