A young startup founder based in Bangalore, India came up with a ridiculously fun idea: Create a game-like app where users can dance along with dancers on screen, get points for their performance, and see where they land on a leaderboard. The tech worked great, the app was loaded with engaging incentives. There was just one problem: You can’t have dance without music.
Ashish Rawat, founder of Oga (oga.so), turned to Adaptr, Feed Media Group’s new single-click music licensing and administration service for startups that need music to grow. “We tried sorting out licensing via brokers or via direct deals. It was very time consuming,” Rawat explains. “When you’re not from the industry, it’s very expensive and hard, especially from the other side of the world.”
He heard about Adaptr and unlocked a pre-cleared, hit-rich catalog of popular music from major labels. “We got signed up in days, lightning fast,” Rawat says. “The terms were good and on the tech side, they were fast to respond and available to troubleshoot by phone as needed.”
“We were excited to get a creative app like Oga on board, even before our official launch in May,” says Bryn Boughton, Head of Platform and Licensing at Adaptr.
“While the licensing has real value, it’s the all-in-one solution that enables startups’ instant time to market and a way to realize their vision.”
Adaptr is designed for innovators like Rawat, who need to get their product to market and take the next steps in building a business, quickly and at an appropriate price point. After the music starts playing, Adaptr also supports startups as they navigate reporting and royalties. “Licensing gets a lot of attention for being time consuming and expensive but the bulk of the work happens after you have rights to the music, including music integration, tracking and reporting,” notes Boughton. “While the licensing has real value, it’s the all-in-one solution that enables startups’ instant time to market and a way to realize their vision.”
The vision for Oga came organically to Rawat. A gamer and developer passionate about interactive experiences, Rawat began to build Oga after embarking on a fitness journey and discovering his love of movement. He originally envisioned an app focused on workouts, using full-body tracking to guide users. However, “The experience we created worked better for dance than fitness,” he recounts. “The feeling and the energy of dance workouts and routines are great and the experience captures that.”
The only full-body tracking app of its kind, Oga is a freewheeling dance competition on your phone. You watch a dance, learn it, and dance along, as the app tracks key points in your movements and rates them for accuracy and style. As you move through the dance, your performance is ranked compared to all the other dancers who’ve completed the dance before you. The better you master the moves, the higher you score and the higher you rank.
Rawat and team plan to integrate playful filters, multi-user dance sessions, and ways for dance-crazy users to upload their own videos, issuing their own challenges. Unlike other short-form social video, users can simply dance for the sake of getting down, while getting feedback from the app. Or they can share their talent and ideas with others, if and when they are ready.
Though currently his main focus is on US users and their musical preferences, Rawat also hopes to expand the sounds available on Oga as Adaptr’s catalog grows. “I’d like to incorporate Bollywoods hits, K-pop, J-pop, you name it,” he says.