Kits and Proxies

Product
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@psi @piper

Not sure if this will be helpful for brainstorming. I came up with some of these ideas a while back and had posted them on Basecamp. Although I believe we are very much in a different-place code-wise, I still find this vision intriguing and felt it was worth moving into the Forum. Was reminded of the proxy thing when @richjensen used the term “designee” in a Mattermost channel chat.

Kits

Any user would have a single generic account type which would be supplemented by modular “kits”.

Kits would be unlocked by going through specific registration processes or fulfilling other requirements. Unlocking a kit would unlock areas inside the Dash, the Player, and the Forum with unique features: for example “Upload Kit”, “Label Kit”, “Member Kit”.

Everyone would get a “Listen Kit” upon signup, for managing playlists, tracking listens, etc.

This way, rather than a user being “defined” by an account type, you would have a generic account that was supplemented by whatever toolkits you need in order to do what you want to do at Resonate.

Membership type and registration would be managed via your Member Kit. Membership could be earned/redeemed in various ways according to what kind of regular contribution you want to make to Resonate, whether labor, music, listening, or dues – resulting in a respective type of membership: listener, worker, musicmaker.

I see this system as making KYC and registration much more logical. More focused on what folks want to do at Resonate, rather than some perceived boxed-in identity.

Proxies

Most inter-account management would be handled by a user being granted proxy control of another’s account, persona(s), or kit(s). More exploration would be needed on this, it was just a bare-bones idea.

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If I understand it correctly, what you’re using the term Kit for is often defined by a role & permission system.

So a user with the role “artist” will have several permissions associated with them “can create LP, view royalties, get payouts”. You can mix and match roles to get different sets of permissions on a user.

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I think we’re on the same page, yeah. If a user could have multiple roles, and if each role granted them access to a particular set of features, I believe functionally it would be similar.

The core idea was that a user would be able to unlock these different feature sets through defined processes, and that you could have all the “kits” you need integrated into one account. Kits would be modularly added to your account and interface, not be treated like forks in the road that take you on one journey rather than another.

In the past when I was thinking about this, a user had to be either a listener or an artist, and this subsequently limited their features and required them to go on these separate paths. To a degree, it seems our setup is still using this presentation. This has often confused artists who don’t understand that their artist account comes with a “listener kit”.

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I saw the vision roughly like this:

  • With an Account, you can potentially unlock Kits that each enable certain features and abilities.
  • An Account can create multiple Personas to present themselves and have unique profiles.
  • Kits are tied to your Account, not your Personas.
  • An Account or Persona can be given Proxy control of another user’s Account, Persona, or Kit(s).

So like, a “Label Kit” for example might be a standardized way to have Proxy control of a set of other users’ Personas and Upload Kits. The user could still have sole control of their Account, but can offer Proxy control of their Upload Kit and relevant Persona to another Account.

Something like that. It’s still a bit hazy in my mind, but feel like I’m on to something.

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I imagine Kits would standardize and clarify situations where an Account wants access to certain features but needs to go through some sort of KYC, registration, qualification, or profile creation process first.

This feels like a pretty natural story:

“Aight I’ve created a Resonate Account. It says I can unlock Listen Kit and Forum Kit by creating a Persona. I see a few other locked kits available, hmmm… Upload Kit and Member Kit. I’ll look into Member Kit later, I want to upload. Ahh, it says I can unlock the Upload Kit by creating a Persona and doing a registration thing. Woah, once I upload, it will automatically unlock my Member Kit? Nice. Okay I made a Persona and registered for an Upload Kit. Now when I go to my account it says “Upload Kit Requested”, cool, that makes sense. [time passes] Oh great, I got an email which says I now have an Upload Kit, now I can upload whenever I want right to the player. Rad.”

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