Zema Platform is a music player app that allows users to fetch instant lyrics to the music they are currently listening to. Having a country where half of the users are listening to languages that are foreign, and the fact that these apps are not localized to most of the users shows that there is a significant portion of the Ethiopian population that could benefit more from localized apps that can solve this problem. Roughly, half of the urban Ethiopians are hooked onto their smartphones on a daily basis, using default/foreign apps to listen to music from their phones. If users were provided with a convenient app that can not only help with fetching lyrics of a selected song but also take an extra step into providing written content of poems, audio books and so on would be a great feature to have. Thus, providing the user with a lot more freedom of having a full experience is a great addition to the basic music player we know and have.
Facing this problem was one of the key insights that helped us come up with the idea of developing The Zema Platform – A music player app made for everyone to listen and fetch instant lyrics to the specific song a user is currently listening to. One of the unique features Zema supports is by hitting a switch button from the app, it can translate the lyrics to an audio one is listening to, into an English version. This helps foreigners or diasporas sing along to the local music as it is provided in an international language.
The beta version of Zema Platform was launched on Saturday, Nov 18th, 2017 at Gebeya Headquarters. The event was based on showcasing the app and all the current features it provides to the users, testing it in terms compatibility throughout different devices and the user experience of each user. The launch took about 3 hours, the first thirty to forty minutes were focused on a presentation of how the overall app works. In addition to this, users were also provided with the download link to the app. Once everyone had the app their phones, there was a subscription process to get an analysis of the total number of users we had registered in our system. Once this was complete, we went to each individual user collecting feedback on their experience on the overall app and the features it supports.
Daniel Getachew Android Application Engineer and Mikiyas Amdu Backend Application Engineer
Sosena Terefe
Front-end Application Engineer
We asked everyone to come out to the balcony area and have some refreshments and enjoy some good music to showcase that Zema can also be used as a karaoke app. We had everyone mingling around and having some snacks before we had a live performance. David and Daggi – our performers took the stage away as they performed two of their best original songs as we displayed the lyrics side by side to the music they were performing on the screen next to them so that people could sing along with them. They also took an extra step of performing other hit songs to showcase that Zema is not limited to just local content.
In conclusion, we hope to fill the gap through Zema by changing the way people experience local content. Users can continue to enjoy their music and receive lyrics as their it plays along, by using the Zema Platform.
Zema Platform Available to Download on Google Play Store
