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Purpose

The DeTour app and network will make it easy for event creators and artists to use the community network and tools in the app to plan, create and manage small to medium sized event tours for up and coming artists. They will be able to painlessly create tours, with a higher chance of financial viability, while removing some of the high cost intermediaries.

Vision

The vision is ambitious but will be built in phases. A roadmap will be provided if successful, with those phases which will be aligned with the roadmap for Aventus services and other apps. The core goal for the app is to develop regular and gradually larger touring opportunities for the market segment of small but established artists and new up and coming artists. We will not be focusing on or looking to draw very well known artists except on rare occasions to mainly benefit marketing.

The short term vision for the app is providing the planning and network capability to build a tour by connecting venues and artists, creating a tour plan or schedule, matching capacity and artist payment/fees and providing basic needs like van hire, instrument hire and rider via the venues, local suppliers and fans.

The long term vision is to reduce the funding required and dependence on powerful promoters, booking agents and disintermediate the process of planning and setting up small tours by enabling anyone to setup a tour of multiple events for their favourite bands. Groups of fans can get together online to plan a tour for approval by their favourite band. Local venue owners, music stores, van/car hire shops, and hotels can collaborate to fulfill logistics needs to setup a tour in their region. In the long term tours in multiple countries maybe connected together to create a larger scale tour in a region e.g. Western Europe.

Problem

The music industry has thousands of highly talented artists who maybe up and coming or long established but still struggle to start touring or to promote tours by themselves successfully because they do not yet have the tools and connections to start touring widely within their own country or on foreign soil. Artists need a good manager, booking agents, a promoter (and a signed PR company) and partners to make a tour of any size happen and the artist may not have the financial resources to pay for that backroom team. The second problem is that to setup a viable event requiring long distance travel, the travel and accommodation costs for an artist is often much higher than the return. Therefore the event is not financially feasible for the artist unless multiple events can be arranged and a tour created to make it profitable to travel to a long distance location.

Solution

The purpose of DeTour is to solve these problems by providing an application on the Aventus platform that allows the event creator, or artist to plan, create, and schedule a tour by pulling together the partners, venues, suppliers and logistics to make the tour happen. The app user can directly book venues, van hire, instrument hire and rider via the venues, local suppliers and fans. It will integrate with other apps to book accommodation and flights or use travel agents, and connect with local promoters or PR companies. With all services available via the app this will allow the app user to setup the tour and its itinerary from end to end ,and promote the tour with local expertise.

The app will allow the tour to be setup (eventually including all the elements required to build the tour within the app) scheduled, and progress to be tracked and connect with other apps on Aventus for ticket sales. This enables event creators to work together to create a tour out of multiple events rather than trying to setup single events that alone are not financially viable for an artist.

Integrations

We will integrate with other apps where necessary (e.g. accommodation booking, flight bookings, accounting apps, reputation systems etc.) or use the Aventus platform (for ID verification and ticketing) to deliver on the core purpose.

How it Works

The User The app user can be a promoter, the artist themselves, the manager, a service provider, or fans or fan groups. The initial focus will be to allow the event creator or the artist themselves to create the tour. Long term, fans, fan groups and logistics providers (accommodation, travel agents, van or instrument hire) can also build a tour in agreement with their favourite artist, but the tour will be executed by the professional parties e.g. service providers, venues, promoters, artists.

Product Flow: Visual Overview

The image is only a summary of the written steps described below. The written steps show the detail. Please read both in isolation

detourflow

Product Flow: Detailed Overview

Step 1: Event Creator and Artist Sourcing, Matching I am Bill, a venue owner and an event creator in Berlin, Germany and one of my favourite artists is from the US and I want them to play a gig at my venue. I login to the DeTour app, find the band and contact them. I send a message to tell them that I would love them to play at my venue in Germany. The band matches my profile since it plays in capacities of 250-400 people and my venue has a 300 max capacity. I also can match their fee and rider. However the costs of travel, accommodation, and other logistics makes the trip unviable. So i realise i need to setup a tour with multiple events in Germany to make their trip viable.

Step 1A: Artist Tour offer matches to fans venues and service providers Alternatively I am an artist and i put an "offer" on the DeTour app to play in a country or region. I set the number of gigs or events i need, the venue capacity, the venue reputation level, my minimum fee and other requirements. Then fans, venues and service providers can all vote on the offer. Relevant info is visible accordingly depending on whether the viewer is a venue, fan or service provider.

Step 2: Matching venues and fans to the artist, matching lead and supporting acts, capacity and dates So I connect to the DeTour app and I search the venue matching database which matches the bands expectations to the venue. If I am an artist can find and match with other artists who have plans to play in the same city. Or as a event creator I can find other venues which meet the capacity and fee requirements for the artist. I find 3 venues in Berlin, 2 venues in Cologne and 3 venues in Munich who want the band to play. They provide their capacity, fee, and available dates. Or as venue I can vote on an artists offer for a tour of events and compete with other venues in the same city, I can win the offer if I vote first, my capacity is within requirements, the fee is within my target range and my reputation is good.

