HOW WE CREATED AND MAINTAIN THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE FOR URAL MUSIC NIGHT

Since 2018, the Doubletapp team has partnered with the organizers of Ural Music Night as their digital partner. In 2018, three months before the festival, we developed an app for iOS and Android from scratch, based on the existing website’s API.

The client came to us with a problem: with hundreds of stages and thousands of musicians, people needed a tool to understand what music was being performed at each venue, which artists were performing at what time, and how to find the venues. The app helped to navigate the festival space and make visitors' lives easier.

Since then, we have been improving the festival's ecosystem every year.

• In 2019, the app’s feature set was expanded, and its design updated. We relaunched the website, integrated it with the app, and added features that had already been implemented in the mobile app. We also integrated a music magazine with news and announcements of the city’s musical events, added an archive of previous festivals with media materials, and provided online broadcasts.

• In the “COVID” year of 2020, Doubletapp literally saved the event. The festival was postponed several times and almost canceled twice. Each time, everything had to be renegotiated (schedules of artists’ arrivals and performances; rental, delivery, installation, and setup of equipment; organization of venues, etc.), wasting time and nerves, and risking reputational and financial damage. By implementing a CRM and transferring all organizational work to an electronic platform, the entire event was organized within 17 days, meeting the deadlines.

How did CRM help? Previously, performance coordination was done via email and phone calls, while in the CRM, forms were filled out and sent automatically. If any materials were missing, the form simply would not be sent. Organizers received a complete set of data that was easy to work with. Thus, Doubletapp’s CRM saved the organizers 6,000 man-hours and sped up their work 18 times. As a result, in 2020, the festival was attended by 170,000 spectators, with 700 artists performing on 50 stages. In 2020, Ural Music Night became the largest festival on Earth!

• In 2021, the festival was planned for June 25 but took place on October 22 due to COVID restrictions. The broadcast from 11 major stages was watched by 4.75 million viewers.

• In 2022, a new attendance record was set: over 400,000 spectators. 3,000 artists performed on 100 stages, with 430 hours of music; the website streamed from 10 concert venues. There were 30,000 app downloads, and it topped the store charts in the “Entertainment” and “Events” categories.

• On June 23, 2023, the festival brought together more than 360,000 participants from 7 countries — over 3,000 artists performed on 100 stages. Performances from 11 venues were streamed online on the project’s website. Despite high loads, the website, app, and CRM system worked stably and without failures. The stable operation of the app, website, and CRM during peak loads was monitored by a team of duty specialists, as it is every year.

How do we ensure stable operations? A project manager oversees the festival project year-round, but the most interesting work begins two months before the event: the team prepares servers and increases their capacity; changes the app configuration to work successfully with powerful servers; caches frequently used data and conducts load testing.

The work of Doubletapp specialists has been highly praised by the Tagline Awards jury:

In 2021, the CRM won silver in the “Best Innovative Service” category and two bronze awards for “Best Intranet Engagement” and “Best Work Automation Service”

In 2022, the UMN website and mobile app were awarded silver for “Best Development/Integration” and “Best Intranet Engagement” and two bronze statues for “Best Event Website” and “Best Intranet/Personal Account”