The Interledger Community 🌱: Kyle Ricketts

Live Streaming from Sweet Life Records — Final Report

Kyle Ricketts — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 19:12:46 +0000

Project Update

Aloha GftW community! Here we are at the end of our grant timeline. We had some successes, some failures, and ultimately have learned so much from this awesome experience. Extremely thankful for the teams at Coil, GftW, and Cinnamon for always being willing to communicate and listen to our concerns. We completed many of our timeline objectives but also failed to deliver live streams (more on that in the next section).

As I mentioned in our last grant report, there were several significant events that occurred that greatly impeded the progress we intended to make back in October 2020-Jan 2021. I left Maui in the midst of the pandemic to West Virginia to live with Zach and Cody for a 3 month period to execute our grant objectives. When we first began promoting our presence on Cinnamon, the Coil email leak happened. It was an unfortunate event that we had intended to hold back on promoting while we it let blow over and be lost to yesterdays news.

While we waited for the news to leak to blow over, the Ripple lawsuit happened. This was pretty serious because we weren't able to cash out of our XRP rewards without jumping through several hoops that simply don't justify the usage of the tech integrated with monetizing music and video content. We had hoped to attract a few more artists on Sweet Life Records to posting on Coil/Cinnamon, but only a few made accounts. A lot of the conversations we had with peers and friends always came with a discussion about if XRP was a "scam". If the SEC had not declared war against XRP, I think XRP would have broken ATH like many other cryptos, and caused a demand with people looking for ways to make passive XRP (aka ILP).

Progress on objectives

I had originally planned to finish all of our objectives while I was in West Virginia. With our timeline extension approved, we had to finish our project remotely as I had to return to Hawaii to begin working again. We decided not to rush a live stream with all of the bad press around the email leak and SEC case. The new plan was Zach and Cody would film the remaining bts type content and send it to me to edit, and do the live streaming on facebook and then reposting it as an exclusive recap to Cinnamon.

I take responsibility for our failure in the "Live Streaming" aspect of our proposal. Zach and Cody tried to get me to come on a mini tour they did across the US to finish off the rest of our content (3 live streams and some funny skits/bts kind of stuff) but life forced me to stay in Hawaii. The problem wasn't that Zach and Cody didn't film content, its that the person filming the content has yet to deliver it for me to edit and post. While my deadline to deliver this content has passed, it is something I am still working to get up on Cinnamon as exclusive content.

What I am most proud of and something I think I seriously stepped my game up on was the creation of my music video, "Paper Squares". I already had the majority of the song written before I got the grant and I knew I was going to make a 3d video in Blender for it. I became obsessed with it. 100+ hours of design, animation, and simulating plus another 40 hours to render. What I thought was going to be a cool looking abstract visualizer type video, turned out to be the exact visual representation of the vibe of the song I made with using every single 3d design/animation technique I have taught myself over the course of this grant. This was my first song I've ever released and its also the song that led into the first conversation I had about the GftW with The Sweet Life so its something I'm really proud of.

Key activities

We found that the best way to get views and participation on social medias wasn't to publicly post, it was direct messaging. We sent a lot of DMs to people asking them to check out our videos on Cinnamon. We offered at least 100 people free Coil codes through The Sweet Life channels and have 120 followers on Cinnamon which I would guess is at least 50% fans we signed up.

The Sweet Life currently has 1344 views on the 11 videos we posted on Youtube. The "Paper Squares" music video was retweeted by Cinnamon and featured on the front page and has 51 views, 460 views on our Coil enabled Youtube page, and 2000 views on Facebook. We had intended to embed the Cinnamon video to Facebook, but it only posts the link now and wont display the video. As much as I am against the ethos of facebook and youtube, it is undeniably a better platform to post on if you want to get your art seen by as many people possible.

As a little side effort to promote Cinnamon, I have been sending customers that purchase my underwater photo packages in Maui a link to my 1 hour marine life video posted exclusively on Cinnamon. At first I was distributing Coil trial codes with the video and had the video as exclusive monetized content. Not many if any of the first 50 people I sent the link and a code to signed up to watch it. Since making the video public I am seeing daily views on my video correlated to the photo package sales.

