Wednesday (8/8) on the Guardian’s Apps Blog (London), Stuart Dredge writes, “Some people think of Smule as a maker of novelty music apps like Ocarina, I Am T-Pain and Magic Piano—which respectively involve blowing a virtual ancient wind instrument; tapping out songs on a curly touchscreen piano; and Auto-Tuning yourself to robo-rap. Some novelties. Smule’s apps have been installed 61m times so far, and in July the company had 15m active users across its collection, with users having created more than 750m songs. Magic Piano alone has notched up 21m installs and has 730k daily active users (DAUs), while AutoRap—released in mid-July 2012—already has 3m installs and 350k DAUs.” Smule co-founders Prerna Gupta and Ge Wang “offer similar explanations for their beliefs: the idea that music was once a fundamental form of human communication, but that in the era of recorded music, it became something to consume rather than create for the vast majority of people. ‘There was no “Am I a musician? Am I talented?”,’ says Gupta of the pre-recordings era. ‘People would just come home every day from work, get together and make music with their family and friends. We want to take technology and bring that back.’ ”
Posted August 9, 2012