Step 3: Artist and venue reputation system Some venues are wary of having a new band play at their venue and want to check the bands reputation with venues where they played in US. So they login to the DeTour app and view the bands Aventus reputation history, via the Aventus service layer. They are happy to see their reputation is good, so they agree to hosting the bands. Likewise later when the band reviews the new tour created by Bill they can check the reputation set by artists and fans of each of the venues before agreeing to play there. As described above the reputation system can allow a venue to win an artists event offer.

Step 4: Pre-book venue, services and finalize the tour plan I can pre-book the venues and set up a tour schedule with an agreed expiry time (e.g. 72 hours or 1 week). During this stage the tour is in "planning" or "provisional state" and open to others in the network to view, contribute to, like and recommend to friends. As event creator I send the details to the artist, they review it, check the costs of travel, hires and accommodation and agree to go ahead with the tour before the expiry date. As the event creator i can now finalize the venue bookings, schedule the tour. Now the artists manager logins into the app to find accommodation, van hire, instrument hire, and makes bookings for the respective dates in each city.

Step 5: Calculate Finances (via a 3P app) and Agree with parties via contract on finances Using the DeTour app the band can agree on service costs for each logistical service (accommodation, flights, van hire etc.) with the parties involved. The band calculates the cost/revenue using a third party app but will agree with each party on the tour plan via Aventus contracts.

Step 6: Approval and Agreement on the Tour and Events The artists, venue owners, suppliers and booking agents where applicable come together and agree that the tour is financially viable and agree to submit the tour as an active tour on the DeTour app.

Step 7: Agree on ticket prices with venues based on fan interest The new event tour will be submitted to gather interest levels from fans 2-8 months in advance of the tour. A ticket price range will be published. Fans can show their level of interest in the tour by first voting on the events and then by pre-booking a ticket for a specific event. Real fans will be verified by the Aventus ID verification layer to ensure the fan is a legitimate fan. Once they are verified as real the pre-bookings are counted and if capacity is filled the ticket price is confirmed and published to the DeTour app for all event details within the tour.

Step 8: Tickets On Sale to Pre-approved fans Bookings are then confirmed only for real fans, and if they agree the tickets are made available to purchase. The pre-booked fans get a time limit to purchase the ticket to ensure that all events are viable and the tour can go ahead. If there is excess space after the pre-booking allocation is complete, the remaining tickets are issued for purchase. If a tour and its associated events are successful, when they are completed, fans can rate the tour organizers and the tour itself.

Monetization

The following commission figures need to be more accurately costed based on realistic projections of fan, artist and venue acquisition numbers into the network. Since the DeTour app development and success is dependent on the successful launch of the Aventus platform development version 1 on mainnet, we can produce more accurate user estimations and commission figures at that time. At this early stage below are is our intended approach and some provisional/suggested commission rates.

The first and primary form of revenue will be a small commission (depending on Aventus service event creation and other costs) on every ticket sold via the app. Due to the core goal and market segment mentioned above the ticket revenue would be expected to be smaller than for famous artists and larger events therefore we may start with a commission of 2-3% per ticket. The fee that we need to charge is dependent on available upfront funding and sources of that funding (e.g. if loan based or crowd sourced), how quickly we become successful at removing high fee intermediaries from the tour creation process, and finally how quickly we grow the network to help ticket sales and event creation reach larger scale adoption.

Other options for revenue may include the following. A subscription model or the service provider fee model would be introduced in the beginning stages only if ticketing commission is not sufficient based on projections and reality. Both options will be analyzed in more detail before we chose to implement them.

A subscription app signup model with a small monthly subscription fee of approx €5/month. We may use this option to provide higher level functionality to users who pay the subscription fee e.g. in phase 2 to allow fans to build the tours for their favourite bands or it could provide event creators with access to other apps or services like analytics to identify cities with the highest share of fans for a given artist, or the largest community for a certain genre. We would envisage that a deposit staking mechanism will make a "membership" signup model obsolete longer term - at least from the fans perspective, since the concept of depositing a stake is a commitment similar to a membership concept.
New service providers may pay a small fee in cryptocurrency or the AVT token for using the network to provide their service to artists. This fee will only be proportional to any existing commission they already pay to platforms they use to sell or market their services. The service providers can include van hire, rider suppliers, music hire, venues and long term hotels and b&bs. After 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years on the DeTour network the fees they pay will reduce by 5% per period, if their reputation also increases or stays at a minimum level. Depending on upfront cost/funding needs to make DeTour self-sustaining our goal in phase 2 would be to deprecate this fee to service providers in favour of a deposit-based staking reward system. (See incentivization below).