One thing is clear to me. People do not want to sign up to a platform just to watch one thing. Ad free viewing is not enough to justify the 5-10 minutes it takes to create a Coil and Cinnamon account, especially when the quality and quantity of content on the platform is still quite low.

Another thing I've learned from talking to other creators outside of Coil/Cinnamon is that although they feel that the model behind Cinnamon is quite interesting and empowering for creators, they feel like they have an added promotional burden by getting their viewers/fans to come to a new platform still in beta when so many alternatives are already built out.

What’s next?

With our funded grant period complete, I am still sending weekly messages to try and get ahold of Zach and Cody's cross country footage and a live performance they did to post on Cinnamon. They sold out that concert so we are hoping we can convert some of the attendees to Coil subscribers so they can watch the concert recap.

Personally, my focus now is retiring from tourism/underwater photography and then moving to West VA to join The Sweet Life full time as their lighting/art director. I never expected to become so passionate about 3d design and animation and I'm super excited to be stacking content that will be unveiled when NFT functionality is added to XRP/Flare (both projects have to do with environmental sustainability so I feel it'd be wrong to release on ETH). Something tells me that efficient NFTs paired with ILP is going to make Web 3.0 a lot more realized. I will be changing The Sweet Life Twitter to my own Submerg5d brand.

What community support would benefit your project?

The community has been incredibly supportive and helpful this entire journey. Shout outs to Peter from Cinnamon for always having time to chat and promoting our music. Huge thanks to GftW team for approving all of our additional time requests and this opportunity. I hope to fulfil all of our content objectives over the next few months and hope the community continues to support us.

Additional comments

Relevant links/resources (optional)

All of the videos we created and posted can be found on our link tree!
https://linktr.ee/SweetLifeRecords

Smart Contracts

Kyle Ricketts — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:06:56 +0000

Aloha Everyone

I'm looking for the best information on creating smart contracts, what's your favorite resource?

Live Streaming from Sweet Life Records — Grant Report #1

Kyle Ricketts — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 19:36:32 +0000

Project Update

Aloha!

Kyle here from Sweet Life Records! What an amazing past 4 months it has been working on this project. As some of you know, I work with Zach and Cody from the band "The Sweet Life".

Our goal is to explore web monetization for original music and video releases, specifically through the Cinnamon video platform. As with many things this last year, we have had to travel some roads we didn't quite anticipate, and are excited to keep exploring this new technological world.

Since receiving the Grant, we have released on Cinnamon 7 original music videos from the band, 1 visual collaboration with another top Cinnamon musician, and participated in two different podcasts.

Check them out here:
https://cinnamon.video/The_Sweet_Life

Progress on objectives

Our objective was rather simple. Promote the WM/ILP ecosystem with live streaming and video releases on Cinnamon. As with many things this year, we have had to take a hard look at the approach we have to not only achieve the means of the grant, but also maintaining the bands' existing fan base.

Pre pandemic, The Sweet Life was on a fast track to success in the electronic music scene. They had an entire year of touring lined up, festivals, recording artists coming to the studio...like many, all of that was taken away.

Around the same time we began posting our videos on Cinnamon, we were noticing a concerning trend -- a declining participation from our fan base. Posts were not receiving a significant amount of interaction as opposed to just months before. What used to be a minimum of 75-100 likes per Facebook post, we began to see a sharp decline starting November 2020.

Something we began to do to reach the fans was mass sharing through direct messaging. Some of our fans mentioned they just were becoming burned out with social media, others said they were not seeing our posts on their feed at all.

This did not come as a surprise to me. Throughout this year, there were 100s of methods that musicians were using to keep fans engaged. Live Streams, private shows, lessons, etc etc. It became overwhelming for me as a music fan to the point where I have gone days without listening to music simply because I felt like there were too many people grabbing for my attention.

