StudioMate
The personalized match algorithm to stretch artist budgets
WHAT IS STUDIOMATE?
At its core, StudioMate is a personalized matching algorithm packaged in an intuitive user interface system aimed at helping New York City creatives find kindred spirits in their craft, expand their personal network, and find co-tenants to split rent on studio spaces.
“I wish I had access to a communal studio space or a meeting space for other artists like me”
— Kyoko C., Textile Artist (Flatbush, Brooklyn)
StudioMate aims to make renting artist studios more affordable for the struggling artist, the broke MFA grad, the part-timer who just needs to work away from their 2-bedroom apartment of 5, and even the young urban professional whose building just won’t allow spray painting in the stairwells — by finding creatives suitable partners in splitting the rent.
THE FACTS
According to the most recent 2017 American Community survey, 10.31% of the city’s economy lies in the arts and entertainment sector. The actual number of creatives in the city is significantly higher, as this number excludes non-industry creatives (those not employed by any creative industry), hobbyists, and students.
In fact, a report produced by the Center for an Urban Future called “Data from Creatives from New York” (2015) shows that only 42% of city creatives are industry employed, while 22.4% creatives work outside of a creative industry, and the remaining 35.6% are self-employed. Even then, these figures cannot account for the number of hobbyist and students not captured in economic data.
“I try to live minimally but unfortunately music equipment takes up a lot of space”
— Tony N., Music Teacher (Astoria, Queens)
The average size of a New York City apartment is around 550 SQFT but costs around $3,282/month. The average NYC artist studio can range anywhere from $300/month to $2000/month, depending on the size and location. While industry artists in the city tend to make more than their non-city counterparts, adjusted from the cost of living in the city, the industry employed NYC city professional makes an average of $5,524/month. This number is also inflated by Manhattan creatives who are paid significantly above the national average of $22/hour. Take away the money for taxes, food, rent, and all that artistic equipment, and what is left for the rest of the city creatives who don’t already have a swanky studio at work?
Our product StudioMate is aimed at answering that exact question: How can 58% of New York City creatives find affordable places to paint, sing, dance, and make art?
THE PRODUCT
We can’t lower rents or increase your pay, but we can help you in finding ways to split the cost.
Watch the video demos below to learn more about how to use StudioMate.
NEW USERS
This video will explain:
How to start using StudioMate
How to create your personal profile
How to create a personalized search profile
We value freedom of choice with your personal data. No information will appear on your public profile except the ones you choose
MATCHING
This video will explain:
How to interpret your matches
How to see more matches
How to adjust your search preferences
How to see user profiles
We believe that our algorithm only tells a small part of the story. Our percentages can only tell you how close to your desired inputs another person’s inputs are, but cannot tell you any more about that person as a creative or their personality.
That’s why StudioMate features not only the match score, but also a personal introduction and photo. We believe that the highest scoring person is not necessarily the best person for you — that part is for you to decide.
THE BORING STUFF (if you’re not an investor)
Market Attractiveness
Data shows that there was an increase in the creative sector from 8.6% in 2013 to 10.3% in 2017. This trend is anticipated to only grow as creative industries grow in demand with the rising technology sector. This is the largest employment in NYC, adding about 9% share of state’s economy. Despite having near 600,000 workers industry, majority of workers find it difficult to find affordable studio space for work. Of the 600,000 works, 58% are non-industry employed or self-employed artists, who do not necessarily have a dedicated workspace suited for their needs, and often would need to find studio space on their own.
The existing platforms available for finding studio mates are neither aggregated nor formalized. Without a standardized infrastructure to support person-to-person searches in this niche market, creatives rely on word-of-mouth, friend referrals, online listing sites such as Craigslist, artist forums, and social media such as Facebook groups. However, traditional methods such as referrals are limited in their potential reach when compared to utilizing web searches, but currently existing online listing sites are decentralized and often have restricted access — such as in the case with Facebook groups, which sometimes requires a friend invitation, administrator approval to join, and may have certain rules on the contents of any post, which again may require administrator post approval. Such processes are time consuming and dependent on the attention and manual efficiency of the group admin.
StudioMate seeks to alleviate those concerns by delivering targeted, personalized searches to creatives without the hassle of a long wait. Users are verified, delivering high quality profiles to your dashboard. Each user profile will show just qualitative information to highly scored matches, while no personal information will be distributed unless chosen by the user.
We are not a studio listing site, but we won’t rule out the possibility that we can implement a listing feature in the future, or partner with a company who can. Our goal is to alleviate at least one pain point for New York City creatives; ideally, we will work to solve many more.
