City trio creates app to make hip hop music discovery easier
Armaan, Amr and Hamza Mecca, three cousins from the city, have developed a homegrown app called Passionfruit Music that connects listeners to exciting hip-hop artists and gives artists a way to showcase their talents to the world. It offers an alternative to traditional music streaming formats, as a community-based platform that levels the playing field for artists, rappers, producers and other creatives and makes music discovery for
listeners a more organic process.
“We are recent college graduates and we had a lot of friends who were making music. These are very talented people with great content, but there’s a big problem — they aren’t getting the success they deserve. This is because they are competing with major record labels that have millions of dollars to spend on marketing. They are struggling to reach the right audience. We built Passionfruit to level the playing field. You shouldn’t have to spend a ton of money to make a living. The music should do the talking,” says Armaan, one of the co-founders.
On other platforms, artists have to find their audience but Passionfruit brings the audience to the artist. “Our unique algorithm means that we can show each user songs that are perfect for their specific taste in music. We are focusing on getting the right music to the right people and there is no paying to get ahead,” Hamza Mecca pitches in.
Through the app, the trio aims to make discovering independent music fun and simple. Users have to scroll through 20-second music videos to discover songs. “Once the listeners find the songs, they can share it with a community of people who share their music taste. This is a very social way to experience music — so each user can follow their friends to see how closely their music tastes match and to share songs,” Amr adds. Passionfruit Music now features approximately 75 hip-hop artists based across India and Jordan, the two initial markets that the app will be launched in.