Streamonomics
Streamonomics is an interactive income simulator built for independent musicians who want to understand the real economics of a music career. Most artists rely on intuition when deciding whether to go independent — Streamonomics replaces that guesswork with data, modeling earnings across streaming, live performance, and merchandise against the actual cost of living in their city.
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Year
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Problem
Independent artists entering the music industry face a fundamental knowledge gap: they don't know how much money they can realistically make. Streaming platforms, social media monetization, touring, and merch all generate income — but the math behind each revenue stream is opaque, city-dependent, and tier-specific. Without a clear picture of what income looks like at different audience sizes and in different cities, emerging artists either overestimate their earning potential or underestimate what it takes to survive on music alone. The system asks artists to navigate a complex financial landscape with almost no data tools built for them.
Solution
Streamonomics is an interactive income simulator for recording artists. Users input their city, audience tier, and revenue strategy — then receive a personalized income breakdown across streaming, social media, touring, and merchandise. The simulator accounts for local cost-of-living thresholds, CPM rates by platform and tier, venue capacities, and attach rates, producing a real financial picture of what it means to pursue music professionally at each stage of growth. A viability meter gives artists an instant read on whether their current strategy covers survival costs in their market.
Design Process
I served as lead designer and full-stack developer on the project. I architected the full data pipeline — building the PHP endpoints, designing the MySQL schema across three relational tables (cost-of-living, CPM rates, merch pricing), and engineering the income calculation engine that powers the simulator. On the design side, I developed the visual identity from scratch: a white-and-gold palette inspired by monetary incentive and creative ambition, paired with an intentionally minimal UI after competitive research revealed that existing tools were overloaded and hard to parse. I designed three user personas — the Cataloguer, the Merch, and the Showman — to ensure the simulator's strategy inputs reflected real artist archetypes rather than abstract variables.
Input
I owned product architecture, database design, API integration, frontend development, and UX end-to-end. I built the city selection map, the multi-step simulator flow, and all data visualizations. I structured the income model to pull live from PHP-served JSON rather than hardcoded values, ensuring the tool could scale with updated data. I also led user research, designed the resources and data reference pages, and ran the final testing pass with real users. Streamonomics was built as part of a course project and deployed live on a production server.