Streemio: Streaming Music Made In Ghana

Posted on 15. Jul, 2010 by Nana Kwabena Owusu in News

Those of us who love the tech industry and follow the tech scene around the world including the US and European tech industry have been fascinated and intrigued by streaming music services such as Rhapsody, Pandora, Spotify and most recently MOG and Rdio. Time and again as we have tried (even with slow connections and restrictive data caps) to test out and trial these services, just as with other content services (Hulu, for example), we’ve been told time and again, No, No, No.

Well its time to say Yes, Yes, Yes. Out of the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) entrepreneurial training program is born Streemio, our very own Ghanaian streaming music service. Streemio is a product of Streemio Technologies, a start up co-founded by Samuel Darko and Francis Ahose and funded privately by the company behind MEST, Meltwater Foundation. Streemio aims to provide ‘Music on the Go’.

Streemio allows users to;

Listen to Predefined Channels
Build and Customize Playlists & Share Playlists with friends
Search for new music & Get recommended music
Get concert information for your favourite artistes

Streemio will be offered as an ‘internet radio’ service which allows users to sign up and quickly start enjoying music based on a few preferences, with the service allowing for personalization as it grows. According to one of the co-founders, an internet radio model was chosen in preference to an on demand model because a better user experience rather than personalization was important to them initially. User experience is especially important since Streemio will be offered primarily through mobile devices initially.

Streemio is offered on the iPhone, Symbian OS, WebOS and Java enabled mobile devices. The BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile have huge markets worldwide and with Android being open source and a darling of the tech industry, I asked the team why these platforms have no apps. The reasons, even to an avid BlackBerry user as myself who wants to be a beta tester so bad, are simple and reasonable and therefore acceptable.

Windows and Blackberry are absent for one reason. They are both in transition. Though they have significant market share, Microsoft has chosen to completely reset Windows Mobile, preventing old apps from working with Windows Phone 7 their new OS making it tricky for us to forecast, BlackBerry is in a similar situation with BlackBerry OS 6 due for release.

With regards to Android, there simply are not enough devices on the market (in Ghana) to warrant full developer commitment.

An interesting aside is that WebOS probably has fewer users than Android in Ghana but the one of the co-founders, Francis loves Palm’s WebOS.

And about WebOS, I just think its the coolest OS out there, hands down. So they have no market share down here, I’m willing to take private time off to build a client app for the platform ….just for kicks…

I love that the developers get to mix business with pleasure, an important balance to keep any start up team’s innovative spirit alive.

Music Streaming is a data intensive activity and with the high costs of data on mobile networks in Ghana (1MB = approx. GH¢ 0.20) it is going to be a challenge. Streemio recognises this and is using a two prong approach involving both a business and technical solution to ensure the service is within the reach of its users. Streemio has therefore partnered with the mobile networks to use an architectural design for delivering the service which significantly cuts the cost of delivery and and agressive music compression algorithms to deliver low bit rates while maintaing stereo quality sounds. Whatever this secret sauce is it needs to be very good to ensure Streemio survives.

Music streaming as the name implies delivers music to users. The depth of the music library of a music streaming service is therefore a crucial component in this service. Streemio has accroding to the team both Ghanaian and foreign music available and is currently working through COSGA to bring more artists on board. Let’s hope the bigwigs at COSGA are open to new models of revenue and unlike their foreign counterparts do not the licensing fees are not ridiculously high.

Streemio is due to be rolled out in a private beta test at the end of this month. A full public rollout is tentatively slated for end of September by which time hopefully the pricing models would have been decided and we will have subscription info available. We hope to score some beta invites for our readers and subscribers, if we can.

Let me know what you think of Streemio and provide any feedback you have via comments. You can also contact the Streemio directly via their contact page.

(Images used courtesy of Streemio Technologies.)

Tags: entrepreneurs, Ghana, iphone, java, mobile, music, smartphones, startups, Symbian, webos