Incentivization & Network Development

Incentivization and reputations/recommendations can be used to both build the network of users and draw them to the platform. This includes fans, artists and support acts, venues, event creators and service providers. Initially in phase 1 incentivization will be based on more traditional methods, and in phase 2 (assuming later availability of a staking rewards mechanism on aventus/ethereum) will be driven a by deposit based staking rewards system. Phase 1:

Service providers or suppliers can receive up to 10 or 15% discounts (depending on tour profit) on tickets and merchandise of their chosen favourite artists anywhere in the world via the DeTour app. They receive this reward in the form of AVT, in return for the quality of the services to make the tour viable.
Artists will be incentivized with AVT tokens to refer other supporting artists to DeTour, who may join the tour.
Fans are incentivized with AVT tokens to refer friends and family to DeTour to attend existing tours, or for referring venues and service providers to a provisional event.
We will use the Aventus event hosting rewards mechanism and expand that to recommendation based rewards to reward both tour creators and artists.
Artists and Tour creators (who can be promoters, venue owners, artists, or even fans) can receive incremental AVT reward depending on how positive the rating is that they receive for a successful tour and set of events. As holders they can use this AVT reward to pay fees for future event/tour creation.
Fans will be incentivized to help their favourite band build a tour in their country, with AVT rewards which result in ticket and merchandise discounts when they pay for the concerts with AVT.
The reputation rating/recommendation features mentioned in the product flow above will allow artists, venues, service providers and fans to rate each of the other roles where applicable. These ratings will be stored with the recipient of the rating. This ability to add new users to the system and make them searchable and usable (venues, service providers, artists) by future event creators will both build the network of users, encourage high standards and make future tours easier to setup and more viable.

Phase 2:

Service providers can make a deposit using their AVT on an event to DeTour Fans as a commitment to the success of the tour and as fee payment to the venue, or artist who is the recipient of the service. If the event or tour they work on is successful (e.g. e.g. majority of events sold out) and the quality rating of their services is high based on ratings they will receive incremental AVT reward + their deposit in return. If their rating is poor (below reasonable thresholds, depending on number of votes) they will only receive their deposit back but no reward.
Fans who commit their AVT as a stake (similar to a bid) on artist tour "offers" are using their stake to vote on an event by that artist at their hometown, on the tour. The fans will receive an AVT reward on top of their deposit if the event they attend on the tour goes ahead successfully, the staking reward increases if they keep their stake deposited until the full tour completes with success and also increases depending on the number of fellow fans they refer to the event who actually attend. The fans can receive this reward in addition to discount based rewards above. This staking reward creates an additional incentive for the fan to commit to buying the ticket, attending the event, and for promoting or using other ways to ensure the full tour is a success. This will be available when Aventus supports staking.
A single fan can earn AVT for matching an artist to in-country venues, booking agents, PR, or with accommodation, flight bookings, riders, music gear, van hire etc, and adding this to an existing tour plan that the band has setup on “DeTour”.
Alternatively a group of fans in a country where their favourite artist has not yet toured, can come together to directly set up a tour for their favourite band on “DeTour”, by setting up events in multiple cities, in venues with the highest fees for the bands and the best value facilities or services.
If the fan is a business owner who can directly provide one of these basic services like van hire, music hire, accommodation etc. then that fan can receive additional AVT rewards for discounts on the tickets and merchandise.

Benefits to Aventus Ecosystem

By making event tours easier to setup, by building and making use of a distributed network of venues, artists, service providers, and fans to service that event tour, by providing incentives and by ensuring the financial viability of the events the DeTour app will create a growing community and network of events, artists, venues and ticket buyers for the Aventus platform, thus inherently building the ecosystem. The tour building process will make use of core services provided by Aventus in event creation and rewards, ticket buying, ID verification, matching and possible reputation systems.

The staking rewards system suggested in Phase 2 of Incentivization, will be leveraged from the Aventus solution and expanded where necessary. It will be fundamental to making the DeTour app and network viable and achieve large scale network effect at the "tour creation" level and will also be crucial to make the Aventus network fully decentralized and viable for ticketing and event creation. The DeTour app and Aventus platform will be fundamentally mutually reinforcing.

Voting

If you like the proposal please vote for it by midnight UTC time on Sept 10th. Do so by entering my app name "DeTour" in the "Other" field on this form, after logging into Google: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DVdtzHpfoCoem6iRSz67Br3Cews1kTC5dnhzLbJlEx8

Aventus-Network-Services / aventus-dapp-proposals

DeTour: Decentralized Event Tour Planning App & Network #29