Does Ohdio Want to Be Spotify for Indonesia?
Ohdio is a startup from Indonesia that wants to disrupt the domestic music industry by offering an online music streaming service. It’s available only for web right now, having gone into live beta just a few days ago.
As an online music streaming service, Ohdio works like YouTube for music. You can play any song in its database anytime without installing any app. To use Ohdio, you need to sign up first, after that you can add songs to the ‘Jukebox’ and just play them.
Ohdioはインドネシアのスタートアップで、オンラインでミュージーック・ストリーミング・サービスを提供し、インドネシア国内の音楽業界を揺るがそうとしている。今はウェブ版しかなく、数日前にベータ版がローンチしたばかりだ。
オンラインのミュージック・ストリーミング・サービスとしてのOhdioは、YouTubeのミュージック版みたいなものだ。アプリをインストールすることなく、同サービスのデータベースに収録されている曲をいつでも聴くことができる。Ohdioを利用するには、まず登録をする必要がある。登録をしたら、あとは「Jukebox」に曲を追加して聴くだけ。
Ohdio は、オンラインの音楽ストリーミングサービスを提供することで国内の音楽産業を破壊することを狙うインドネシアのスタートアップだ。現在はウェブでしか提供されておらず、2-3日前にベータ版が出たばかりだ。
オンラインの音楽ストリーミングサービスの Ohdio は、音楽版 YouTube のように機能する。アプリのインストールなしに、いつでもデータベースからどんな歌でも再生できる。Ohdio を使うには、まず登録が必要で、その後、Jukebox に曲を追加したりそれを再生したりできる。
After exploring the service, I noticed the collection isn’t really complete even for recent songs (where’s my Sheila on 7?) as they have only worked with three major labels. But Yoga Nandiwardhana (the founder of Ohdio) and his team are working on it. So for now you can play some songs from Dewa 19, or if you are in your 30s you might prefer Katon Bagaskara. What about Western music? Or Korean? Yoga said that they are focusing on Indonesian music for the time being.
For the interface and user experience, I like Ohdio because it is clean and easy to use. The search bar is also prominent so users won’t have much trouble searching the songs. So is Ohdio trying to be the Spotify of Indonesia? Yoga Nandiwardhana, the founder and CEO of Ohdio answers:
We’re not trying to be the something-something of Indonesia, really, because we believe that Indonesia has a unique music listening and online behavior, so applying some foreign concept directly to the local market just won’t cut it. For the freemium model, let’s put simply that we will give some more enjoyable experience to paid users. We only allow people to put two songs in their jukebox to be played without registering, since we’re in beta mode, we’d like to get people to get the experience first. If you stick around for a little longer, you’ll find out that you need to register to explore the service. For the official launch and mobile app, I cannot disclose that yet.
The company received investment from East Ventures [1], so I think Ohdio will have a good chance to build the music library and scale the service. Many Indonesians are waiting for this kind of product, but at the same time I wonder how much easy it will be to convert free users into premium ones.
1. Disclosure: East Ventures is an investor in this blog. Please see our ethics statement for more information.