Andre J Cherry

Project Overview

Ryze is a social music web application with the goal to encourage local/smaller artists to release music at a high rate. Today’s music industry is dominated by streaming services making it hard for smaller artists to be heard. Without connections to a label it is impossible to see your music on the front page or easy to search.

The Discovery

I discovered an imbalance in the music industry, one in which the streaming services control who the users listen to. Regardless of the product streaming services can decide not to place and artists on the front page because they don’t like the artist. Or they will promote music because of their relationship with an artist. In addition, the artist is getting pennies per stream, which can equate to a good chunk of money if your Drake or Nicki Minaj but for the smaller artist they don’t have the fanbase or marketing to get their music played enough where streaming services are actually profitable for them.

Process

My process for this project was to research the industry to get a baseline of what can help the smaller underground artists. Once I gathered all the research I came up with a solution that will give those same artists a better chance of making growing their fanbase from releasing music independently. From there, I designed UI Comps and a style guide. After the comps and style guide was approved I developed the app providing the client with a finished responsive web application.

Design

These are the brand guidelines I developed for this web app. I choose to use a darker-themed color palette to reference the underground music scene. Using yellow to symbolize the bold yet bright future we hope for the app’s users. The app has a modern look and feels with the sleek layout and use of smooth sliders.

Solution

A modern sleek is easy to navigate web application that can be used both in a mobile or desktop browser. This app will give artists the exposure to take their career to the next level, rewarding those who are consistently using and releasing music. Ryze was developed to balance that out giving a platform for the smaller artist to be heard. Ryze is dedicated to promoting the hardest most consistent artist by placing artists on its homepage regardless of connection and popularity. Simply put the artists that are consistently creating new music and uploading it will be the artist that will get recognized the most.

What I learned

This project is when I learned how to work with a database and create an application where users can not only interact with the site but with other users as well.