Turning off the music was a good thing. It caused all of us at Sweet Life to really start thinking about what we would need to do to A) Continuing to move up the musician success ladder and B) Promote and utilize the ILP/WM technology in a truly intuitive and solution based manner.

During the week we went the hardest to promote Cinnamon to our existing follower base, a bug in Coil/Cinnamon caused new followers to not show up. Many people were frustrated and confused as to how to sign up in the first place and experienced bugs that made their user experience poor. We paused aggressively promoting Cinnamon during that time, and by the time we were ready to start again...we had some negative feedback about the Coil email leak - and felt it would be good to dial back once again. Although I am a firm believer in the technology, explaining why and convincing people to use Cinnamon became an arduous task.

To complicate matters even more, the band found themselves in a position where we had to move the entire studio and property to a new location. With studio renovations and a long moving process, we shifted gears this last couple months with a much more refined mindset looking forward.

Something I have noticed, smaller musicians (in the same tier as The Sweet Life) are actively losing interest from fans the longer live touring is shut down. Even bands that we looked up to have seen obvious declines in their viewership of live streams and virtual events. As I mentioned earlier, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Viewer/listener fatigue is a very real issue that many musicians and promoters haven't quite figured out in this new pandemic era we live in. After June 2020, paid virtual events and long format live streams really started to seem gimmicky and a desperate attempt for musicians' to stay relevant. I can't count how many live streams and virtual events I have been invited to this year.

There is one thing that has become a stark truth to me, virtual events simply CAN NOT recreate a live music experience. Until full sensory immersion technology is readily available, you can not recreate the sounds, smells, tastes, and feels of being surrounded by people and loud music. Without the live outlet, smaller musicians are going to struggle even more to break out and retain fans.

These struggles are important to mention, as a significant portion of our timeline revolved around live streams. From the beginning, we planned to use a LiDar Scanning device to projection map visuals into the studio to live stream. What we didn't plan, is how long it would take to learn how to do that. Sure, it is simple enough to use the stock effects our device included to get some interesting visuals, but we wanted the experience to be something viewers wouldn't just watch, but would return to and share as well. I've been spending hours/days/weeks learning Blender/Resolume/Lightform/HeavyM -- all new programs to me, to accomplish this goal. We are excited for the upcoming content that will be released

That leads us to this moment. Zach and Cody have been literally tearing down walls at the studio to open it up for not only projection mapping, but also green screening for upcoming videos and viewer immersive content. I am currently back in Hawaii (mentally and emotionally, I was not as prepared to deal with the east coast winter like I thought) working on original visuals to projection map and live stream with the Sweet Life music.

Key activities

NETWORKING! We have gotten to chat with some amazing people while navigating this project. We have a great relationship with the team at Cinnamon. We have two other ILP/WM collaborators we can't mention right now that have been working with us to develop a fully interactive digital musical experience. Also would like to give a shout out to Coil, for generously gifting us with 500 3 month trial memberships to give out

LEARNING! The speed at which entertainment technology is changing is mind numbing. There is truly nothing we can't learn. Combining knowledge and teamwork is our route to success.

Communications and marketing

Check out the podcasts we did

Zach and Cody with Cinnamon
https://blog.cinnamon.video/creator-stories-episode-1/

Kyle with PLAN
https://cinnamon.video/watch?v=458625857884260180

What’s next?

Finishing/releasing several music projects recorded at Sweet Life Records.

Releasing behind the scenes content

Going on a socially distanced and remote eco tour around the US -- live streaming each location.

Developing a visionary interactive virtual music platform

What community support would benefit your project?

Listening to our music and following us on Cinnamon would be great! We are open to all kinds of collaboration.

New Sweet Life Beat

Kyle Ricketts — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 02:08:37 +0000

Hey guys, here's our newest song. This is a little look at how we make beats. Looking forward to sharing more with everyone here! Check us out on Cinnamon too..

https://cinnamon.video/watch?v=476820701022521267