Symphony out of chaos

A 22-year-old has created a music-oriented social networking app that promises to be both Instagram and Quora for music lovers.

For no other generation perhaps is music such an inseparable part of their lives as for millennials. Right from the minute one wakes up to the time one spends on working out to the long hours one takes to reach the workplace or return home, music is one’s constant source of companionship. Isn’t it ironic then that we don’t have a single social networking app that caters to music enthusiasts alone?

This very thought sparked the inception of Symphony in the mind of Rosanlal Behera, an engineering graduate of D J Sanghvi College of Engineering, Mumbai. The 22-year-old is the founder of a music-oriented social networking app that he says is both ‘Instagram and Quora for music lovers’, where they can share as well as explore the nuances of music in its greatest depth.

Like how Twitter is a beneficial tool to share succinct, precise information or how Instagram can let you narrate short, peppy photo and video stories, Symphony aspires to do the same with music as a medium. Having started the app in its Beta mode during his college years, it was positive feedback that helped his cause, with users from Europe and the US as well as India taking a liking to the idea. In less than two years, Symphony has about 15,000 downloads on Google PlayStore already with an average rating beyond 4.5 stars.

“I thought of an app where people can share details about the song they’re listening to, regardless of the music streaming platform. There are more than ten music streaming applications with about 10 million users in the country and the streaming space happens to be immensely fragmented. In other social networking platforms where people share songs from a music application, we are often directed to download the music application to listen to the number — which doesn’t make much sense. In Symphony, irrespective of the streaming application, you get to hear a 30-second bit of a song a user shares,” Rosanlal adds. And if you want to share a piece of music, there is a 45 million song-base to choose from!

While discussions surrounding music, latest trends, happening numbers and reference points for a song are a part and parcel of our daily lives, Symphony lends this discussion more concreteness, something that could enthuse many and serve as a go-to material for musical references in the future. “One huge source of motivation was the fact that people love to discuss music and many such significant conversations are lost in thin air in our daily lives. The application lets us ask questions about music and also enables replies in the form of a music portion (if not words).”

To approach the discussions on the platform with more seriousness and provide it more validity, Symphony is in the process of bringing on board several musicians, experts and professionals in the music industry. Not only can users converse with the crème de la crème of the music fraternity, but they can also stay in tune with their latest albums and songs. Specific moderation techniques are employed so that the discussion doesn’t veer towards aspects beyond music.

Having gone through the various stages of the platform development sans a co-founder or a business partner, he knows the advantages of being the only face of Symphony. Says Rosanlal, “I have the freedom to decide what I want to do. There’s less friction because I don’t have to take the permission of other people. That can be a disadvantage sometimes though. On the plus side however, I have no co-founder conflicts and hence can focus solely on the product.”

Learning from mistakes

It’s not that similar ideas about music haven’t been tried before in the social networking space. It’s just that Rosanlal has tried to learn from their mistakes. “Because several people have failed at it in the past, I have realised how difficult it is to execute a music-only social media platform. A lot of factors come into the picture; because music may or may not be as exciting as photos and videos. The content you post is not owned by you (unlike the content you post on Instagram or Facebook).” However, it’s the exclusivity of catering to music-enthusiasts alone that gives it an edge.

“Facebook had always allowed its users to upload images. Yet, when Instagram came as an exclusive image-sharing platform, it was a game-changer. When you create something exclusive, people start taking notice. If I want to know about music or want to hear a particular song on any social networking platform, hardly 2 of 100 posts end up helping me. This is why there’s a great opportunity for niche social media,” the Mumbaikar feels.

The possibilities with the platform are diverse and Rosanlal has several ideas up his sleeve. “We are here to create calm out of chaos,” the young lad smiles.