Music To Go: An App That Will Change Your Habits!
In the framework of Startup Lab of ADandPRLab and in association with Antenna Music, we had the chance to create our own start-ups based on the theme “Radio & Audio Innovations”.
That project required many hours of brainstorming in order to reach our decision! Finally, we chose to focus on the daily problems music app users deal with. Problems such as the internet access those apps require and the application’s huge capacity on the Smartphone. We took into consideration all these times we didn’t listen to music on the bus, while coming to our classes , or on a trip due to the reasons mentioned above. So we thought: Since music is an integral part of our lives, how about we create a music app that overtakes all the issues above? And that’s how the idea of “Music To Go” was born!
“Music To Go” is a music app powered by Antenna with:
· Thousands of music lists (Billboard, Grammy’s, Top 100, Pop, etc.).
· Personal profile.
· The ability to find new friends with similar music interests and share songs with them.
· Free and premium services. The free version gives you the opportunity to create music lists, while connected to the internet and replay them later without it. The premium has a monthly fee of 3.99 € and by purchasing it you can create your lists without internet connection, better music quality and without ads.
· A section with new musicians to discover.
· The ability to save & replay your favorite songs.
· Space/MB saver
We managed to actually design our app , so in the first page of the application users could see the music categories, their friends , the upcoming musicians , their favorite saved songs and of course the “search” button. Take a look of ‘Music To Go’’ interface below!
As you can see we actually tried to create a user-friendly application, delicate yet simple to use and we always kept in mind a short yet powerful statement, for us, People always come first! Our goal was to create a start-up which will support and fulfill our user’s needs. While we were just at the beginning of the project, we decided that there is not a better way to organize our ideas and plans than a Value Proposition Canvas. Not only we wanted our start-up service to be useful and successful but also we wanted to be sure that it can improve our potential user’s life. For that we needed to create specific values for our users that could be visualized, designed and tested before the start up would come-to-life. The value proposition canvas consists of two parts, the customer profile and the value map.
Starting at the customer profile, we researched the jobs our users wanted to be done. Specifically, since music is a part of their everyday life, the ability to listen to it wherever they are, even in remote places without mobile reception, is crucial. They also need to be constantly informed about the latest hits and find friends from all around the world with the same music taste as them. For them, it’s important to be able to save as much mobile space they can while downloading and saving playlists. Users face many difficulties though, as they have to face dangerous for their device viruses, running out of space and/or MB (especially heavy users who listen to music all daylong) while most of them are “doomed” to listen to the same songs again and again. All in all, our users would hope for a service/product which will be simple in use, have space/internet free section as well as options of discovering — creating- sharing their own music lists.
Focusing on our users profile, we went on creating our value map in order to apply our service to their needs. First of all we checked thoroughly the difficulties our users face and we came up with a service that you cannot only find, create, share music lists but you can also do it without storing them in the mobile’s memory but in the app’s memory instead, saving them a lot of space. The content will be safe without any viruses and all that from the free or premium pack that both can fulfill different needs of our users. But we didn’t want to just solve their problems, we aimed to give them something more than they expected. The variety of songs in our data base will be constantly developing, adding both the newest hits and all-time-classics in order to have variety to choose from. Our user will be able to track down new musicians and artists and not just the mainstream ones, who are currently making their way to music industry.
But to achieve such uniqueness and include a large variety of songs coming from new artists as well, what we had to do was to see if our application could be successful and therefore how much it would appeal to our potential audience. So, we created a questionnaire, consisted of 6 questions and we asked 40 people of the age 18–38. Their reaction really made us believe even more in our project, as they seemed satisfied from what they heard. Their feedback played a profound role as it helped us make better decisions! The only objection was about the price, that they were hesitant to pay 3,99€ for the premium section, so we decided to reduce the cost at 2,99€. By making this questionnaire and seeing their responses we understood how important it is to test our ideas and see what people’s needs are, if we cover them or not, what they want from us to change in order to be more appealing. Besides, it’s an important factor which contributes to the success of a project, as we check what isn’t so appealing and he have the chance to change it, avoiding failure.
But apart from these, an application has to be promoted in order to stand out from all the others in the market. Our team thought of 3 steps which will lead us to the ultimate success. We decided to take advantage of our sponsor, who is ANT1, in order to advertise us and to bring more and more users in. The second step is to keep on developing our data base with more songs and new hits so as to make our app even more exciting and up-to-date. Last but not least, there could be a contest that will be carried out at the end of the year, among the 5 most loved musicians from our app. The winner of the contest will have the opportunity to sign a contract with HEAVEN MUSIC. We thought that this will be a good advertisement for Music To Go App as we will show to people how seriously we take that project and that we do not only care for our own profit, but also with the services we offer, we try to make people’s free time better and to help the upcoming musicians, who love music as much as we do!
Although, as we stated, music apps have become a crucial part of our lives, most of us are unaware of the process for this kind of app and what it needs in order to be created. Through ADandPRLab, we were given the opportunity to get informed about what things an application like this requires. Concerning our expenses, we learnt that apart from the usual costs we should pay (e.g. the technician to create the application, the designer etc.) there are more we should think about. More specifically, our expenses go to our data base which costs around 200€, but since it will be continuously developed, the price will be raised every time it gets updated. Moreover, we need to pay for the digital construction for Android and iOS software, which is 2,500€ each. Nevertheless, an application founder does not pay only for the technical part, but also for its continuous development, as well as for it to become known. This way, the cost grows, as we are called to pay influencers to advertise and suggest us to the public, who most of them are paid 212€ per post on social media.
All of this is based on the business model of the canvas that we quote below:
In other words, we can say that this process gave us many supplies for the future. We saw things from a more realistic perspective and we went deeper to this domain. Also, the teamwork made us even more powerful and confident to propose and support our ideas. Lastly, it prepared us for our future career, so as to be able to face any difficulty with smart consideration and offer to the world services with fresh, as well as innovative ideas, and we think that Music To Go is one of them!
Our Team, MEDia: Dimitra Karali, Dimitra Christodoulaki, Evaggelia Paraskevopoulou, Mariza Rizou
