Cellphone and classical music! Twaang is an on-demand mobile music library for Indian classical music lovers and the couple who made it happen is IT professional Vishnu Raned and Madhuri, working “eight days a week”, as they put it. The pair was at it since May last year but it was quietly put in place a little before Deepavali with no noise to announce its arrival. “We wanted our effort to be in perfect sruthi first,” said Vishnu, its co-founder and CEO.
Calling it Twaang — Music on the Move, Vishnu explained it was launched for Android smartphones to reach provides legal, high quality music — on demand and on the move — via Wi-Fi and 3G/4G.
Huge library
The Bangalore engineer has spent most of his working life in the enterprise software space in the Asia-Pacific and is a specialist in building business from ground zero for companies/start-ups looking to establish and grow. His new start-up, Twaang, already has listings of about 50,000 music tracks, 6,000 albums, and has tie-ups with nearly 4,000 artists in all genres in his listings, and 44 record labels that include Carnatic, Hindustani, folk, fusion, devotional, live concerts and recordings! “Interestingly with independent musicians willingly being associated with their albums, the listener’s response too is really catching up as Twaang is currently used by over 3,000 users across multiple continents. Listeners used our app more than 30,000 times in the last month. It was also voted recently as one of the Top 5 Mobile Apps in 2012 at MobiSparks,”
Vishnu Raned said. “We just have been able to run this and work out costs with advertisements plugged in between.”
The musicians
In the classical range, Twaang is upswing with Shubha Mudgal, Sudha Ragunathan, Ganesh/Kumaresh, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Jayanthi Kumaresh, Mysore Manjunath and Nagaraj, Malladi Brothers, Pravin Godkhindi and much more. “It serves as a launch/promotion pad for new artists/bands, helping them promote their music. Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhat is exclusively releasing his new album for Twaang in Bangalore at Atria, 2.30 p.m. on Friday.”
How did he come up with the app? “I was once stuck in my car for hours not able to listen to music of my choice. I didn’t have any CDs nor did radio programmes interest me. I knew of internet radio in the West and [was inspired] to replicate something of this kind, especially to help classical enthusiasts have a choice at their fingertips.”
As veena artiste Jayanthi Kumaresh observed: “Gone are the days when one clung to one’s albums. We must realise that in this tech-savvy age, the more people listen to our work, the more satisfaction we derive. Just like Spotify in the U.K., if classical music is available as an android app, what more can musicians ask for?”
Interested persons can get more information on www.twaang.com
