I quit my job to make music social again.
Clickbait title I know. But hold tight, let me explain…
Born in the late 80s, I grew up with music at the forefront of my school experience. You’d go to school and we’d all be swapping casettes, borrowing and burning CDs (legally, obviously) and compiling minidiscs (remember those?!). Before what suddenly felt like a technologic revolution, we started swapping MP3 songs via bluetooth as phones advanced, and music sharing started its digital journey.
For me growing up, music was social, and I loved it.
As I moved on to University in 2008, a new startup called Spotify came out of the valley. I remember hearing about it and thinking how is this even legal? I can listen to all of this music for free, with a few measly ads? This was crazy, and changed the way I listened to music from that day forward. I lived in an apartment of lads at the time and got them all on it immediately. I remember the excitement as you discovered or rediscovered a song, shouting across the hall; “Mute your music, remember this?!”. From that point on, I never looked back, and I’ve been in love with Spotify ever since. There has always been one drawback to having this much music though, you have a paradox of choice which creates decision fatigue. Sometimes I just wish people would help me choose, like back in the day when they’d lend you a CD.
I know what you’re thinking, people send me music all of the time on Whatsapp, iMessage, Slack, so what’s your point? They send it to me as well, and I love it. What’s the problem then? It’s very rarely at the right time. People listen to music at different times; working, at the gym, walking. Often people would send me a track via Whatsapp whilst they are working and I’d not be in a position to listen to it. By time you remember about it, you’d have to scroll through 12 memes and a bunch of worthless content, just to find that track; that’s if you could ever find it again. I wanted a way I could access track recommendations from people when I want them, without all the excess noise. So I set on a journey to create Choona (pronounced, like the fish, yes).
So who am I and what is our plan?
I’m Andy, a senior product designer based in Liverpool, England. I’ve spent 12+ years working with some huge names in the tech industry, so I know the tech scene inside out.
Up until the end of last year, I was the Head of Design at a large health tech startup in the UK. I was building Choona as a side project, whilst working there. On top of that, I have just become a first time dad to this little fella. Life is hectic to say the least, but I decided Choona needed my full attention to launch it properly. I sat down with my wife, who currently is on maternity (earning basically nothing) and told her I was going to risk it and leave in order to pursue Choona, she was thrilled as you can imagine. Jokes aside she has been super supportive and trusts in me, and Choona.
Up to now, I’ve had to self fund all of this development and leave my job to focus on an app that currently makes me 0 in revenue; a risk that will hopefully pay off. We have zero VC funding thus far and are bootstrapping all aspects of the business; it’s been difficult but we are finally at a position to let other users onboard.
So, what is Choona?
Often when describing Choona I say it’s Instagram for Music; it’s a lazy explanation, but it isn’t too far from the truth. Choona allows a lot of the same functionality that instagram does for photos; just for music.
You can:
- Follow people with interesting taste in music
- Discover new music, at a pace that suits your lifestyle
- Post tracks you love and build an audience based on just that
- Comment and react to tracks
- Send tracks privately to another users inbox
- Save tracks for later
- Discover what’s popular now
- Find users who share a similar music taste
- Open songs cross platform — if you are a Spotify user and follow a user who is on Apple Music, Choona will open the same track on Spotify; and vice-versa.
Why should you download?
If you love sharing music with friends and have always wished you had a place just for doing that, then that place is Choona. We are making this app for music lovers just like you.
The one positive to being bootstrapped, we are a super agile startup and ready to build the features you want and disregard the ones you don’t. It took us months to create the alogiritms to allow cross platform ability and to make the experience smooth, but this is just the start.
Early 2022, we opened up Choona to a small beta of about 100 users, some of the findings have really blown us away. I thought the average user would be a millennial, yet our third most active user is a 60+ super cool mum who loves reminiscing on old tracks. This is why it’s so helpful to have early users to shape the platform for the true music lovers. We need you.
We aren’t a Y Combinator startup with unlimited funds, we need the support from you, whether this is bug spotting, recommending features or even just spreading the word to friends and family; it all helps.
Where to download?
Choona is out for Android and iOS now, we are currently building a web platform as well, but that’s a few months from launch.
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/choona/id1552241351
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.choona&gl=GB
Website: www.choona.com
And before you go…
Choona is made for the music lover; if you find a bug, have an issue or would prefer a feature, please reach out. Your feedback will help us shape this platform to be as big as it deserves to be. You can reach me on Twitter or via email, I’ll get back to everyone.
I’m going to be blogging the whole journey of launching Choona and any challenges we face as a bootstrapped start up.
Thanks so much for reading
