On October 16th at 11 AM PST, Basscaster (by FarcastHER) will debut in /farcasther as a mini app with an interview and co-working session with the prolific @ChicBangs.

Why Basscaster?

Dan Romero has said there's not enough interesting content on Farcaster. The majority of farcaster content is text-based. Creators need reasons to post, and short-form video which has basic UX isn't enough.

Farcaster also loses value when community energy goes elsewhere. Tavern.fm has become a popular hangout because farcasters want to actually talk to each other, and people have been clamouring for a Clubhouse like experience on Farcaster for a long time.

Enter Miniapps

With miniapps, we now have the technology! Launchable from a frame or a direct deep link to a composer action, users no longer have to leave. Basscaster is available on the flagship client as orthogonal media. Something other than the traditional text experience.

Orthogonal clients are under development, and they are needed. Orthogonal media is needed first, as creators eat technology for breakfast. With onboarding directly into channels coming, currently a Warpcast (the flagship / first-party client) only feature, you need to work within Warpcast to interact with channels.

Imagine: Onboarding someone into /yourawesomechannel, and engaging in a voice AMA. Regular hangouts that you can drop links to farcaster content in, with less clicks needed to check them out / come back to the chat if needed.

The MVP will contain live chat, giving an audio-livestream experience. The purple app has already made people rich, financially. Rich media has been lacking, and it's here.

The Roadmap

MVP

The MVP, launching on October 16th will feature a live voice and text chat. After our initial event with ChicBangs, regular audio / text hangouts will be scheduled in /farcasther.

Recorded Media

Our followup release will be providing all higher.fm recordings playable in Basscaster on /higherfm.

White Labelling

After developing a robust version of Basscaster, other channels will be able to request a white labelled version for their own purposes, whether it's recorded media, live audio, live chat or a combination.

Sufficiently Decentralized Basscaster

Channels and/or users will be able to automatically provision their own white labelled version of Basscaster automatically without requiring interventions from the Basscaster team.

The Team

The Basscaster team consists of a one woman show at present : Ivy Astrix (that's me!)

I'm a staff level engineer with deep experience in streaming media distribution. I was hired at TELUS to stand up Optik TV, the Canadian equivalent of AT&T U-Verse based initially on Microsoft Mediaroom middleware. This service now boasts over 1 million customers in western Canada.