Background
Edinburgh based Ruaridh Currie and Felicitas Betzl wanted to create a platform dedicated to the hard and heavy metal genre. The service would target an estimated fan base of 530 million people world-wide, tapping into a £19 billion global market.
2020 saw the closure and cancellation of music venues and gigs across the globe due to restrictions imposed by governments to tackle the spread of coronavirus. As a result, the team was forced to rethink their app entirely. This led them to Bad Dinosaur.
The recent Covid-19 pandemic meant we had to pivot our Rockifi platform away from live music based to live streaming of concerts. This meant not just a change in direction but a complete change in our development approach. We knew we had to move quickly and work efficiently. We moved away from our previous development agency as we needed a fresh start and some new input to build our MVP.
Ruaridh Currie, Rockifi
The app would allow rock fans to stream live events, discover and rate new artists, purchase merchandise and donate funds to support bands and workers in the Covid-afflicted music community. Their aim was to emphasise creating a fun and interactive experience for fans to enjoy live streamed events.
The project
In collaboration with Rockifi’s chief technical officer, Greg Fyans, Bad Dinosaur built a live streaming platform with community and e-commerce functionality.
Bad Dinosaurs' open and friendly approach helped us understand what our minimum requirements should be, and they worked within a realistic timeframe which greatly appealed to us. From the first day we knew they were the right agency for us to develop our pivoted MVP idea.
Ruaridh Currie, Rockifi
The live streaming functionality shows unique high end video and audio productions featuring heavy music artists, on a pay-per-view model for fans. One particularly special feature of the build is the unique 'Rock Horns' button, which lets fans get involved in a unique and fun way. It means that every fan interaction does count and gives direct feedback to the artist as they perform, so they can “see when they are really killing it!”.
Rockifi was built as a responsive web app, using .NET Razor Pages, a Dacast API integration for live streaming and PubNub to harness the chat functionality.
Today
On Halloween night the team launched with their first live gig, a pre-recorded set from Manchester based outfit, Ingested. The night was a roaring success and the whole Bad Dinosaur team joined in to the live stream to hit those rock horns.
The Rockifi team has big plans for the app. A promising launch has inspired Rockifi to seek fresh funding and hire new developers while also creating two new marketing roles. They believe that new artists coming through are the life-blood of this industry, and so they’re looking at ways of getting smaller and independent artists and content creators involved.
We'd certainly recommend Bad Dinosaur to anyone who is interested in building an MVP. They have a great team, and a clear and transparent approach to development and we'll certainly work with them again in future.
Ruaridh Currie, Rockifi
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