Case Studies › Soul Artists

Entertainment & Creator Marketplaces

From Inbox Chaos to Instant Live Talent Bookings

Soul Artists was managing bookings through a patchwork of emails, WhatsApp threads, and bank transfers — losing deals to slower competitors who at least had a form. Techdots built a purpose-built two-sided marketplace with real-time availability, automated contracts, and integrated escrow payments. The result was a platform that let event organisers go from discovery to confirmed booking in under ten minutes.

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Soul Artists

Entertainment & Creator Marketplaces

3.2x

increase in completed bookings within 6 months of launch

74%

reduction in time-to-confirmation vs. the old email/phone process

£1.2M+

in talent fees transacted through the platform in year one

16 weeks

timeline

This engagement is best for

Entertainment and talent agencies looking to productise their booking operations

Marketplace founders who need a transactional platform with trust and payment infrastructure

Operators running high-touch service businesses that rely too heavily on manual back-and-forth

Platforms targeting the live events or hospitality sectors where speed of confirmation is a competitive edge

The Transformation

Before & After

Before

✕ Booking requests arrived by email and phone with no central tracking, causing deals to fall through the cracks

✕ Artists had no self-serve way to manage availability, leading to double-bookings and last-minute cancellations

✕ Payments were handled via bank transfer with no escrow, creating disputes and delayed payouts for talent

✕ Event organisers had no way to compare performers by genre, price range, or availability without calling the team

✕ The back-office team was spending 60–70% of their time on admin — quotes, contracts, chasing confirmations — rather than growing the roster

After

✓ Event organisers can search, filter, and request performers by category, location, budget, and live date availability

✓ Artists manage their own profiles, set availability windows, and receive booking requests directly in a dashboard

✓ Escrow-backed payments via Stripe release funds to artists automatically after the event date passes

✓ Auto-generated PDF contracts are sent to both parties on booking confirmation, removing legal back-and-forth

✓ The ops team shifted from reactive admin to proactive roster growth, with platform data surfacing which acts convert best

What We Built

Deliverables & Scope

Every item below was chosen because it directly addressed a business bottleneck — not because it was technically interesting.

Two-sided marketplace with separate onboarding flows, dashboards, and permission models for artists and event bookers

Real-time availability calendar with conflict detection, so artists block dates and bookers only see genuinely open slots

Escrow payment layer built on Stripe Connect — split payouts, platform commission deduction, and automated release on event completion

Auto-generated booking contracts using dynamic PDF templating, delivered via email and stored against each booking record

Search and discovery engine with faceted filters (genre, location radius, price tier, group size suitability) backed by Elasticsearch

Admin portal for the Soul Artists team to manage artist vetting, commission rates, dispute resolution, and payout overrides

ROI Logic

Why This Generated
Real Business Value

Every hour the ops team previously spent on manual quoting and contract prep was an hour not spent signing new artists or converting warm leads. By automating the transactional layer end-to-end, Techdots freed the team to focus on supply-side growth — which directly drove the increase in completed bookings. The escrow model also unlocked larger corporate event clients who previously would not pay via bank transfer, meaningfully increasing average booking value.

Key Outcomes

3.2x

increase in completed bookings within 6 months of launch

74%

reduction in time-to-confirmation vs. the old email/phone process

£1.2M+

in talent fees transacted through the platform in year one

Why It Worked

The Decisions That
Made the Difference

Good execution matters. But the right early decisions matter more.

We designed the artist onboarding flow to take under 20 minutes, which meant supply-side adoption was high from day one and the marketplace never felt thin

Stripe Connect was chosen specifically for its marketplace-native split-payout model, avoiding months of custom accounting logic

Contract automation was prioritised early because it was the single biggest source of back-and-forth delay in the old process — removing it created an immediate, visible win

We ran a closed beta with ten existing artists and five regular clients before public launch, using real booking data to pressure-test edge cases around cancellations and date conflicts

Tech Stack

Sidekiq

Integrations

Stripe Connect (escrow, split payouts, and commission) SendGrid (transactional email and contract delivery) Google Calendar API (two-way artist availability sync) DocuSeal (PDF contract generation and e-signature)

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