Competitive Landscape
In order to further evaluate the viability of our service, we also looked into the competitive landscape of the market. After conducting research on studio mate matching services, we identified that there are no other services that cater to studio mate matching services. However we expect to have some level of service overlap between work space search service and roommate finding service domain.
In work space search domain, services such as New York Federations for the Arts, Stutsu, Listing Projects provide work space search to artists. However, often times, they are focused on short-term rentals and they do not provide capabilities to search for potential roommates. For roommate finding services such as Room Zoom and Spare Room, they primarily focus on roommates searching for housing purposes. There are no services that are dedicated for artists to match with each other.
These services may provide certain features that are similar to StudioMate’s services, but StudioMate’s value proposition targets a domain (Long-term lease & Roommate matching for artists) where no competition is currently present.
But what about studio residence programs that are already affordable to artists?
If you already have a studio you love at a price point suited to you, that’s amazing! If you would like to share the space, that’s even more amazing!
At StudioMate, our number one goal is to help creatives in the city find a way to afford the space to make their works. We can’t change the market prices of studio, and we can’t increase your income (we wish we could!), but we hope to facilitate you in finding someone fun, reliable, and just as creative as you are to share the costs. We know artists residences exist, but spots are competitive and restricted. StudioMate is here to help those who cannot afford to rent a private studio at their current budget, but cannot work their craft in their current residential space, or for those who feed off the creative energy of others. If you like to work alone, StudioMate is not for you.
So… What’s Next?
StudioMate envisions connecting artists together to provide opportunities to help artists find affordable work spaces. StudioMate expects to expand its business with three different phases.
Phase 1 — Studio Mate Matching
Upon the initial launch, StudioMate will focus on connecting artists in NYC area. Much of the effort in the first phase will be centered around in increasing the user base to expand the customer database and improve the match rate of the search
Phase 2 — Partnership
Once we establish a large enough customer base, we will try to partner with other real estate or space rental businesses who can provide work spaces to artists. By placing an advertisement and promoting work spaces on StudioMate’s platform, artists will be able to directly make connections with real estate and space rental businesses to find a work space. StudioMate can also expect to generate revenue from advertisement and service fees, or a paid subscription model for real estate firms to find creative tenants for leases.
The neighborhoods in the outer boroughs of New York City such as Long Island City and Brooklyn have a glut of previously industrial warehouses and manufacturing lofts that now sit vacant near encroaching residential developments. If artist studios are made more accessible to city creatives through partnership brokers with the supply and StudioMate with the demand, manufacturing districts can be made more vibrant to its residents in the long run. We can already see some transformation happening in those areas.
Phase 3 — Market Expansion
After StudioMate successfully build presence in NYC market, StudioMate will seek further opportunities to expand its business coverage to other markets. Markets with similar needs will be identified to prioritize market expansion efforts. Based on lessons learned and existing resources, StudioMate will establish a Go-To-Market strategy that can increase the impact of market penetration.
Want More?
Upcoming Features
- Mobile application (Android & iOS): Mobile version application will be developed to diversify access points and user convenience.
- Keep me Updated: StudioMate will feature a function that allows us to regularly notify user with new match alerts as they are detected by the system.
- I am off the Market: To avoid receiving request to connect, artists will have an option to stay off the market. Artists, who are” off the market” will still be included on the match result, but other artists will not be able to send messages to the user.
- Match Threshold: Set a percentage at which StudioMate will no longer feature profiles below a certain match score on your dashboard. This will be an optional feature to further help users narrow their search.
- Work Studio Listings: After partnering with real estate and work space rental companies, StudioMate will provide featured listings for studios on our Platform.
- Market Report: Online report will be published monthly to provide information on artists demographic by different neighborhoods, average studio cost, and featured artwork of the StudioMate artists.
- Featured Artist of the Week: We will promote artist profile on StudioMate platform. This will provide artists an opportunity to build publicity and promote their work.
… More features to come. Stay Tuned!
