Home / Case Studies / RTYST

RTYST

The social network platform for aspiring artists

Industry:

Technologies:

EXPERTISE

Design

PLATFORMS

iOS, Android

Deliverables

UX, UI

Interested?

Join the waitlist

Brief

RTYST is a mobile application with video streaming technology, helping aspiring artists share audio-visual content while competing in contests. You can think of it as Tik Tok for aspiring artists around the world. The idea was born from the heart of novice creators who wanted to share their talent, build an engaged fanbase, find peers to collaborate with, create traction in their industry and generate income. In contrast to traditional social media promoting existing, career-advanced stars, the RTYST platform supports those who are at the beginning of their journey. This social network platform is a place where every artist can develop their talent: from singers, musicians, and dancers to comedians or magicians. Each of them can perfect their creations thanks to the built-in features enabling users to sing over beats, create and edit videos, add sound and video filters, and choose from a selection of instrumentals and sound effects.

The challenge

During the project, we had to face several challenges. As one of the main assumptions of the application is the sharing of audio-visual content, this project’s key issue was providing appropriately adapted, high-quality tools for editing and modifying movies and sound. In this case, the challenge for us was to find the right solution for fast and well-functioning video filters. Another challenge for us was to adjust the video resolution on different phones – both in terms of recording and displaying.

The implementation of the subscription system for iOS and Android and the consistent integration of both systems was also challenging aspect of this project.

The application is based, among other things, on creating movies in conjunction with ready-made background music. Therefore, we had to work out a solution that would allow us to combine beat soundtracks with video. It was not an easy task, but thanks to the knowledge and creativity of our specialists, we have achieved a result that satisfied both us, the client, and hopefully, the creators!

Despite many challenges and obstacles during the project, the effects of our cooperation was satisfactory both for the client and for us and we are all very proud of the final result.

Michał
Project Management Lead at Applover

Development Time

different mechanisms of displaying videos

Technological Solution

We used Flutter technology to develop the mobile app on Android and iOS. For the Back-end side of the development we used Ruby on Rails, Postgres, Redis and Sidekiq in this project. We implemented Firebase Cloud Messaging to enable sending push notifications. Another solution we applied here was Firebase Dynamic Links, which allows handling links appropriately depending on the platform. If the user clicked on the link sharing the video in the app, depending on the used device and whether the user had the application installed on their phone, the service was different:

opening a link on the phone without the application installed – redirection to the Google Play / AppStore store
opening a link on the phone with the application installed – launching the application on the screen displaying the shared movie
opening a link on the computer – displaying a website encouraging to install the application

What is more, we managed to introduce algorithms responsible for displaying videos. The user is able to see different kind of content depending on various factors:

some videos may be unavailable for the user if they’re owned by private profiles that aren’t followed by the user, 
some videos may be unavailable for the users if they were blocked by the authors or if they banned someone, 
the videos were banned or restricted, 
the videos were already seen by the user.

There are also 4 different mechanisms of displaying films, implemented by 4 different feeds (Mix, Challenges, Following, User Profile) in the app.

Our client wanted the user experience to be of possibly the highest quality, irrespectively to the localization and the quality of users’ network. In order to optimize video’s loading process, despite the limited budget, we worked out a satisfying solution using the following mechanisms:

We used Amazon CloudFront (CDN – Content Delivery Network) service which gets the data from the AWS S3 and distributes them to many databases, localized in different parts of the world. The users’ request is sent to the nearest localization, what helps to avoid delays related to the distance between the user and the central database.
We applied a mechanism allowing for preloading videos – the films following the one currently watched are loaded in the background, so that when you go to the next one, it starts immediately.
Optimization of the videos with the usage of ffmpeg library in order to decrease the size of videos with maintaining the best quality at the same time. The key here was to compress the videos using appropriate parameters.

Technological solution

The Outcome

The goal of our client was to create a digital space for talented people that combines creation and competition. The RTYST application perfectly reflects these values. Thanks to the platform we have developed together, young talents have many benefits, such as:

wide range of ready-made beats and samples
opportunities of taking part in contests and challenges – to receive rewards or just to have fun
the ability to promote their final videos on various social media channels
creating and discovering new content from the field of their interests
gaining recognition from labels and sponsors
collaborating with other talented people
receiving feedback from others based on ratings
mastering their skills thanks to the elements of gamification
being part of a bigger community of artists

Despite many challenges and obstacles during the project, the effects of our cooperation was satisfactory both for the client and for us and we are all very proud of the final result. RTYST is the platform that will crowdsource the next wave of talent!

Meet our team!

Michał

Head of Delivery

Szymon

Flutter/Android Developer

Kamil

Flutter Developer

Bartosz

Back-end Developer

Julia

UX / UI Designer

Kuba

QA Specialist

Dominik

QA Specialist

Kasia

UX / UI Designer