Who is still on the Team?
The original members of the team are still part of the project, nothing has changed. There are only four stock holders in PeerTracks at this time.
Is Eddie still around?
Yes, Eddie is CEO of PeerTracks. Naturally he is still there.
When will you provide a working website for Troopeers, PeerTracks and MUSE?
Leaving Troopeers out of this for now as this will have an update of its own.
If you are referring to landing pages, the one for PeerTracks will stay as is for the time being.
In regards to the MUSE information page, Cass showed me a page he had designed for it. It’s based off of the read M logo he and Pendragon3 did. Real slick. I’d like to get him to do the changes to both the red logo and that MUSE page.
If you are talking about the web app, the PeerTracks platform is complete, as it stands today, it only needs to be integrated with MUSE.
As far as the MUSE client goes. That’s not getting revamped. It was just updated to where BitShares is today. The interface for MUSE is going to be PeerTracks anyway… at least for 99% of the users.
Can you publish a document of how you have spent the crowdfund money?
We can give you a very general recap of where the fund went and continue to go.
The biggest expense was the development of the PeerTracks web app. This includes all standard features like streaming, playlist creation, downloading/purchasing of song files, following artists, liking songs, channel creation. It also included project specific features like buying of UIAs, and the front end of a basic wallet to see your tokens. Added to that is the GUI for the automatic royalty payment splitter and song metadata. I can dig out a video of that, which might bore the non-music crowd but should excite the musicians on the forums! Finally there is the advertiser portal that was created to allow brands to partner with Artists. That’s it for web app dev.
Then there’s the blockchain development cost. Keep in mind funds went into helping fund codebase production that was required for both MUSE and BitShares. On top of that was MUSE specific work.
Legal fees.
Lawyers aren’t the cheapest chaps in the land! This project requires different specialists: Corporate attorneys, Trademarks specialists, Crypto-currency lawyers, SEC specialists and Entertainment industry attorney.
Moving on to the more business side of things. Such as attending key events to make our presence known, network and build up extremely valuable contacts… not to mention learn learn learn. This includes travel related expenses for the NYC, Las Vegas and Texas bitcoin Conferences, but most importantly the music specific events like the Entertainment Law Initiative, The Grammys, MIDEM, The Future of Music Policy Summit and Berklee’s Fair Music Open Forum event.
Finally there are marketing expenses in this I include a couple sponsorships, which turned out to be a great move. (Eddie really educated me on the value those can have!)
Keep in mind we have only covered expenses, we haven’t paid ourselves. I personally have been on this full time for about two years with no salary coming in. I just want to put that out there to put it into perspective.
I did a small raise of capital for stock in the PeerTracks company here in Canada because I had friends and family wanting to invest into PeerTracks itself. At the moment all expenses of the project are funded by the CEO.
We are now prepping for a spring or summer raise, which aims to be the biggest yet.
Everything we have done to this point was to set the stage and ensure both PeerTracks and MUSE have a foundation and can now rise in value. If anyone in the community is interested in PeerTracks, contact us. Many opportunities are available.
Will you be releasing a working product before you being your next round of financing?
Yes.
Has BitSapphire succeeded or failed to deliver a working product? Do you still have a relationship with them?
BitSapphire has completed their task and relationship with PeerTracks. We are now moving to a more internal approach. The hiring process has begun. They did much of the heavy lifting as far as development, fundraising and early day consulting goes. We are still on good terms and will most likely work with them again in the near future.
What technical obstacles must be overcome before launch?
As far as we can see, it looks like smooth sailing ahead. Unless we find a fundamental flaw in the Graphene codebase while integrating PeerTracks to MUSE, everything should be fine.
Once the basic functions are there, we will insert the automatic payment splitter in MUSE and start a muse_USD market to allow us to Launch PeerTracks with all its features.
Are you willing to commit to publishing updates at regular intervals?
Yes we can. However the product is going to launch soon, at that point, most of you will probably all be using it either as testers or regular users. Also our NYC-based PR firm will be releasing general write-ups for us on the mainstream media. Those should contain good nuggets of info as well.
Will you be releasing a project plan?
No.
Have you secured a way for artists to create Tokens and users to get money into the system through Credit Card?
Yes. Users will be able to purchase Tokens with credit card directly. As far as funding their account with muse_USD, this requires a gateway like CCEDK – which can be seamlessly tied into the site like ebay is to paypal.
With your current funding level, will you still have enough to release the initial product?
Yes. More funding would merely speed up the process since we could hire more full time devs.
We are always looking for more funding and would entertain any accredited investor wanting to explore coming into PeerTracks as a stockholder.
What are your plans for SXSW?
We will attend and have a street team interfacing with the crowd/public walking the streets passing out cards and banners. SXSW is such a crowded space/event you can get lost in the shuffle. The days of launching your new app at SXSW are pretty much gone. You get drowned out in the noise. It was recommended we attend SXSW as a place to set up important meetings and make valuable connections. This is what we intend to do.
Has PeerTracks already paid the marketing firms upfront for work or is that another upcoming expense?
PeerTracks has an internal team inclusive of Eddie’s marketing and promotional experience as well as a PR team based in New York, which is paid on an ongoing monthly basis.
Why wasn't there more transparency over the last few months when PeerTracks was running into difficulty?
Eddie’s father passing away took out our CEO and I had to step in double time during that period as work stacked up. This all happened during the Washington event at the same date MUSE was launched. Still Eddie made it to NYC a week later for the important meetings we had lined up. Those were difficult times, great things came out of it and all is good now but at that time, I was under water with many shoes to fill.
Eddie always states in interviews that his dad is the reason he is in the music business so you can imagine the emotional strain. I can say that he is back and louder than ever.
Also, It made no sense to update people about internal difficulties with our partners (which cost us time and money) until we had resolved the issue. An update during those weeks would have caused 1000x more speculation and rumours than we see today. And as stated above, as of today, everything has been resolved and we are moving forward again. We are moving faster, have more traction and we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the two-year long tunnel.
Topic: Unanswered question thread (Read 21815 times)