MORE BORING STUFF (if you’re not a programmer)
The creation of a profile involves two key pieces of information: the user's profile information, and their search preferences for their potential StudioMate. The matching algorithm utilizes this information in order to look up potential matches.The logic of the matching algorithm recognizes the following key metrics: 1. The profile of any potential matches should match as closely as possible to the search preferences of the current user2. The profile of the current user should match as closely as possible to the search preferences of any potential matches3. The user is best equipped to understand what is most important to them in the event of imperfect matches.To this end, the logic of our matching algorithm tries to embody these key components. First, we establish two ranking scores. There is one for the match between the current user's search preferences and any potential users already in the database, and another for the match between the search preferences of potential matches and the current profile. We match based on 6 categories: Gender, Age, StudioSize, Borough, Trade, and Budget. If there is a match between search preference and profile attribute, we assign a 1 to that category. Each score is then a sum of the 6 categories. Currently, each category is weighted equally, and the sum of the two scores (user preference + potential match preference) is scaled by 12 (the max score) to give the match percentage for every other user in the database.We filter all users to make sure that there is a nonzero score in both ranks, as this reflects at least 1 category match in both side's preferences. We then sort all users by this match percentage in descending order to show the user their potential matches.
This matching algorithm is still rudimentary - there are potential improvements that could be made, pending user feedback. We detail a few:
- Currently, aside from the nonzero ranks filtering, the algorithm does not favor user search preference matches over the converse, which is nonideal, as we watch users to see the match percentage correlate to a match with the user's search preferences. No one wants to see someone ranking highly if they don't match at all to the user's search preferences.
- One solution would be to adjust the match percentage algorithm to be weighted more on the user's search preference side, and less so on the converse side. Finding an ideal weight split would involve more research on our end, and discussions with alpha testers.
- Suppose a user placed significant value on the Trade attribute matching with a potential user, and much less so on whether or not the Budget matched well. There isn't currently a way for the algorithm to prioritize one field over another in the calculation of a match percentage.
- To incorporate this, we could add more steps to the user profile creation, potentially asking for a ranking of the search preferences, which would inform our calculation of the weights on our end.
- Technically, all fields for search preferences should be multiple-valued, indicating that the user could have a range of preferences for Gender/Age/Borough, much like Trade and Budget are currently.
- Budget matching criteria is pretty basic right now: if the user's budget is greater than a potential match, the user-side ranking score is incremented by 1, and conversely so. Budget match should be much fuzzier than this black-and-white criteria, and more research should be done into what the ideal evaluation is for this category.
FAQ
How does my personal information used/shared? Can everyone see my personal information?
We use private data system to store your personal information. Members of StudioMate can only see your personal description, and the details you choose to provide. Even private messages will be direct on our site through the direct messaging system, though you may choose to have your messages forwarded to your personal email.
How do I know I can trust my matches?
All users must go through a two-step verification process by entering their emails and a phone number. Users with more complete profiles get higher match rates.
StudioMate urges all users to use the direct message system and not to give out personal contact information to unverified users. We cannot help users who communicate outside of StudioMate.
Users may block users for any reason, and should report any harassment or unwanted contact to StudioMate.
Is StudioMate free?
Yes! It is totally free to create a profile and find your studio mate on our platform.
Which cities is StudioMate available in?
Currently we provide service within NYC and all five boroughs. We hope that following a successful launch, we can expand to other cities with burgeoning creative populations.
What if I don’t like my matches?
If you do not like the batch that appears on your personalized dashboard, you can go back to your user profile and adjust your search preferences. The algorithm is not an exact science yet, and we are still working out the kinks. We are still in the MVP stage, but hope to implement a match rating feature, which will tell us more information about the quality of your matches.
Help us help you!
I keep getting the same matches even if I change my search preferences!
Sometimes, all there is to do is wait and check the “keep me updated!” button which will send new match alerts as they are detected by the system. Matching is a two way street, and sometimes it takes take for that perfect studiomate to appear. As we expand our user base (tell your friends!), this should become less of an issue.
I matched with a mate and we really hit it off. Now what?
If you found the ideal studiomate, then the next step is to start exchanging recommendations for studios. Maybe you have a place in mind, or they saw the perfect listing online. Make sure to set expectations when studio shopping. In the future, we hope to make this process even easier by partnering with studio listing companies for quick access to available art studios.
I would really like this as an app. Will there be an app version?
We believe that getting a usable product is the first priority, and that a website will reach more users searching for studios and studiomates on the web than an app store will. Once we hit a critical mass, the next step is definitely a companion app. So sit tight, and refer your friends!
I don’t see my trade or creative field listed. What should I do?
Oops! We are so sorry we left something out! We know that the creative field is vast and a few simple categories can’t encompass every trade. If you feel left out or are unsure what field you classify as, send us a message! We hope to expand our array of creative fields to choose from as we grow. For now, pick the one that is closest to what you do or what you make. If you are a foley artist, you make sounds — please use the “sound artist” field!
If you have anymore questions, please feel free to reach out to us at studiomatesNYC@gmail.com
Created by Joy Huang, Kevin Kim, and Yingwen He
