TRACKED, TUNED & BOUNCED using RECHORD.XYZ
App planning 101, task one: create a service that will work for the average consumer.
Sounds easy.
The only problem is, the average consumer doesn’t live on your street. Or ours. They probably don’t even speak the same language.
In the western-centric bubble dominated by the London, Paris, New York axis of cool, there’s a real and obvious tendency to look out of a Silicon Valley office window and imagine what you see is pretty much how it is. That elusive target consumer you’re trying to define and serve is out there, somewhere, in one of the coffee shops or maybe the nail bar.
On a planet of many worlds, at a time in which global reach and connectivity has never been greater, it’s ironic how frequently we ignore whole cultures and are blinded to the realities beyond our own very narrow experiences and perspectives.
That’s why, when it came to creating the RECHORD.XYZ MVP, we deliberately engineered an internationalised approach that doesn’t lean heavily on a cloud architecture to go about it’s business.
We chose not to automatically back up user’s output online by default, process all of the effects and transcoding via a battery of APIs, or harvest perpetual streams of irrelevant data.
Yes, the cloud will play its role – providing a gateway through RECHORD.XYZ to a range of third party resources and transcoding services will necessitate that – but our primary objective has been to make the core tool handle as much of the weight as possible. Utilising the power of the device in your hand rather than the awesome power of the ether, which is ultimately only as expandable as the user’s data allowance.
And that’s rather the point.
Globally, vast populations do not have easy access to fast & affordable data connections. Across Africa, The Middle East, South, Central & East Asia and the Pacific region, billions rely on mobile networks to provide a digital lifeline, and for them, the hyperbolically
accelerating data suck is a very real and significant issue.
So to make an app truly accessible – no matter where or how the user lives – you’ve got to make sure that it can work independently of a data connection.
The last mile problem – how do you service a user at the end of a restricted or inadequate network – has plagued the internet age since its earliest beginnings. We’ve fixed it by flipping it on its head and making the point at which the user stands the very first step
Once the app is on their handset, any user (free or subscribed) can Track, Tune & Bounce to their heart’s content irrespective of whether they have a connection to the internet. No ifs. No buts. Just hit record and say or sing what you see.
Yes, there are elements that by necessity require connecting to our cloud infrastructure, but none that impact on the app’s core functionality. Record audio, finesse it and export it. All out of the box.
Because we believe that this is what democratisation of digital tools is all about. If your app doesn’t work in Ghana, India, or Indonesia as well as it does in Southern California, then not only is it not accessible, but it’s also ignoring billions of people. We want to put a 4-track recording studio into your pocket, everyone’s pocket… we want the kid in the Mangrove Jungle to have the same tools as the kid in the coffee shop.
Why would we build a system more than half the world would struggle to use when uncomplicated creativity is the most universal language there is?
Well we wouldn’t … and we didn’t.
TRACK. TUNE. BOUNCE.
That’s all you have to do.
