Musicians are not born, they’re crafted from practice: From 0 to 500,000
At Soundbrenner we want to help more people succeed in their goal to become a great musician. We do that by bringing modern technology and great design to the world of instrumentalists. Our products focus on solving the most universal challenges that we all face when playing music: whether we’re beginners or advanced musicians, no matter which instrument we play, and regardless of which country we live in.
The first challenge could not have been more important or universal: Rhythm. Everyone has to play on time. And rhythm, of course, is the lifeblood of music. So in January 2016, we launched our first two products to the world: A wearable, vibrating metronome, called the Soundbrenner Pulse (you can read more about it here) and our mobile app, The Metronome by Soundbrenner.
When we launched our app, there were already several hundred metronome apps out there — yet all of them missed the mark in one way or another. Our goal was to change that.
3 years later, I’m proud to say we have succeeded. This week we’ve officially crossed the mark of 500,000 unique musicians playing music with our app — that is every single month. We’re also the #1 search result for the keyword ‘metronome’ for both the iOS App Store and the Google Play store in many countries across the globe. And finally, throughout 2018, no other metronome app received a higher rating, or more reviews, than The Metronome by Soundbrenner.
What made our app take off? According to the backend of the Google Play store, the usability rating our app received from users is 2.2x higher than for the average music app. The top 3 most frequent words mentioned in reviews are: ‘Easy to use’, ‘useful’ and ‘simple interface’. 💪
Most importantly, we are blown away and humbled by the sheer amount of music practice that our community has completed. We are proud to say that in 2018 alone there were over 12 million unique practice days logged. Wow!
Besides just saying thank you, we want to share some fun insights below:
Most of our users are drummers (41%), followed by guitarists (23%), and pianists (11%). But who is the most hard-working and puts in the most practice hours? Let the competition begin!
And if you check the average practice hours per month by country, here are the top 5:
- Argentina (4.8 hours)
- Brazil (4.4 hours)
- Mexico (4 hours)
- Australia (3.9 hours)
- France (3.5 hours)
So if you’re a cellist from Argentina, you can pride yourself because you just might put in more effort than anyone else in the world! Cheers to you. 🎻🇦🇷
Our app is far from perfect yet. There are many things we want to improve, and many new features we plan to add. In fact, we are even going to tackle some entirely new challenges that go far beyond rhythm. We can’t wait to ship those exciting new products and share more insights down the road!
A special thanks and shoutout has to go to our multi-disciplinary team of app engineers, designers and music technologists. Without their great work, the app today wouldn’t exist! And finally I want to mention our amazing community — thank you for making us part of your music practice routine. Your hard work inspires us to push ourselves further every day, with the goal to make a brighter, better future of music-making happen.
PS: If you want to know about our latest project, make sure to check out the crowdfunding campaign of our second wearable: the 4-in-1 Smart Music Tool, Soundbrenner Core, currently live on Indiegogo.
